How to animate 3D plot_surface in Matplotlib?

To animate 3D plot_surface in Matplotlib, we can take the following steps−

• Initialize variables for number of mesh grids (N), frequency per second (fps) to call a function, and frame numbers (frn).
• Create x, y and z array for a curve.
• Make a function to make a z-array using lambda function.
• To pass a function into animation class, make a user-defined function that removes the previous plot and plot a surface using x, y and z-array.
• 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 figure, use show() method.

Example

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

plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = [7.50, 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)

ax.axis('off')

plt.show()

Output