Note

This section is only a reference, please see chapter on mlab: scripting for 3D plotting for an introduction to mlab.

Please see the section on Running mlab scripts for instructions on running the examples.

Camera handling functions

roll

enthought.mayavi.mlab.roll(roll=None)
Sets or returns the absolute roll angle of the camera

view

enthought.mayavi.mlab.view(azimuth=None, elevation=None, distance=None, focalpoint=None)

Sets/Gets the view point for the camera.

view(azimuth=None, elevation=None, distance=None, focalpoint=None)

If called with no arguments this returns the current view of the camera. To understand how this function works imagine the surface of a sphere centered around the visualization. The azimuth argument specifies the the angle “phi” on the x-y plane which varies from 0-360 degrees. The elevation argument specifies the angle “theta” from the z axis and varies from 0-180 degrees. The distance argument is the radius of the sphere and the focalpoint, the center of the sphere.

Note that if the elevation is close to zero or 180, then the azimuth angle refers to the amount of rotation of a standard x-y plot with respect to the x-axis. Thus, specifying view(0,0) will give you a typical x-y plot with x varying from left to right and y from bottom to top.

Keyword arguments:

azimuth:float, optional. The azimuthal angle (in degrees, 0-360), i.e. the angle subtended by the position vector on a sphere projected on to the x-y plane with the x-axis.
elevation:float, optional. The zenith angle (in degrees, 0-180), i.e. the angle subtended by the position vector and the z-axis.
distance:float, optional. A positive floating point number representing the distance from the focal point to place the camera.
focalpoint:array_like, optional. An array of 3 floating point numbers representing the focal point of the camera.

Returns:

If no arguments are supplied it returns a tuple of 4 values (azimuth, elevation, distance, focalpoint), representing the current view. Note that these can be used later on to set the view.

If arguments are supplied it returns None.

Examples:

Get the current view:

 >>> v = view()
 >>> v
(45.0, 45.0, 25.02794981, array([ 0.01118028,  0.        ,  4.00558996]))

Set the view in different ways:

>>> view(45, 45)
>>> view(240, 120)
>>> view(distance=20)
>>> view(focalpoint=(0,0,9))

Set the view to that saved in v above:

>>> view(*v)