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How can I make a 3D plot without showing the axes?

When plotting a 3d plot, Matplotlib not only draws the x, y, and z axes, it draws light gray grids on the x-y, y-z, and x-z planes. I would like to draw a "free-floating" 3D plot, with none of these elements.

Stuff I've tried:

# Doesn't work; this hides the plot, not the axes
my_3d_axes.set_visible(False)

# Doesn't do anything. Also, there's no get_zaxis() function.
my_3d_axes.get_xaxis().set_visible(False)
my_3d_axes.get_yaxis().set_visible(False)
SuperElectric
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  • What you've tried used to work. Unfortunately, I'm not certain there's a way to do it easily, anymore... Hopefully there still is! – Joe Kington Sep 07 '11 at 16:01
  • @Joe Klington: Out of curiosity, which of the two things I tried used to work? I'm wondering, because the first, axes.set_visible(), has the following help description: "Set the artist's visiblity." So it seems that it was always supposed to set the visibility of the graph, not the axes. As for the second, how did it work, when there was never a get_zaxis() method? – SuperElectric Sep 07 '11 at 17:19
  • It was `my_3d_axes.set_visible(False)` that use to work, if I recall correctly. (Which is rather counter-intuitive, actually. It hides the entire plot for 2D plots, which is why they changed it to be the same for 3D plots.) – Joe Kington Sep 07 '11 at 18:20
  • For the other three, you want `ax.w_xaxis`, `ax.w_yaxis`, and `ax.w_zaxis`. Setting these to be invisible won't help, though. – Joe Kington Sep 07 '11 at 18:24
  • I see. It's good to know anyway; thanks. – SuperElectric Sep 07 '11 at 18:37
  • Looks like Ben Root already answered your question on the users list. (`ax.set_axis_off()`) Good to know there is an easy way! Actually, I vaguely recall answering a question about that at some point... Maybe that was what I was remembering working, rather than `ax.set_visible(False)`. – Joe Kington Sep 07 '11 at 18:57
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    Apparently, I knew that at some point. My memory is awful. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3732787/how-can-i-remove-the-axes-in-an-axes3d-class/3736072#3736072 It doesn't seem to work anymore with matplotlib `1.0.1`... It's probably worth reporting as a bug. – Joe Kington Sep 07 '11 at 19:06

2 Answers2

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Ben Root provided a patch that fixes this for 1.0.1. It can be found as an attachment to the last email of this thread. To quote Ben:

Ok, looks like the hiding of the 3d axes was a feature added after the v1.0 release (but before I started working on mplot3d). This patch should enable the basic feature without interfering with existing functions. To hide the axes, you would have to set the private member "_axis3don" to False, like so:

ax = plt.gca(projection='3d') ax._axis3don = False

If you do it this way, then you will get what you want now, and your code will still be compatible with mplot3d when you upgrade (although the preferred method would be to call set_axis_on() or set_axis_off()).

I hope that helps!

Ben Root

SuperElectric
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    `ax.set_axis_off()` and `set_axis_on()` is now supported (1.4.1) – user989762 Nov 28 '14 at 03:05
  • It seems setting axis to off also hides the planes of these axis. Would you know about a solution to hide the axis lines but keep the planes to maintain the perspective? – Alexis.Rolland Jan 22 '20 at 10:57
  • @Alexis.Rolland `ax.setxticklabels([])` does almost what you want. it does not hide the axis itself but the labels, so the planes are still visible. – rolly Mar 16 '20 at 07:48
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    AttributeError: 'Axes3DSubplot' object has no attribute 'setxticklabels' – KeithB Sep 28 '20 at 15:56
2

ax.set_axis_off()

Just to provide a concrete and direct example of what was mentioned at https://stackoverflow.com/a/7363931/895245

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.patches import Circle
import mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.art3d as art3d

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
ax.set_axis_off()

# Draw a circle on the x=0 'wall'
p = Circle((0, 0), 1, fill=False)
ax.add_patch(p)
art3d.pathpatch_2d_to_3d(p, zdir="x")
p = Circle((0, 0), 1, fill=False)
ax.add_patch(p)
art3d.pathpatch_2d_to_3d(p, zdir="z")

ax.set_xlim(-1.2, 1.2)
ax.set_ylim(-1.2, 1.2)
ax.set_zlim(-1.2, 1.2)

plt.savefig('main.png', format='png', bbox_inches='tight')

Output:

enter image description here

Without ax.set_axis_off() it would look like:

enter image description here

You will notice however that this produces an excessively large whitespace margin around the figure, and bbox_inches='tight' did not help as it does in 2D. How to solve that at: Remove white spaces in Axes3d (matplotlib)

Tested on matplotlib==3.2.2.

Ciro Santilli Путлер Капут 六四事
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