# Graphics Glitch or Modern Art?

I was trying to draw a simple surface and ended up with some modern art... if we start with a surface defined by a Gaussian shape and plot it, all looks well:

surf = GaussianMatrix[{100, 10}];
ListPlot3D[surf]


But if I try to plot the closely related 1-surf, some weird things happen:

ListPlot3D[1 - surf]


Rotating the image with my mouse gives:

I guess I'm wondering if there is something strange/iodiosyncratic about my setup or if this is generic...

• What does surf look like if you give the vertical a range of 0 to 1? Maybe you can gather something from that? – CA Trevillian Jul 1 at 14:17
• It's modern art for sure. Setting PlotRange -> Full resolves the issue, so I think the problem lies in the code that selects the plot range automatically. There's something with the value range that it doesn't like. – C. E. Jul 1 at 14:35

You have too many 1.'s, I guess, and the automatic plot range is too small.

ListPlot3D[1 - surf, PlotRange -> 1 - MinMax[surf]]


More than half of the entries of 1 - surf are 1.:

1 - surf;
Count[Flatten@%, 1.]
Length@Flatten@%%
(*
21060
40401
*)