Animated contour plot from 3D numpy array Python

Question

I have a 3D array which has one time index and two space indices. I am trying to animate over the first index to visualize the 2D solution in time. I found another stack question about this here , but I am not entirely sure how it was resolved, I'm still a little confused. Basically I have a solution array which is A[n,i,j] where n is the time index, and x and y are the spacial indices. As I mentioned I want to animate over the 2D arrays A[:,i,j] . How do I use the animation module in matplotlib to do this?

Answer 1

Here's an example based on the one you linked to where the data is in the format you describe:

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

# Fake Data
x = y = np.arange(-3.0, 3.01, 0.025)
X, Y = np.meshgrid(x, y)
s = np.shape(X)
nFrames = 20
A = np.zeros((nFrames, s[0], s[1]))
for i in range(1,21): 
    A[i-1,:,:] = plt.mlab.bivariate_normal(X, Y, 0.5+i*0.1, 0.5, 1, 1)

# Set up plotting
fig = plt.figure()
ax = plt.axes()  

# Animation function
def animate(i): 
    z = A[i,:,:]
    cont = plt.contourf(X, Y, z)

    return cont  

anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, frames=nFrames)
plt.show()