Contour (Matrix)

Authors

[Editor] Hu Zheng;

[Contributors]

Modified

2026-01-17

Note

Hiplot website

This page is the tutorial for source code version of the Hiplot Contour (Matrix) plugin. You can also use the Hiplot website to achieve no code ploting. For more information please see the following link:

https://hiplot.cn/basic/contour-matrix?lang=en

The contour map (matrix) is a graph that displays three-dimensional data in a two-dimensional form

Setup

System Requirements: Cross-platform (Linux/MacOS/Windows)
Programming language: R
Dependent packages: data.table; jsonlite; ggplot2; reshape2; ggisoband; cowplot

# Install packages
if (!requireNamespace("data.table", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("data.table")
}
if (!requireNamespace("jsonlite", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("jsonlite")
}
if (!requireNamespace("ggplot2", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("ggplot2")
}
if (!requireNamespace("reshape2", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("reshape2")
}
if (!requireNamespace("ggisoband", quietly = TRUE)) {
  remotes::install_github("clauswilke/ggisoband")
}
if (!requireNamespace("cowplot", quietly = TRUE)) {
  install.packages("cowplot")
}

# Load packages
library(data.table)
library(jsonlite)
library(ggplot2)
library(reshape2)
library(ggisoband)
library(cowplot)

sessioninfo::session_info("attached")

─ Session info ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 setting  value
 version  R version 4.5.2 (2025-10-31)
 os       Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS
 system   x86_64, linux-gnu
 ui       X11
 language (EN)
 collate  C.UTF-8
 ctype    C.UTF-8
 tz       UTC
 date     2026-01-17
 pandoc   3.1.3 @ /usr/bin/ (via rmarkdown)
 quarto   1.8.27 @ /usr/local/bin/quarto

─ Packages ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 package    * version    date (UTC) lib source
 cowplot    * 1.2.0      2025-07-07 [1] RSPM
 data.table * 1.18.0     2025-12-24 [1] RSPM
 ggisoband  * 0.0.0.9000 2025-11-02 [1] Github (clauswilke/ggisoband@eef779f)
 ggplot2    * 4.0.1      2025-11-14 [1] RSPM
 jsonlite   * 2.0.0      2025-03-27 [1] RSPM
 reshape2   * 1.4.5      2025-11-12 [1] RSPM

 [1] /home/runner/work/_temp/Library
 [2] /opt/R/4.5.2/lib/R/site-library
 [3] /opt/R/4.5.2/lib/R/library
 * ── Packages attached to the search path.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Data Preparation

The loaded data is a matrix.

# Load data
data <- data.table::fread(jsonlite::read_json("https://hiplot.cn/ui/basic/contour-matrix/data.json")$exampleData$textarea[[1]])
data <- as.data.frame(data)

# convert data structure
data <- as.matrix(data)
colnames(data) <- NULL
data3d <- reshape2::melt(data)
names(data3d) <- c("x", "y", "z")

# View data
head(data3d)

Visualization

# Contour (Matrix)
complex_general_theme <- 
  theme(text = element_text(family = "Arial"),
        plot.title = element_text(size = 12,hjust = 0.5),
        axis.title = element_text(size = 12),
        axis.text = element_text(size = 10),
        axis.text.x = element_text(angle = 0, hjust = 0.5,vjust = 1),
        legend.position = "right",
        legend.direction = "vertical",
        legend.title = element_text(size = 10),
        legend.text = element_text(size = 10))

p1 <- ggplot(data3d, aes(x, y, z = z)) +
  geom_isobands(
    alpha = 1,
    aes(color = stat(zmin)), fill = NA
  ) +
  scale_color_viridis_c() +
  coord_cartesian(expand = FALSE) +
  theme_bw() +
  complex_general_theme

p2 <- ggplot(data3d, aes(x, y, z = z)) +
  geom_isobands(
    alpha = 1,
    aes(fill = stat(zmin)), color = NA
  ) +
  scale_fill_viridis_c(guide = "legend") +
  coord_cartesian(expand = FALSE) +
  theme_bw() +
  complex_general_theme

plot_grid(p1, p2, labels = c("A", "B"), label_size = 12)

Contour (Matrix)

Yellow represents the highest, dark purple represents the lowest, the height scale range is 90-190.