How to set colormap for a 3D surface that is projected onto the XY Plane?

Recently, I asked a question on improving the performance of plotting functions like barh. The solution is very time efficient (about 150 times faster than barh), but I find it difficult to set the colormap for the surface https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/414253-why-do-plotting-functions-like-bar-or-barh-take-a-long-time-to-execute.

The code provided in the answer creates a 3D surface and projects it onto XY Plane to create the stacked bar graph.This projection has the correct length for every patch, but the color order changes from what I define. The graph has around 100 patches in the XY projection and I use only two colors based on a certain criteria defined by the identf vector. The resulting figure patches don't have the same color ordering as what I defined in the col matrix. I suspect this has to do with the fact that the graph is being projected onto the XY Plane. Note: colormap was not defined in the following figures.

        for icol = 1 : length(data)

           if identf(icol) == 0
               col(icol,1) = 0;
               col(icol,2) = 0.7;
               col(icol,3) = 0.7;

           elseif identf(icol) == 1
               col(icol,1) = 0.79;
               col(icol,2) = 0.79;
               col(icol,3) = 0.79;
           end
        end
        colormap(parent, col);

Answer 1

[jonas]

In the answer to the other question:

"You can use a different colormap and a different method for calculating the Z-values, if you need more distinct color differences."

To clarify:

• Change the colormap to define the colors you want to apply. For two colors this is basically just cmap=[r1 g1 b1;r2 g2 b2]
• Set the Z-value of your dataset to assign these colors to elements.

In the previous answer, the Z-value was selected randomly. From your attached figures, it appears they are still assigned randomly. You need to change this line of code and assign Z-values by your criteria.

In short: colormap sets the palette, but you paint the segments through the z-data

[theblueeyeswhitedragon]

How exactly does one paint the segments through the z-data? Say I have to distinguish between a process A and another process B. I have a vector of 1s and 0s which has a one-one matching with the X data vector that contains information about the duration of these processes. Do I set the Z-values to a constant M for all 1s indeces and to another constant N for all Os?

M,N are constants.

for i = 1 : length(X)
  if identifier(i) == 0
     Z(i) = M;
  else
     Z(i) = N;
end

[jonas]

If you have a vector of 1's and 0's, just use that as Z-data.

Let's say you have durations X of two process A(0) and B(1). You want A to be red and B to be blue.

X=[5 10 5 10 10 10];
id=[0 1 0 0 1 1];
cmap=[1 0 0;0 0 1];

First, prepare data:

%%Prepare data
Z=[id id(end)]; %Add one extra point to draw last segment
Xs=[0 cumsum(X)];
Xs=[Xs;Xs];
Zs=[Z;Z];
Y=ones(size(Xs))
Ys=Y.*[0.5;1.5];

And plot:

%%Draw
surf(Xs,Ys,Zs)
colormap(cmap)
colorbar
axis([0 50 -10 10])

Voila! See how the Z-data determine the color of the segment. You don't necessarly need 1's and 0's, any pair of numbers work as identifiers.