draw ellipse and ellipsoid in MATLAB

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Ellipse article on Wikipedia had a simple JavaScript code to draw ellipses.

It uses the parametric form:

x(theta) = a0 + ax*sin(theta) + bx*cos(theta)
y(theta) = b0 + ay*sin(theta) + by*cos(theta)

where

(a0,b0) is the center of the ellipse
(ax,ay) vector representing the major axis
(bx,by) vector representing the minor axis

I translated the code into a MATLAB function:

calculateEllipse.m

function [X,Y] = calculateEllipse(x, y, a, b, angle, steps)
    %# This functions returns points to draw an ellipse
    %#
    %#  @param x     X coordinate
    %#  @param y     Y coordinate
    %#  @param a     Semimajor axis
    %#  @param b     Semiminor axis
    %#  @param angle Angle of the ellipse (in degrees)
    %#

    narginchk(5, 6);
    if nargin<6, steps = 36; end

    beta = -angle * (pi / 180);
    sinbeta = sin(beta);
    cosbeta = cos(beta);

    alpha = linspace(0, 360, steps)' .* (pi / 180);
    sinalpha = sin(alpha);
    cosalpha = cos(alpha);

    X = x + (a * cosalpha * cosbeta - b * sinalpha * sinbeta);
    Y = y + (a * cosalpha * sinbeta + b * sinalpha * cosbeta);

    if nargout==1, X = [X Y]; end
end

and an example to test it:

%# ellipse centered at (0,0) with axes length
%# major=20, ,minor=10, rotated 50 degrees
%# (drawn using the default N=36 points)
p = calculateEllipse(0, 0, 20, 10, 50);
plot(p(:,1), p(:,2), '.-'), axis equal

example rotated ellipse

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