3-D Visualization

Projection Types and Camera Location

By default, MATLAB adjusts the CameraPosition, CameraTarget, and CameraViewAngle properties to point the camera at the center of the scene and to include all graphics objects in the axes. If you position the camera so that there are graphics objects behind the camera, the scene displayed can be affected by both the axes Projection property and the figure Renderer property. This table summarizes the interactions between projection type and rendering method.

	Orthographic	Perspective
Z-buffer	CameraViewAngle determines extent of scene at CameraTarget	CameraViewAngle determines extent of scene from CameraPosition to infinity
Painters	All objects display regardless of CameraPosition	Not recommended if graphics objects are behind the CameraPosition

This diagram illustrates what you see (gray area) when using orthographic projection and Z-buffer. Anything in front of the camera is visible.

In perspective projection, you see only what is visible in the cone of the camera view angle.

Painters rendering method is less suited to moving the camera in 3-D space because MATLAB does not clip along the viewing axis. Orthographic projection in painters method results in all objects contained in the scene being visible regardless of the camera position.

Printing 3-D Scenes

The same effects described in the previous section occur in hardcopy output. However, because of the differences in the process of rendering to the screen and to a printing format, MATLAB may render in Z-buffer and generate printed output in painters. You may need to specify Z-buffer printing explicitly to obtain the results displayed on the screen (use the -zbuffer option with the print command ).

Additional Information

See the Basic Printing and Exporting chapter and the and the Selecting a Renderer section in the "Figure Properties" chapter for information on printing and rendering methods.

View Projection Types

Understanding Axes Aspect Ratio