Plot an image as a 3D surface

Is there a simple way to take an image, give each pixel a height value and have matlab plot the whole thing as a surface but retain the image values instead of the matlab shading on the surface?

Background: I have an RGB image and another matrix of same size that is height values. I'd like to plot the image as a 3D surface using the height values for each pixel in the image so that each point in the surface has the color of the matching point in the RGB matrix.

In this case the data comes from a kinect but this question has more general applications.

Data: size(imgColor)=480,640,3 size(IMgDepth)=480,640

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Perhaps you can adapt these:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/39559-automatic-terrain-generation

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/32357-heightprofile-from-googleearth-to-3d-surface

http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2009/10/09/colored-area-on-a-curved-surface/

[Tim Brown]

The solution in the third link worked great.

Thanks!

Tim

[Image Analyst]

Glad I could help. Please mark this answer as "Accepted" then.