Plot (x,y,z) triplets over coordinates (x,y) with color z
matlab, plot
Solution
Assuming you don't care about the color of the actual line, but the markers. Use `plot` in combination with `scatter`.
Imagine following example data:
t = 0:pi/20:2*pi;
x = sin(t);
y = cos(t);
z = t;
plot3(x,y,z);
Plotted in the 2D-plane:
plot(x,y); hold on
scatter(x,y,300,z); hold off
results in:
From your comment: if you have enough data and you don't need the line, just use `scatter`, it's exactly what you need.
Another possibility inspired by a solution on MATLAB Central, considering both line and markers.
surface([x;x],[y;y],zeros(2,length(t)),[z;z],'EdgeColor','flat',...
'Marker','o','MarkerSize',10,'MarkerFaceColor','flat');
Make the color dependent on `z` is quite easy, for changing marker sizes you definitely need the `scatter` function:
surface([x;x],[y;y],zeros(2,length(t)),[z;z],'EdgeColor','flat'); hold on
MarkerSize = round(z*1000)+1;
scatter(x,y,MarkerSize,z,'.','MarkerFaceColor','auto'); hold off
For on `z` depending, increasing transparency it's a little tricky. You can find a workaround here, using the `patch` function.
Problem
I've got a list of points (x,y,z) and would like to visualize them as a curve on a plane with points on (x,y) and any of color/intensity/thickness as z. How can this be done in Matlab? `plot(x,y)` gets the right shape, but I need the color to depend on `z`.