[Matplotlib-users] No z-axis background in 3d plots

[Julian Gethmann]

Dear all,

I found a solution to my first problem, which I share here for completeness.
Instead of trick 2 in the MWE one can use the following code to set the 
background to transparent white/(1,1,1,0).
```
ax1.set_facecolor('white')
ax1.w_xaxis.set_pane_color((1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0))
ax1.w_yaxis.set_pane_color((1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0))
ax1.w_zaxis.set_pane_color((1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.0))
ax1.w_zaxis.line.set_visible(False)
```

Cheers,
Julian

On 01/03/2021 17:51, Julian Gethmann wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I've got two questions concerning axis in 3d plots.
> When I do something similar to my minimal working example (see below), 
> then I see a grid and light gray filling forming half a cube.
> 
> 1. How do I turn off this cube in z-direction, so that the x-y-plane 
> still has got the ticks and labels, but there is no x-z-plane, nor a 
> y-z-plane.
> In the first attached image there is how far I got and the other image 
> is what I intend to have.
> In the left plot, there I turned off the axis (`ax2.axis('off')`, but 
> this also turns off the x-y-plane and in the right plot there is the box.
> 
> 2. The best case would be that I get the right plot with a shifted 
> dedicated z-axis, but I haven't looked into creating such new axis, yet.
> 
> Unfortunately, I couldn't find an option like 
> `ax2.axis(x=True,y=True,z=False)` or `plt.grid('no-z')` and the 3d 
> examples from the gallery also include all this box, even the frontpage 
> example[1] which has no ticks.
> Also emptying the ticks and labels in z still leaves the gray box (trick 
> 1 in MWE). And trying to hide them behind a white surface (trick 2 in 
> MWE) still leaves a small grey border.
> 
> ---------------------
> Minimal Working Example
> 
> # MWE
> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
> from matplotlib import cm
> from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
> import numpy as np
> 
> # sample data
> x = np.linspace(-2, 2, 10)
> y = np.linspace(-2, 2, 10)
> X, Y = np.meshgrid(x, y)
> def fun(x, y):
>      return x + y
> Z = fun(X, Y)
> 
> # plotting problem
> fig = plt.figure()
> ax1 = fig.add_subplot(1, 1, 1, projection='3d', frame_on=False, )
> surf1 = ax1.plot_surface(X, Y, Z, linewidth=0, antialiased=True, 
> cmap=cm.RdYlBu)
> 
> # trick 1
> ax1.set_zticks([])
> ax1.set_zticklabels([])
> ax1.grid(False)
> 
> # trick 2
> ax1.contourf(X, Y,
>               np.array([np.ones_like(Z)[-1, :] * i for i in 
> np.linspace(-4, 4, 10)]).T,
>               zdir='x', offset=-2, colors="white")
> ax1.set_xlim(-2,2)
> ax1.set_ylim(-2,2)
> ---------------------
> 
> [1] 
> https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/frontpage/3D.html#sphx-glr-gallery-frontpage-3d-py 
> 
> 
> I hope, I could make my intention and attempts clear, hope a solution 
> exists and someone here knows of it and can tell me how to proceed.
> 
> 
> Thank you very much in advance,
> 
> Julian
> 
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