How to Make 3D Plots in R

Written by Matt Dancho on January 12, 2021

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This article is part of a R-Tips Weekly, a weekly video tutorial that shows you step-by-step how to do common R coding tasks.

The RStudio IDE is amazing. You can enhance your R productivity even more with these simple keyboard shortcuts.

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Making Your First 3D Plot
rayshader mtcars-style

Start by making a ggplot w/ mtcars displ vs mpg

Then unleash the AWESOME POWER 🔥 of rayshader to make it 3D ⛰️

Making Elevation Plots
rayshader heatmap-style

What about heatmaps and volcano plots?

Sometimes you have heatmap formatted data where you have a matrix:

• x/y-axis are the rows/columns
• depth (z-axis) is the values in the matrix.

We can handle this matrix data format with:

• A little bit of data wrangling with dplyr.
• Then make swiftly make a ggplot.
• Then just like before, use rayshader.

And BOOM! We have a 3D Elevation Heat-Map Plot! ⛰️⛰️⛰️

Your boss is loving your new data story-telling skills. 👇 This is career acceleration

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