Plot 4D data with color as 4th dimension

Question

I have a list of 4D data (x position, y position, amplitude, wavelength). I want to plot x, y, and amplitude on a 3D plot and have the color of the points correspond to the wavelength. I have seen many examples using functions to define color but my wavelength cannot be expressed by an analytic function. Is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

Here a another possible way to visualize 4D data:

data = Flatten[Table[{x, y, x^2 + y^2, Sin[x - y]}, 
    {x, -Pi, Pi,Pi/10}, {y,-Pi,Pi, Pi/10}], 1];

You can use the function Point along with VertexColors. Now the points are places using the first three elements and the color is determined by the fourth. In this case I used Hue, but you can use whatever you prefer.

Graphics3D[
   Point[data[[All, 1 ;; 3]], VertexColors -> Hue /@ data[[All, 4]]],
   Axes -> True, BoxRatios -> {1, 1, 1/GoldenRatio}]

Answer 2

You can try the following approach. Let's first generate some 4D data:

ndata = 100;
data = Transpose[{RandomReal[{-1, 1}, ndata], 
    RandomReal[{-1, 1}, ndata], RandomReal[{0, 10}, ndata], 
    RandomReal[{400, 800}, ndata]}];

Now we use the first three columns as $x$, $y$ and $z$ coordinates, whereas the 4th column specifies the color of each point. The color range is specified via the Blend function that specifies that a value of 400 should correspond to Darker[Green], a value of 600 to Yellow and a value of 800 to Red. All other values are blended colors.

ListPointPlot3D[List /@ data[[All, {1, 2, 3}]], 
 PlotStyle -> ({PointSize[Large], 
      Blend[{{400, Darker[Green]}, {600, Yellow}, {800, 
         Red}}, #1]} & /@ Flatten[data[[All, {4}]]])]