How can I create a 3D plot animation using Matplotlib?

How can I create a 3D plot animation using Matplotlib?

You can create a 3D plot animation in Matplotlib using the FuncAnimation class. First, set up your 3D plot, then define an update function to modify the plot for each frame.

Can you show me a simple code example?

Sure! Here's a basic example:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
from matplotlib.animation import FuncAnimation

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

x = np.linspace(-5, 5, 100)
y = np.linspace(-5, 5, 100)
z = np.sin(np.sqrt(x**2 + y**2))

line, = ax.plot(x, y, z)

def update(frame):
    line.set_ydata(np.sin(np.sqrt(x**2 + (y + frame)**2)))  # Update y data
    return line,

ani = FuncAnimation(fig, update, frames=np.arange(0, 10), blit=True)
plt.show()

What if I want to save the animation as a video?

You can save the animation using the save method of the FuncAnimation object. Just specify the filename and format, like this:

ani.save('animation.mp4', writer='ffmpeg')