I am a Matlab person, among other tools as well. I do something of the sort that you suggested in your second paragraph to plot time-varying diagrams by generat

I am a Matlab person, among other tools as well. I do something of the sort that you suggested in your second paragraph to plot time-varying diagrams by generating successive frames and then making a gif. Matlab can also do some very nice colormap stuff. Just wish there was a method with less friction!