ArtistAnimation with 3D plotting?

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1

I have a list of files, each of which stores locations of particles at different times. I’d like to create an animation that shows the particles’ movement in time. I tried to use matplotlib.animation.ArtistAnimation as follows:

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection='3d')
artists = []
for evolve_idx in range(TOT_STEPS):
    _, data = pl.readdump(positions_dir + str(evolve_idx) + ".txt")
    container = ax.scatter(data[10:-10:10, :, 0], data[10:-10:10, :, 1], data[10:-10:10, :, 2])
    artists.append(container)

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

Where pl.readdump is a function that reads the data from these text files. I get the error:

TypeError: 'Path3DCollection' object is not iterable

So I guess that’s because ax.scatter doesn’t return an object of instance Artist, because it’s a 3d plot.

Hence I wonder - is there a way to use ArtistAnimation with ax.scatter for 3D plotting?

I think I can use FuncAnimation with a an updating function that runs plot.remove() or ax.clear(), as done here, but I’m not sure if that’s the only way.

Help will be appreciated!

2

The ArtistAnimation docs say that artists should be:

Each list entry is a collection of Artist objects that are made visible on the corresponding frame. Other artists are made invisible.

However, each entry that you have provided is a single Artist. Instead, it should be wrapped in a list or tuple.