🏔️ 3D Surface Plotter

A surface plot visualizes a function of two variables, z = f(x, y), as a height field: for every point on the flat x/y plane the function gives a height z, and connecting those heights forms a smooth mesh floating in 3D. Color usually encodes height, so peaks and valleys stand out at a glance. It is the natural way to picture things like terrain, temperature over a plate, or the shape of a mathematical saddle.

The tool computes a grid of points (up to 40×40) by evaluating your function across the domain, then rotates them using two angles you control, projects the rotated points to 2D with a simple isometric projection, and sorts the faces back-to-front so nearer ones cover farther ones — the classic painter's algorithm. Everything is drawn with plain HTML canvas: there is no WebGL and no three.js, which keeps the tool small and dependency-free.

A custom whitelist parser reads your formula — there is no JavaScript eval — so only the listed functions (sin, cos, tan, sqrt, abs, exp, log, pow), the constants pi and e, and the two variables x and y are accepted. Anything else is rejected before it runs. Good starting points are the presets, such as sin(x)*cos(y) for a rolling wave field or x^2 - y^2 for a classic saddle.