Contouring

Generate iso-lines or -surfaces for the scalars of a surface or volume.

3D meshes can have 2D iso-surfaces of a scalar field extracted and 2D surface meshes can have 1D iso-lines of a scalar field extracted.

import numpy as np

import pyvista as pv
from pyvista import examples

Iso-Lines

Let’s extract 1D iso-lines of a scalar field from a 2D surface mesh.

mesh = examples.load_random_hills()

contours = mesh.contour()

p = pv.Plotter()
p.add_mesh(mesh, opacity=0.85)
p.add_mesh(contours, color="white", line_width=5)
p.show()

Iso-Surfaces

Let’s extract 2D iso-surfaces of a scalar field from a 3D mesh.

mesh = examples.download_embryo()

contours = mesh.contour(np.linspace(50, 200, 5))

p = pv.Plotter()
p.add_mesh(mesh.outline(), color="k")
p.add_mesh(contours, opacity=0.25, clim=[0, 200])
p.camera_position = [
    (-130.99381142132086, 644.4868354828589, 163.80447435848686),
    (125.21748748157661, 123.94368717158413, 108.83283586619626),
    (0.2780372840777734, 0.03547871361794171, 0.9599148553609699),
]
p.show()