Hide tick text but keep grid for 3D-plot

Question

I have searched far and wide for a way to remove the tick text but not the actual grid lines from a 3D matplotlib plot. I unfortunately still have no idea how to do it, as most solutions seem to only work for 2D figures.

I tried the follwing code:

ax.set_xticks([])
ax.set_yticks([])
ax.set_zticks([])

but this also removed the gridlines. I have provided an example of the figure I want the tick text removed from, and an example of what happens when use the code stump above.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

One way is to set numeric ticks and empty label ticks:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

xmin, xmax = -10, 10
ymin, ymax = -10, 10
zmin, zmax = -10, 10
x = np.random.uniform(xmin, xmax, 20)
y = np.random.uniform(ymin, ymax, 20)
z = np.random.uniform(zmin, zmax, 20)

xticks = np.arange(xmin, xmax+1, 3)
yticks = np.arange(xmin, xmax+1, 3)
zticks = np.arange(xmin, xmax+1, 3)
empty_labels_x = ["" for i in range(len(xticks))]
empty_labels_y = ["" for i in range(len(yticks))]
empty_labels_z = ["" for i in range(len(zticks))]

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(projection="3d")
ax.scatter(x, y, z)
ax.set_xticks(xticks, empty_labels_x)
ax.set_yticks(yticks, empty_labels_y)
ax.set_zticks(zticks, empty_labels_z)
ax.set_xlabel("x")
ax.set_ylabel("y")
ax.set_zlabel("z")