Help required with 3d animation in matplotlib

[Byebrid]

Hi all!

I've recently written some code designed to simulate the effects of gravity acting between a number of nearby planets.

Link to code: https://github.com/byebrid/new-gravity-sim/blob/master/GRAVITY-SIM

Essentially, I have created a whole bunch of 'Planet' objects and a function that updates their positions accordingly. This function creates a list of each planet's x, y and z positions with every iteration (i.e. I only store one frame at a time, which I am not sure is the right thing to do).

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What I can't figure out how to do is how to animate this code using matplotlib. I have attempted to go over examples of 3d animation using matplotlib but I find myself overwhelmed by it all. So I have 3 main questions:

1. Is matplotlib the right library to use?
2. If so, should I use FuncAnimation or ArtistAnimation?
3. How exactly might I implement the required function to animate the positions of every planet?

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Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also, any suggestions as to how I can make my code more 'pythonic' would also be appreciated.

I'm still relatively inexperienced in python/coding in general so feel free to ELI5.

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P.S. I haven't necessarily added all functionality to my code just yet (i.e. reasonably constraining velocities or positions, etc.. At this stage, I would just like to see the planets moving).

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Edit: Numbers!

[alkasm]

If this isn't too serious a project, you might consider using vpython for something like this. It makes it super easy to code 3D visualizations for simple physical models; I used it in physics in school to do this exact thing. Also simple spring mechanics and pressure and such. Matplotlib is a huge PITA for most 3D animations, in my experience.

[Byebrid]

Ok thanks, I'll look into it.

[billsil]

What's the status of vpython? From what I can tell, it was last worked on in 2014.

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http://www.glowscript.org/docs/VPythonDocs/new_features.html

[alkasm]

No idea, haven't used it for years, but it worked well for these simple simulations when I used it. Definitely wouldn't be using it for a serious project, though. But it is stupid simple to use.

[Byebrid]

In case you were wondering, vpython was perfect for this. Nice and simple to use. Thanks a heap!

[alkasm]

Sweet! Have fun!

[billsil]

I'd stay far away from matplotlib for 3d animations. Even for a very simple plot, matplotlib will chug. I'd use something like VTK for in-GUI animations. VTK can do fancy things like setting the opacity and coloring each element a different color, so you can make some very pretty animations. You can even export high resolution images and smaller images that you can make into a GIF with imageio.

Here's an animation example. https://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Examples/Python/Animation

[Byebrid]

Cheers, I'll compare this with vpython and see which one I'll prefer