Create a continuous heatmap
What about imshow? Check these different interpolation methods which will allow you to define the &quot;discreteness&quot;.
Example with quadric interpolation:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np

harvest = np.array([[0.8, 2.4, 2.5, 3.9, 0.0, 4.0, 0.0],
                    [2.4, 0.0, 4.0, 1.0, 2.7, 0.0, 0.0],
                    [1.1, 2.4, 0.8, 4.3, 1.9, 4.4, 0.0],
                    [0.6, 0.0, 0.3, 0.0, 3.1, 0.0, 0.0],
                    [0.7, 1.7, 0.6, 2.6, 2.2, 6.2, 0.0],
                    [1.3, 1.2, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 3.2, 5.1],
                    [0.1, 2.0, 0.0, 1.4, 0.0, 1.9, 6.3]])


fig, ax = plt.subplots()
im = ax.imshow(harvest,interpolation=&quot;quadric&quot;)

Output image: