vrmlgen (version 1.4.9)

points3d: Draw points in a 3D-scene

Description

points3d plots data points in a 3D-scene in the VRML- or Livegraphics3D-format. Must be called after vrml.open() or lg3d.open() and before vrml.close() or lg3d.close().

Usage

points3d(x, y = NULL, z = NULL, col = "black", pointstyle = "s", transparency = 0, hyperlinks = NULL, scale = 1)

Arguments

x

a 3-column numeric matrix of coordinates or a numeric vector of x-coordinates

y

a numeric vector of y-coordinates (only needed if x is a vector)

z

a numeric vector of z-coordinates (only needed if x is a vector)

col

the color of the text

pointstyle

"s" for sphere, "b" for box, "c" for cone

transparency

a number between 0 and 1 specifying the transparency level of plotted objects

hyperlinks

a vector of strings specifying hyperlinks that will be triggered, when the user clicks on the corresponding datapoint

scale

a numerical scaling factor to increase/decrease the point size

Value

The function is used for its side-effect (writing text in a VRML- or Livegraphics3D-file) and has no return value.

Details

points3d plots data points in different point-styles (sphere, box, cone) in a 3D-scene in the VRML- or Livegraphics3D-format. This function can be used to add single data point representations to an already existing 3D scene, or to flexibly combine different plotting styles like points, lines (see lines3d) and text-strings (see text3d) in a 3D environment. To create a standard scatter plot, bar plot or 3D mesh visualization, the higher-level plotting functions cloud3d, bar3d and mesh3d provide more convenient alternatives. points3d can only be applied within a VRML- or Livegraphics3D-environment created by calling the vrml.open() or lg3d.open() function and closed using the vrml.\-close() or lg3d.close() function.

References

Enrico Glaab, Jonathan M. Garibaldi, Natalio Krasnogor (2010). vrmlgen: An R Package for 3D Data Visualization on the Web. Journal of Statistical Software, 36(8), p. 1-18. URL: http://www.jstatsoft.org/v36/i08/

See Also

text3d, lines3d

Examples

curdir <- getwd()
outdir <- tempdir()
setwd(outdir)

# This example loads the atom coordinates of a molecule
# (C60, fullerene) and visualizes the molecule in 3D
# using points for the atoms and lines for the atom bonds
# (atom pairs within a given distance threshold).

vrml.open(file = "c60.wrl", navigation = "EXAMINE",
          html.embed = "c60example.html")

# load dataset
data(c60coords)

# plot the atoms as black spheres
points3d(c60coords, col = "black")

# plot the atom bonds as gray lines
# (for all atom pairs with a Euclidean distance < 0.66)
for(j in 1:(nrow(c60coords)-1))
{
  for(k in (j+1):nrow(c60coords))
  {
  	if(sqrt(sum((c60coords[j,]-c60coords[k,])^2)) < 0.66)
  	  lines3d(c60coords[c(j,k),], col = "gray", lwd = 1)
  }
}

vrml.close()

# show the output in a web-browser 
# (VRML-plugin must be installed!)
if(file.exists(paste("file://",file.path(outdir,
                "c60example.html"), sep = "")))
{                
  browseURL(paste("file://",file.path(outdir,
                  "c60example.html"), sep = ""))
}

setwd(curdir)