I have made a simple n-body simulator and I plot/animate the movement with the following code:
for i in range(N):
[...]
x = [ Rbod[j][0], Rbod[j][0]]
y = [ Rbod[j][1], Rbod[j][1]]
#print(R1, V1, A1, F12)
if i%10 == 0:
print(i)
pylab.ion()
pylab.scatter( x, y, c=(j/nbodies,j/nbodies,j/nbodies) )
pylab.axis([-400, 400, -400, 400])
pylab.draw()
Now I would really like to save the animation as a gif. Is this possible? The internet vaguely said that it was but not on how to do it with pylab
.
Example of 4 body interaction:
I solved it by using ffmpeg, a conversion programme ran trough the commandline. So first I save all the seperate pictures and then make them into a avi and the avi into a gif.
print(i)
#pylab.ion()
pylab.scatter( x, y, c=(j/nbodies,j/nbodies,j/nbodies) )
pylab.axis([-400, 400, -400, 400])
#pylab.draw()
pylab.savefig('picture'+str(i))
os.chdir('C://Users/Alex')
subprocess.call(['ffmpeg', '-i', 'picture%d0.png', 'output.avi'])
subprocess.call(['ffmpeg', '-i', 'output.avi', '-t', '5', 'out.gif'])