Plotting Points as a Surface in Tikz Using GNUPlot and Octave

%I forget if you need pgfplots or if I have it for another reason...
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{pgfplots}

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}
\begin{tikzpicture}

    % This is for a 3D plot. It assumes your data is in a file called data.txt, local to the tex file.
    % Mine was formatted with one point per line, with each component separated by a single space like so:
    % 1 0.5 3
    % for x y and z components respectively. These are data points that you want to generate a surface out of.
    
    % What the below does is, when you compile the LaTeX, it asks gnuplot/octave to triangulate your data
    % so that tikz can plot that, since it's not able to just magically turn my random data into a surface.
    
    % I installed gnuplot and octave using brew:
    % brew install gnuplot
    % brew install octave
    
    % Important note: I had to add the option '-shell-escape' to my pdflatex call. 
    % In TexMaker you can go to preferences to see your pdflatex command, and add it there.
    
    \begin{axis}
        \addplot3 [patch, patch table={triangles.txt},
        ] shell {echo "data=dlmread('data.txt');
    tri=delaunay(data(:,1), data(:,2));
    dlmwrite('triangles.txt',tri-1,' ');
    disp(data)" | octave --silent};
    \end{axis}
    \end{tikzpicture}
\end{figure}

\end{document}