[matplotlib-devel] New Animation Class
Hi, I've been hard at work over the last couple of months putting together a set of classes that simplifies the creation of animations in matplotlib. This started when I resurrected some old code for animations to give to a colleague, when I realized just how bad the old code was and how much better I could do. The result of this afternoon hack is what I'm ready to put forth. Some of the goals: * Run independently of the backend, unlike the examples we have now (This is really accomplished by the Timer object we now have) * Remove the boilerplate code of setting up loops * Facilitate saving out animations as a movie file * Provide a simple API that integrates well with the rest of Matplotlib * Provide (optional) blitting support so that users don't have to learn the ins and outs of blitting Overall, I think I accomplished my goals, so I'm putting this out there for wider comments. I've attached the python module which, when run, displays two animated figures. There is also a git repository at: http://github.com/dopplershift/Animation which has some more examples, including ports of our old examples. (The examples assume animation.py is in your python path somewhere, which you'll have to do by hand. This can be as simple as dropping animation.py into the directory). Some things to note: * The flow is broken into *a lot* of member functions. This is to provide sufficient entry points for subclasses so that they really only need to reimplement the parts they override. Optional blitting support drove a lot of this. * There are two main classes for end users: * FuncAnimation -- provide a callback which draws the next frame of animation * ArtistAnimation -- provide a sequence of collections of artists which are turned off and on for each frame of animation * There is support for saving movies with either mencoder or ffmpeg. The config for this is really rough, and the place I could *really* use suggestions. I'm not sure how best to go about it. I've been unable to find a (currently maintained) python library for saving movie files, so system calls to the utilities is the best I can do at the moment. I'm not sure what to use on windows, since I'm not sure of the state (and requirements) of mencode/ffmpeg on windows. TODOs: * Configuring saving movie files (formats, programs, etc.) (see above) * Documentation (I promise not to commit until this is written) * More examples (could use some more procedural examples, like animating using data read from a socket, or inotify) I welcome feedback on this, because I really want to see this become an easy and bulletproof way of doing animations in matplotlib. This seems to be an area of frequent question on the mailing list, and I want this framework to lessen the questions, not increase them. Ryan -- Ryan May Graduate Research Assistant School of Meteorology University of Oklahoma # TODO: # * Documentation -- this will need a new section of the User's Guide. # Both for Animations and just timers. # - Also need to update http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib/Animations # * Blit # * Currently broken with Qt4 for widgets that don't start on screen # * Still a few edge cases that aren't working correctly # * Can this integrate better with existing matplotlib animation artist flag? # * Example # * Frameless animation - pure procedural with no loop # * Need example that uses something like inotify or subprocess # * Complex syncing examples # * Movies # * Library to make movies? # * RC parameter for config? # * Need to consider event sources to allow clicking through multiple figures from datetime import datetime def traceme(func): def wrapper(*args): print '%s -- Calling: %s %s' % (datetime.now(), func.__name__, str(args)) ret = func(*args) print 'Returned: %s' % func.__name__ return ret return wrapper from matplotlib.cbook import iterable class Animation(object): ''' This class wraps the creation of an animation using matplotlib. It is only a base class which should be subclassed to provide needed behavior. *fig* is the figure object that is used to get draw, resize, and any other needed events. *event_source* is a class that can run a callback when desired events are generated, as well as be stopped and started. Examples include timers (see :class:`TimedAnimation`) and file system notifications. *blit* is a boolean that controls whether blitting is used to optimize drawing. ''' def __init__(self, fig, event_source=None, blit=False): self._fig = fig self._blit = blit # These are the basics of the animation. The frame sequence represents # information for each frame of the animation and depends on how the # drawing is handled by the subclasses. The event source fires events # that cause the frame sequence to be iterated. self.frame_seq = self.new_frame_seq() self.event_source =
Re: [matplotlib-devel] New Animation Class
On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 5:22 PM, Ryan May rma...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, I've been hard at work over the last couple of months putting together a set of classes that simplifies the creation of animations in matplotlib. This started when I resurrected some old code for animations to give to a colleague, when I realized just how bad the old code was and how much better I could do. The result of this afternoon hack is what I'm ready to put forth. Some of the goals: In my haste to get this out, I forgot to mention that thanks go to Ben Root for already banging on this quite a bit, giving quite a bit of useful design feedback and helping me find some bugs. Ryan -- Ryan May Graduate Research Assistant School of Meteorology University of Oklahoma -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
