I’ve recently had to plot a lot of 3D elements like point clouds and meshes for my research. Compared to 2D plots, 3D plots benefit greatly from interaction: translating and rotating the plot gives a better sense of the geometry of elements in the plot. I’ve found that plotly is the easiest and most responsive tool for interactive 3D plots, and this post is a primer on how I make them.

Visualizing meshes with plotly

Below is an example of a sphere rendered with Python and plotly.