Attractive 3D plot in R

Question

I am writing a proposal and need a 3D plot something like this:

but preferably more attractive. I need the size of each point to reflect the abundance of the species and an outline of the volume created by connecting the points.

Sample data:

input<-data.frame(
label=c("sp1","sp2","sp3","sp4"),
trait_x=c(6,6,6,1),
trait_y=c(7,7,7,1),
trait_z=c(8,8,8,1),
point_size=c(6,7,8,1)
)
input
  label trait_x trait_y trait_z point_size
1   sp1       6       7       8        6
2   sp2       6       7       8        7
3   sp3       6       7       8        8
4   sp4       1       1       1        1

Any suggestion on how to make such a graph more attractive (perhaps including gridlines? I do not want any numbers on the axes however)

I have played around with scatterplot3d, but it doesn't plot all my points and I personally find that the cube has a strange look to it... like it is not quite accurate...

library(scatterplot3d)
x<-input$trait_x
y<-input$trait_y
z<-input$trait_z
scatterplot3d(x,y,z,xlim=c(0,10),ylim=c(0,10),zlim=c(0,10))

Answer 1

This should get you started using package rgl. Note: On re-read I see I am using your xyz coords a little different than you did, but the concept is the same.

input<-data.frame( # I adjusted the values for better appearance in demo
label=c("sp1","sp2","sp3","sp4"),
trait_x=c(6,7,11,1),
trait_y=c(10,7,9,1),
trait_z=c(4,7,6,1),
point_size=c(6,7,8,1)
)
names(input) <- c("name", "x", "y", "z", "radius")
input$radius <- input$radius*0.2

require("rgl")

spheres3d(input[,2:4], radius = input[,5], col = c("red", "green", "blue", "orange"), alpha = 0.5)
axes3d(box = TRUE)
title3d(xlab = "x_trait", ylab = "y_trait", zlab = "z_trait")
text3d(input[1,2:4], texts = "species X")
# next line is clunky but you can do it more elegantly
segs <- rbind(input[1:2,2:4], input[2:3,2:4], input[3:4,2:4], input[c(4,1),2:4])
segments3d(segs)

Now you can rotate your diagram interactively and then use rgl.snapshot to get a hardcopy (using antialias arguments in spheres3d will improve the diagram).