length: [1.0 | float]
The length of each quiver, default to 1.0, the unit is the same with the axes
arrow_length_ratio: [0.3 | float]
The ratio of the arrow head with respect to the quiver, default to 0.3
pivot: [ ‘tail’ | ‘middle’ | ‘tip’ ]
The part of the arrow that is at the grid point; the arrow rotates about this point, hence the name pivot. Default is ‘tail’
normalize: [False | True]
When True, all of the arrows will be the same length. This defaults to False, where the arrows will be different lengths depending on the values of u,v,w.
My answer is an amalgamation of the above two with extension to drawing sphere of user-defined opacity and some annotation. It finds application in b-vector visualization on a sphere for magnetic resonance image (MRI). Hope you find it useful:
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')
# draw sphere
u, v = np.mgrid[0:2*np.pi:50j, 0:np.pi:50j]
x = np.cos(u)*np.sin(v)
y = np.sin(u)*np.sin(v)
z = np.cos(v)
# alpha controls opacity
ax.plot_surface(x, y, z, color="g", alpha=0.3)
# a random array of 3D coordinates in [-1,1]
bvecs= np.random.randn(20,3)
# tails of the arrows
tails= np.zeros(len(bvecs))
# heads of the arrows with adjusted arrow head length
ax.quiver(tails,tails,tails,bvecs[:,0], bvecs[:,1], bvecs[:,2],
length=1.0, normalize=True, color='r', arrow_length_ratio=0.15)
ax.set_xlabel('X-axis')
ax.set_ylabel('Y-axis')
ax.set_zlabel('Z-axis')
ax.set_title('b-vectors on unit sphere')
plt.show()