| 3-D Visualization | |
Truecolor is a means to specify a color explicitly with RGB values rather than pointing to an entry in the figure colormap. Truecolor generally provides a greater range of colors than can be defined in a colormap.
Using truecolor eliminates the mapping of data to colormap entries. On the other hand, you cannot change the coloring of the patch without redefining the color data (as opposed to just changing the colormap).
Interpolating in Indexed Color Versus Truecolor
When you specify interpolated face coloring, MATLAB determines the color of each face by interpolating the vertex colors. The method of interpolation depends on whether you specified truecolor data or indexed color data.
With truecolor data, MATLAB interpolates the numeric RGB values defined for the vertices. This generally produces a smooth variation of color across the face. In contrast, indexed color interpolation uses only colors that are defined in the colormap. With certain colormaps, the results can be quite different.
To illustrate this difference, these two patches are defined with the same vertex colors. Circular markers indicate the yellow, red, and blue vertex colors.
The patch on the left uses indexed colors obtained from the six-element colormap shown next to it. The color data maps the vertex colors to the colormap elements indicated in the picture. With this colormap, interpolating from the cyan vertex to the blue vertex can include only the colors green, red, yellow, and magenta, hence the banding.
Interpolation in RGB space makes no use of the colormap. It is simply the gradual transition from one numeric value to another. For example, interpolating from the cyan vertex to the blue vertex follows a progression similar to these values.
In reality each pixel would be a different color so the incremental change would be much smaller than illustrated here.
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