[R] RGL 'front' upwards default in rendering image

Duncan Murdoch murdoch at stats.uwo.ca
Tue Oct 3 20:32:43 CEST 2006


On 10/3/2006 2:27 PM, Joe Byers wrote:
> Thanx for the help.  Other comments are posted inline below.
> 
> Joe
> 
> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 10/3/2006 11:31 AM, Joe Byers wrote:
>>> thanks for the reply.
>>>
>>> I wish I could create a self contained example of the problem, but I 
>>> can't.
>>>
>>> My task is displaying the surface generated from a simulation of 
>>> Forward prices for a selected trajectory.  The x axis is time from 
>>> 9/25/06 to 3/31/2007 or 133X1 vector of integers. The z axis is the 
>>> expiration month of the forwards as integers (1-36), the y axis is 
>>> price.  For each day(x) there are 36 prices (y).  surface3d displays 
>>> the surface but displays the z axis in reverse order and the x axis 
>>> in reverse order as well.  I can rotate the image 180 degrees but 
>>> time on the x axis is running  from right to left instead of left to 
>>> right.  My z axis is now in ascending order.
>>>
>>> I have read the documentation for rgl and much of the supported 
>>> documents on neosciences web site, but I can not understand how to 
>>> generate the image with the displaying the x axis left to right and z 
>>> axis in ascending order.  I think that rotation matrix or a setting 
>>> in rgl.materials will do it, but I can't figure out which one.  This 
>>> mathematical conversions is beyond me.
>>
>> Generally I'd suggest using surface3d, which uses the same conventions 
>> as persp and other R functions, rather than rgl.surface, which uses 
>> the OpenGL/computer graphics conventions.
>>
>> If you do that, you would want x and y to be the fixed variables (rows 
>> and columns) and z to be the response.
> surface3d instead of rgl.surface seems to have worked.  I need to work 
> out issued with the axis labels and placement, but you made some 
> suggestions below that I will try.  I think I have my y and z ases 
> turned around.  The documentation for rgl.surface uses y and surface3d 
> uses z in their examples, but the examples do the same thing.
> 
> One note is surface3d uses a white background instead of black that 
> rgl.surface has.  I did  see the rgl.bg method that I will experiment 
> with to see how this works.

You can play with a variable called r3dDefaults to set your own defaults 
for par3d(), background, and material.  The open3d() function (called by 
most *3d functions) looks here for parameters that you haven't specified.

Duncan Murdoch

> 
>>
>>>
>>> Here is my code
>>> library(rgl);
>>> #set x and z vectors
>>> x<-as.numeric(as.date(rownames(calday.1),order='ymd'));
>>> z<-as.numeric(colnames(a)[1:ncurve]); #only use the portion of the 
>>> curve with data, exclude NaN's
>>>     res<-par3d('zoom'=5);
>>>             #attempt to set the image/window size, constrained to 
>>> 0,0,256,256 wish I could change this to 0,0,640,640
>>
>> That's on my wish list too.  All I can suggest is that in the current 
>> release in Windows in MDI mode, the Windows|Tile command works.
>>
>> (The difficulty is that rgl is portable to 3 incompatible windowing 
>> systems.  Things like setting the size of a Window thus take much more 
>> work than you'd expect.  More than three times as much, because I 
>> don't think there's anybody who is familiar with all 3 systems.)
> I do understand.  I know windows, and have a linux server running that 
> is used for a data warehouse and web server at home.  Here at the 
> university of Tulsa, I am stuck with Windows only in our college.  But I 
> am not a OS programmer, and for that matter not a very good high level 
> programmer either:).
>>
>>
>>>     res<- rotationMatrix(pi,0, 1, 0) # attempt to set rotation, does 
>>> not make a difference
>>
>> That just stored a matrix.  You need to use view3d to set the 
>> userMatrix to that value.
>>
>>> #create a x labels vectors that somewhat matches in the image, trial 
>>> and error here
>>> labels<-as.character(as.date(x))# could just use rownames(calday.1)
>>> labels<-labels[c(1,n%/%6,n%/%4,n%/%3,n%/%2,(n*2)%/%3,(n*3)%/%4,(n*5)%/%6,n)] 
>>>
>>>     i=1;
>>>     y<-ez[,,i]; # set y array
>>>     #create the y axis labels,again trial and error to fit, using 7 
>>> slots from 0 to the max(y)
>>>     
>>> labelsy<-as.character(format(max(y)*rep(1/7,8)*(seq(1:8)-1),digits=2))
>>> #pretty colors thank you rgl docs.
>>>     ylim <- range(y)
>>>     ylen <- ylim[2] - ylim[1] + 1
>>>     colorlut <- terrain.colors(ylen) # height color lookup table
>>>     col <- colorlut[ y-ylim[1]+1 ] # assign colors to heights for 
>>> each point
>>> #generate the surface
>>>         rgl.surface(x,z,y,ylim=c(0,max(ez[,,i])),back='lines',color=col)
>>>         title3d(xlab='Date',zlab='Contract Month');#,ylab='Price $'); 
>>> #sub='Forward curve Trajectory 1',
>>>         axis3d('x--',labels=labels,nticks=9)
>>>         axis3d('y+-',labels=labelsy,nticks=8)
>>>         axis3d('z--',labels=as.character(z),nticks=ncurve);
>>
>> You can use the "at" argument to set ticks at some location and 
>> "labels" to set the text to something else.  For example, you might 
>> want to reverse one of the axes if the direction isn't the one you want.
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>>>
>>> Thank you
>>> Joe
>>>
>>> Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>>>> Joe Byers wrote:
>>>>> The documentation for surface3d and rgl.surface in the package RGL 
>>>>> states
>>>>> "'surface3d' always draws the surface with the `front' upwards
>>>>>       (i.e. towards higher 'z' values).  This can be used to render 
>>>>> the
>>>>>       top and bottom differently; see 'rgl.material' and the example
>>>>>       below."
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there a way to override this default?  I have search all the 
>>>>> related methods help and the documents on RGL's website.
>>>> There are lots of ways to override it:  as the docs say, rgl.surface 
>>>> is more flexible than surface3d, and you can draw triangles or quads 
>>>> arbitrarily.  What sort of thing do you want to do?
>>>>
>>>> Duncan Murdoch
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
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>>



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