How to visualize values stored in a 2D matrix?

Question

I have an array of floating point values ranging from 0.0 to 70000.0 and I want to visualize this data in a 3D surface. I want something like this:

I have no idea how to do this. I don't even know what this type of graph is actually called. Should I use Matlab? I haven't used Matlab before but I have access to a machine which has Matlab installed on it...

Answer 1

Tools like matlab or Octave can produce a very similar plot.

The figure you provide displays the matrix as a height-map. For a matrix M with elements M[i][j] , the 3D surface you want is simply:

x = i
y = j
z = M[i][j]

The surface is visualized with a rendering algorithm like ray marching or rasterizing a mesh overlaid with the height map.