The view_init() method for 3D axes should specify that the elevation and azimuth arguments are in degrees (as opposed to radians). The docstring to change is here: https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/api/_as_gen/mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.axes3d.Axes3D.html?highlight=view_init#mpl_toolkits.mplot3d.axes3d.Axes3D.view_init