Make a surface (interpolated colors) plot with contour lines over it

I wanto to make a plot like the one in the image:

The code I tried is below, but the contours dont properly show (hidden below the surface)

surface(XX, YY, F, 'edgecolor', 'none')

hold on

contour(XX,YY,F,3,'-k','showText',true)

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

You can use a surfc plot with tweks to the contour plot, and an appropriate view call —

[X,Y,Z] = peaks(250);

figure
hs = surfc(X, Y, Z, 'EdgeColor','interp');
hs(2).LabelFormat = '%.3f';
hs(2).ZLocation = 'zmax';
hs(2).ShowText = 'on';
hs(2).LineStyle = '-';
hs(2).LineColor = 'k';
colormap(turbo)
view(0,90)

The problem is that unlike the contour function, the contour labels are not aligned well with the contour lines. That can be adjusted (with additional and definitely non-trivial programming) that would require locating the lables and then rotating them appropriately.

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[Andrea Somma]

Thank you very much, that was not much intuitive😂

[Star Strider]

As always, my pleasure!

[Andrea Somma]

Sorry again is it possible to choose the value at which isolines are? Cant find it in the doc

[Star Strider]

Yes.

Use the LevelList property.

In my code, that would be:

hs(2).LevelList = [0.041 0.044 0.047 0.05];

to match the conotour levels in your provided plot image.

Adding that to my previous code:

[X,Y,Z] = peaks(250);

figure
hs = surfc(X, Y, Z, 'EdgeColor','interp');
hs(2).LabelFormat = '%.3f';
hs(2).ZLocation = 'zmax';
hs(2).ShowText = 'on';
hs(2).LineStyle = '-';
hs(2).LineColor = 'k';
hs(2).LevelList = [0.041 0.044 0.047 0.05];
colormap(turbo)
view(0,90)

That looks a bit strange here, however it should work on your plot.

Please note that you never need to apologise for requesting more information! That is what we are here for!

.

[Andrea Somma]

Thank you very much! I suppose there is not easy way to prevent labels to overlap right?

[Star Strider]

As always, my pleasure!

Unfortunately, no, or at least not to my knowledge when they are as close as they are here. There is a LabelSpacing property, however that would probably not solve the overlap problem, since that is their spacing along the contour lines, and it is not possible (at least to my knowledge) to set that individually for each contour.

It might be possible to change the label font size, since I suspect that they are text objects (the documentation notes that they are created by the compose function), however I will have to look into that. It is not part of the documented properties, and could require some property spelunking to find it. If I can find it and change it, I will post back here with that information.