Animate a rotating 3D graph in Matplotlib

Matplotlib Python Data Visualization

Python Data Science basics with Numpy, Pandas and Matplotlib

Data Visualization using MatPlotLib & Seaborn

DATAhill Solutions Srinivas Reddy

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MatPlotLib with Python

DATAhill Solutions Srinivas Reddy

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To make a rotating 3D graph in matplotlib, we can use Animation class for calling a function repeatedly.

Steps

Initialize variables for number of mesh grids, frequency per second to call a function, frame numbers.
Create x, y, and z array for a curve.
Make a function to make z array using lambda function.
To pass a function into the animation class, make a user-defined function to remove the previous plot and plot a surface using x, y, and zarray.
Create a new figure or activate an existing figure.
Add a subplot arrangement using subplots() method.
Set the Z-axis limit using set_zlim() method.
Call the animation class to animate the surface plot.
To display the animated plot, use show() method.

Example

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

plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = [7.00, 3.50]
plt.rcParams["figure.autolayout"] = True
N = 50
fps = 250
frn = 75

x = np.linspace(-4, 4, N + 1)
x, y = np.meshgrid(x, x)
zarray = np.zeros((N + 1, N + 1, frn))

f = lambda x, y, sig: 1 / np.sqrt(sig) * np.exp(-(x ** 2 + y ** 2) / sig ** 2)

for i in range(frn):
   zarray[:, :, i] = f(x, y, 1.5 + np.sin(i * 2 * np.pi / frn))

def change_plot(frame_number, zarray, plot):
   plot[0].remove()
   plot[0] = ax.plot_surface(x, y, zarray[:, :, frame_number], cmap="afmhot_r")

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')

plot = [ax.plot_surface(x, y, zarray[:, :, 0], color='0.75', rstride=1,
cstride=1)]
ax.set_zlim(0, 1.1)
ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, change_plot, frn, fargs=(zarray, plot),
interval=1000 / fps)
ani.save('526.gif')

plt.show()