Animations using Matplotlib

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.animation as animation

Animation classes

The animation process in Matplotlib can be thought of in 2 different ways:

FuncAnimation: Generate data for first frame and then modify this data for each frame to create an animated plot.

ArtistAnimation: Generate a list (iterable) of artists that will draw in each frame in the animation.

FuncAnimation is more efficient in terms of speed and memory as it draws an artist once and then modifies it. On the other hand ArtistAnimation is flexible as it allows any iterable of artists to be animated in a sequence.

FuncAnimation

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
t = np.linspace(0, 3, 40)
g = -9.81
v0 = 12
z = g * t**2 / 2 + v0 * t

v02 = 5
z2 = g * t**2 / 2 + v02 * t

scat = ax.scatter(t[0], z[0], c="b", s=5, label=f'v0 = {v0} m/s')
line2 = ax.plot(t[0], z2[0], label=f'v0 = {v02} m/s')[0]
ax.set(xlim=[0, 3], ylim=[-4, 10], xlabel='Time [s]', ylabel='Z [m]')
ax.legend()


def update(frame):
    # for each frame, update the data stored on each artist.
    x = t[:frame]
    y = z[:frame]
    # update the scatter plot:
    data = np.stack([x, y]).T
    scat.set_offsets(data)
    # update the line plot:
    line2.set_xdata(t[:frame])
    line2.set_ydata(z2[:frame])
    return (scat, line2)


ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig=fig, func=update, frames=40, interval=30)
plt.show()

ArtistAnimation

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
rng = np.random.default_rng(19680801)
data = np.array([20, 20, 20, 20])
x = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4])

artists = []
colors = ['tab:blue', 'tab:red', 'tab:green', 'tab:purple']
for i in range(20):
    data += rng.integers(low=0, high=10, size=data.shape)
    container = ax.barh(x, data, color=colors)
    artists.append(container)


ani = animation.ArtistAnimation(fig=fig, artists=artists, interval=400)
plt.show()

Saving Animations

Pillow writers:

ani.save(filename="/tmp/pillow_example.gif", writer="pillow")
ani.save(filename="/tmp/pillow_example.apng", writer="pillow")

HTML writers:

ani.save(filename="/tmp/html_example.html", writer="html")
ani.save(filename="/tmp/html_example.htm", writer="html")
ani.save(filename="/tmp/html_example.png", writer="html")

FFMpegWriter:

ani.save(filename="/tmp/ffmpeg_example.mkv", writer="ffmpeg")
ani.save(filename="/tmp/ffmpeg_example.mp4", writer="ffmpeg")
ani.save(filename="/tmp/ffmpeg_example.mjpeg", writer="ffmpeg")

Imagemagick writers:

ani.save(filename="/tmp/imagemagick_example.gif", writer="imagemagick")
ani.save(filename="/tmp/imagemagick_example.webp", writer="imagemagick")
ani.save(filename="apng:/tmp/imagemagick_example.apng",
         writer="imagemagick", extra_args=["-quality", "100"])

Credits

• Animations using Matplotlib