Why is my surface black when plotting with the SURF command regardless of the color map chosen?

The SURF command creates a plot in which the surface is black regardless of the color map that I choose.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The issue occurs when the grid which your surface is plotted over contains a large number of points. The lines which create the wire mesh surface are black by default and take precedence over the color map.

Example:

x = 1:.01:3*pi;

[X Y] = meshgrid(x,x);

Z = sin(X.*Y).*cos(X.*Y);

h = surf(Z)

In this situation, the wire grid is so dense that the lines form a completely black surface.

To solve this either turn the lines off using the command

set(h,'LineStyle','none')

If you would like a visible wire mesh on your surface plot, use a grid with fewer points.

An example of this would be:

x = -3:.2:3;

[X Y] = meshgrid(x,x);

Z = peaks(X,Y);;

h = surf(Z)