MATLAB: Surf plot mesh looks jagged when I set FaceAlpha

alphaMATLABsurf

Below is the example given in the "surf" documentation. The mesh looks smooth when `FaceAlpha` is not included but it looks jagged when it's transparent. Is this a graphics card issue or can it somehow be fixed?

 [X,Y] = meshgrid(-5:.5:5);
 Z = Y.*sin(X) - X.*cos(Y);
 s = surf(X,Y,Z,'FaceAlpha',0.5)

Best Answer

It looks nice in my Matlab 2016b/Win10. Setting the Alpha blending enables the OpenGL renderer. If this causes troubles, try:

opengl software

Does this help? Do you have the current versions of the drivers installed? Which OS are you using? Can you post a screenshot such that "looks jagged" gets more clear?

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Display question about transparent intersected surfaces

This issue is due to the Order Independent Transparency method used by MATLAB called "Depth Peeling." Unfortunately, there are no existing workarounds.

Changing to "opengl" setting to "hardwarebasic" gives a slightly better result, as this triggers the transparency to use an "object sort" method (Typically this is worse than any Order Independent Transparency method). Or you may use the "painters" renderer for the figures created by executing the following:

>> set(gcf,'Renderer','painters');

Our development team is looking into addressing this issue and it will be considered for a future release of MATLAB.

MATLAB: Partial transparent surface plot

Play with Chart Surface Options: https://it.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/chartsurface-properties.html

You can set AlphaData to 0 where you don't want to see any colour. Here is an example hiding values of a trigonometric function between 0 and 1:

[X,Y] = meshgrid(1:0.5:10,1:20);
Z = sin(X) + cos(Y);
s = surf(X,Y,Z);
s.AlphaData = (Z<=0) | (Z>=1);
s.FaceColor = 'texturemap';
s.FaceAlpha = 'texturemap';

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Display question about transparent intersected surfaces

MATLAB: Partial transparent surface plot

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