Note

This section is only a reference describing the function, please see the chapter on mlab: Python scripting for 3D plotting for an introduction to mlab and how to interact with and assemble the functions of mlab.

Please see the section on Running mlab scripts for instructions on running the examples.

# Figure handling functions

## clf

`mayavi.mlab.``clf`(figure=None)

  Clear the current figure.

  You can also supply the figure that you want to clear.

## close

`mayavi.mlab.``close`(scene=None, all=False)

  Close a figure window

  close() by itself closes the current figure.

  close(num) closes figure number num.

  close(name) closes figure named name.

  close(figure), where figure is a scene instance, closes that figure.

  close(all=True) closes all figures controlled by mlab

## draw

`mayavi.mlab.``draw`(figure=None)

  Forces a redraw of the current figure.

## figure

`mayavi.mlab.``figure`(figure=None, bgcolor=None, fgcolor=None, engine=None, size=(400, 350))

  Creates a new scene or retrieves an existing scene. If the mayavi engine is not running this also starts it.

  Keyword arguments

  > figure

  >   The name of the figure, or handle to it.

  > bgcolor

  >   The color of the background (None is default).

  > fgcolor

  >   The color of the foreground, that is the color of all text annotation labels (axes, orientation axes, scalar bar labels). It should be sufficiently far from bgcolor to see the annotation texts. (None is default).

  > engine

  >   The mayavi engine that controls the figure.

  > size

  >   The size of the scene created, in pixels. May not apply for certain scene viewer.

## gcf

`mayavi.mlab.``gcf`(engine=None)

  Return a handle to the current figure.

  You can supply the engine from which you want to retrieve the current figure, if you have several mayavi engines.

## savefig

`mayavi.mlab.``savefig`(filename, size=None, figure=None, magnification='auto', **kwargs)

  Save the current scene. The output format are deduced by the extension to filename. Possibilities are png, jpg, bmp, tiff, ps, eps, pdf, rib (renderman), oogl (geomview), iv (OpenInventor), vrml, obj (wavefront)

  Parameters

  Size

    the size of the image created (unless magnification is set, in which case it is the size of the window used for rendering).

  Figure

    the figure instance to save to a file.

  Magnification

    the magnification is the scaling between the pixels on the screen, and the pixels in the file saved. If you do not specify it, it will be calculated so that the file is saved with the specified size. If you specify a magnification, Mayavi will use the given size as a screen size, and the file size will be ‘magnification * size’.

  Notes

  If the size specified is larger than the window size, and no magnification parameter is passed, the magnification of the scene is changed so that the image created has the requested size. Please note that if you are trying to save images with sizes larger than the window size, there will be additional computation cost.

  Any extra keyword arguments are passed along to the respective image format’s save method.

## screenshot

`mayavi.mlab.``screenshot`(figure=None, mode='rgb', antialiased=False)

  Return the current figure pixmap as an array.

  Parameters

  Figure

    a figure instance or None, optional If specified, the figure instance to capture the view of.

  Mode

    {‘rgb’, ‘rgba’} The color mode of the array captured.

  Antialiased

    {True, False} Use anti-aliasing for rendering the screenshot. Uses the number of aa frames set by figure.scene.anti_aliasing_frames

  Notes

  On most systems, this works similarly to taking a screenshot of the rendering window. Thus if it is hidden by another window, you will capture the other window. This limitation is due to the heavy use of the hardware graphics system.

  Examples

  This function can be useful for integrating 3D plotting with Mayavi in a 2D plot created by matplotlib.

      >>> from mayavi import mlab
      >>> mlab.test_plot3d()
      >>> arr = mlab.screenshot()
      >>> import pylab as pl
      >>> pl.imshow(arr)
      >>> pl.axis('off')
      >>> pl.show()

## sync_camera

`mayavi.mlab.``sync_camera`(reference_figure, target_figure)

  Synchronise the camera of the target_figure on the camera of the reference_figure.