Re: [matplotlib-devel] New Animation Class
On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 5:22 PM, Ryan May rma...@gmail.com wrote: I've been hard at work over the last couple of months putting together a set of classes that simplifies the creation of animations in matplotlib. This started when I resurrected some old code for Very nice -- people are going to really like this. I've had several requests personally to add something like this so thanks for doing it :-) Some rapid fire comments, in no particular order * on recent ubuntu linux with gtkagg, dynamic_image has a one pixel bug on the right side if blit=True. I suspect this has nothing to do with your package and everything to do with gtkagg blitting code having an off-by-one error somewhere. I added this to the tracker: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detailaid=3027636group_id=80706atid=560720 * this is completely un-thought out, but could we define a subclass of TimedAnimation to work like an iterator so users could do the natural thing : line, = ax.plot(something) for frame in SomeTimedAnimation(fig, blit=True): line.set_data(mydata) frame.update() or something along those lines * when you integrate this into trunk, I would like to see widgets.py upgraded to use it. This is not a requirement and I would be happy to help with it, but it is a good way to push on the new API and expand the test cases. * I am happy to see this pushed into trunk at any time. I would not push it into the branch, but we can do a 1.1 trunk release as soon as we are ready (release early, release often). Putting it in the trunk will facilitate testing and other developer contributions. But if you'd rather leave it in github for a while, I have no problem with that either. * you hardcode the artist visible state True/False in ArtistAnimation, which overrides any settings the users may be trying to control. Not sure if this is a problem, but it's something to think about. When you set False in ArtistAnimation._init_draw, should you first store the current state so you can restore the userland settings? You comment that maybe you should be integrating with the animated property. This is essentially what this is for, if animated is set it should not be used in drawing the background. Not sure if this matters since it may be sensible to assume they are handing you control of visibility in ArtistAnimation, just throwing it out there. * in Animation.save, why do you set blit=False? When making movies, shouldn't we also depend on the efficiencies of blit? Or was the idea: blit is buggy so for production movies turn it off cause I'm willing to sacrifice performance for quality? If so, I'd rather try an fix the bugsor expose blit as a kwarg. * a tutorial for the site docs would be awesome. It's one of the big missing pieces in the docs, so this would be a good time to add it. * when you include animation.py in the trunk, would you write the examples as import matplotlib.animation as animation ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, ...) per the style guidelines in the coding guide. * let's preserve the old gui specific examples in a subdir of examples/animation, so people who need bare metal control will still have examples to follow. You can add a README in that dir suggesting the use of the new API unless necessary. Nice work. JDH -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
Re: [matplotlib-devel] ContourSet not an Artist?
On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 9:59 PM, Eric Firing efir...@hawaii.edu wrote: On 07/09/2010 11:45 AM, Ryan May wrote: Hi, I just noticed that ContourSet only inherits ScalarMappable and ContourLabeller, neither of which is an Artist subclass, which means ContourSet is not an Artist. (And is why it does not have a remove() method). Anyone have any idea why and if we should correct that? I'm not sure what the ramifications would be. It's just historical. Should every plotting command return an Artist, simple or compound? If so, I suspect contouring is not the only thing that will need refactoring. I haven't investigated what would be required. Ryan, was there a particular use case in which you found that CS was not an Artist to be a limitation, or were you just asking out of curiosity? JDH -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
Re: [matplotlib-devel] ContourSet not an Artist?
On Jul 9, 2010, at 22:11, John Hunter jdh2...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 9:59 PM, Eric Firing efir...@hawaii.edu wrote: On 07/09/2010 11:45 AM, Ryan May wrote: Hi, I just noticed that ContourSet only inherits ScalarMappable and ContourLabeller, neither of which is an Artist subclass, which means ContourSet is not an Artist. (And is why it does not have a remove() method). Anyone have any idea why and if we should correct that? I'm not sure what the ramifications would be. It's just historical. Should every plotting command return an Artist, simple or compound? If so, I suspect contouring is not the only thing that will need refactoring. I haven't investigated what would be required. Ryan, was there a particular use case in which you found that CS was not an Artist to be a limitation, or were you just asking out of curiosit Looking at adding a remove method, per another thread. I was confused by the lack of standard machinery, and wasn't sure if I should just add remove method or make it an artist. Ryan JDH -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel -- This SF.net email is sponsored by Sprint What will you do first with EVO, the first 4G phone? Visit sprint.com/first -- http://p.sf.net/sfu/sprint-com-first ___ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
