Python matplotlib Animation repeat

Question

I made an animation using matplotlib.animation and FuncAnimation. I know that I can set repeat to True/False to replay the animation, but is there also a way to replay the animation after the FuncAnimation has returned?

anim = FuncAnimation(fig, update, frames= range(0,nr_samples_for_display), blit=USE_BLITTING, interval=5,repeat=False)

plt.show()
playvideo = messagebox.askyesno("What to do next?", "Play Video again?")

Can I use the anim object to replay the animation or do another plt.show()?

Thanks in advance for your answer with kind regards, Gerard

Answer 1

After the figure has been shown once, it cannot be shown a second time using plt.show().

An option is to recreate the figure to show that new figure again.

createfig():
    fig = ...
    # plot something
    def update(i):
        #animate
    anim = FuncAnimation(fig, update, ...)

createfig()
plt.show()

while messagebox.askyesno(..):
    createfig()
    plt.show()

Probably a better option to restart the animation is to integrate the user dialog into the GUI. That would mean that at the end of the animation you ask the user if he wants to replay the animation without actually closing the matplotlib window first. To reset the animation to the start, you'd use

ani.frame_seq = ani.new_frame_seq() 

Example:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import matplotlib.animation as animation
import numpy as np
import Tkinter
import tkMessageBox

y = np.cumsum(np.random.normal(size=18))
x = np.arange(len(y))

fig, ax=plt.subplots()

line, = ax.plot([],[], color="crimson")

def update(i):
    line.set_data(x[:i],y[:i])
    ax.set_title("Frame {}".format(i))
    ax.relim()
    ax.autoscale_view()
    if i == len(x)-1:
        restart()

ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig,update, frames=len(x), repeat=False)

def restart():
    root = Tkinter.Tk()
    root.withdraw()
    result = tkMessageBox.askyesno("Restart", "Do you want to restart animation?")
    if result:
        ani.frame_seq = ani.new_frame_seq() 
        ani.event_source.start()
    else:
        plt.close()

plt.show()