# How to smoothen the mesh lines of a translucent sphere

This code generates a nice sphere with distorted mesh lines, in the sense that they are not smooth enough. One can clearly see many disjoint lines trying to imitate a curve. I would like a smoothened curve instead for this particular mesh setup.

ParametricPlot3D[{Cos[\[Phi]] Sin[\[Theta]], Sin[\[Phi]] Sin[\[Theta]], Cos[\[Theta]]}, {\[Phi], 0, 2 \[Pi]}, {\[Theta], 0, \[Pi]}, Mesh -> 6, BoundaryStyle -> Black, PlotRange -> ConstantArray[{-1.1, 1.1}, 3], PlotStyle -> {Opacity[0.2]}, ImageSize -> Large]

Any hint is appreciated.

• Increase the value of Mesh. Mar 31 '20 at 9:53
• @HenrikSchumacher, that would increase the number of curves, instead of the quality of each curve. I am sorry if that was not clear from the question. Mar 31 '20 at 9:55
• Well, it does both. I am still figuring out how to do one one thing of the two... Mar 31 '20 at 9:56
• @Nasser, I really want only these many lines otherwise when I add more details to my plot it will look clumsy. Is there any way to increase the quality? Mar 31 '20 at 9:56
• Okay, you can leave Mesh - > 6 and add something like PlotPoints -> 50. Mar 31 '20 at 9:57

As Henrik Schumacher pointed out, I had to increase the number of PlotPoints. However, including more number of points did not necessarily change the quality a lot after a value; sort of hit a saturation point.

In case of sphere I really could not see a difference between 25 and 50 points, but probably it is too fine to notice without magnifying many times.

GraphicsGrid[
ArrayReshape[
{Table[
ParametricPlot3D[{Cos[\[Phi]] Sin[\[Theta]], Sin[\[Phi]] Sin[\[Theta]], Cos[\[Theta]]},
{\[Phi], 0, 2 \[Pi]}, {\[Theta], 0, \[Pi]}, RotationAction -> "Clip",
Mesh -> 6, BoundaryStyle -> Black, PlotRange -> ConstantArray[{-1.1, 1.1}, 3],
PlotStyle -> Opacity[0.2], Boxed -> False, Axes -> False, PlotPoints -> i,
PlotLabel -> StringJoin["PlotPoints: ", ToString[i]]],
{i, {Automatic, 10, 25, 50}}]},
{2, 2}],
ImageSize -> Full, Frame -> All]


After reading through Make A Smoother Or Rougher Plot: How Tos helped me realise, I could increase MaxRecursion also. But if PlotPoints is too low it does not yield any better results.