How to create surface plot from greyscale image with Matplotlib?

So this is pretty straightforward. Load the data, build the plot:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D

# generate some sample data
import scipy.misc
lena = scipy.misc.lena()

# downscaling has a "smoothing" effect
lena = scipy.misc.imresize(lena, 0.15, interp='cubic')

# create the x and y coordinate arrays (here we just use pixel indices)
xx, yy = np.mgrid[0:lena.shape[0], 0:lena.shape[1]]

# create the figure
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')
ax.plot_surface(xx, yy, lena ,rstride=1, cstride=1, cmap=plt.cm.gray,
        linewidth=0)

# show it
plt.show()

Result:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
import cv2

# generate some sample data
import scipy.misc
lena = cv2.imread("./data/lena.png", 0)

# downscaling has a "smoothing" effect
lena = cv2.resize(lena, (100,100))

# create the x and y coordinate arrays (here we just use pixel indices)
xx, yy = np.mgrid[0:lena.shape[0], 0:lena.shape[1]]

# create the figure
fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.gca(projection='3d')
ax.plot_surface(xx, yy, lena ,rstride=1, cstride=1, cmap=plt.cm.jet,
                linewidth=0)

# show it
plt.show()

If you want to get color plot, change the code to: "cmap=plt.cm.jet". So you can get something like this: color plot