Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Animate simulations in python

I've recently written a nice short code in python to animate the results (plots) of a simulation using chaco (part of Enthought ETS)
It is not actually very difficult, but i've just made up this one for myself, and it also has some cool features, so i thought i'd share it with others may as well benefit from it.

  • This if useful for you if you ever do coding in python and need to plot somethings which may change with time. Example lets say you are plotting the evolution of temperature over a rod with time or solving a 1D Euler equation (say shock tube problem)
  • This code provides a simple function to do it easily.
  • You can play-pause the code (simulation) at any time.
  • You can zoom-pan theplot
  • You can plot multiple subplots in a single window (Example the velocity, density and pressure in a shock tube problem)
  • You can edit axis labels, font, grids using gui
  • You can save the plots
Usage:
This is the only function defined in the file  you need to know:
def animate(func, delay=0.1, total_time=0.0, time_factor=1.0, size=(800, 600), title='Plot'):
    '''function to animate the values returned by a function
   
    func : function which returns a tuple of x,y values to animate on each call
        x is shape (N,), y is shape (N,) or (p,N), N is number of points, p is number of plots (properties)
    delay is the time interval in which to call the func after the previous func has returned(seconds)
    total_time is the time at which to stop the animation
            animation will stop when total_time > self.time / time_factor
            total_time <= 0 will continue indefinitely
    time_factor is the time to display as title (displayed_time=time/time_factor)
    In the plot window:
        pressing 'p' key will toggle animation play-pause
        pressing Ctrl-S will open a dialog to save a rendering of the plot
        pressing 'ESC' will reset the zoom level of the plot
        double clicking on some parts of the plot allows you to edit them in a gui,
            (axis titles, grids, ticks etc)
        if the window becomes unresponsive, pause the animation for a while
    '''


The docstring explains most of the things you need to know.
Here's how you could use it:
First we see how to animate a single plot (A moving sine wave in this case)
from animate import animate
from numpy import linspace, sin
x = linspace(-10, 10, 101)
i = 0.0
def get_data():
    global i
    i += 0.1
    return x + i, sin(x + i)
animate(func=get_data)

The above code snippet will generate a nice moving animation window. Here's a plot from the same


Plotting multiple values is just as simple. You only need to pass on a tuple of the y values:
from animate import animate
from numpy import linspace, sin, cos
x = linspace(-10, 10, 101)
i = 0.0
def get_data2():
    global i

    i += 0.1
    return x + i, (1 / (1 + x ** 2), sin(x + i), cos(x + i), sin(x + i), cos(x + i),)

animate(func=get_data2)
Here's a plot from the above snippet:

As you can see i have tried to make it as easy as possible without losing out on functionality.

Requirements:
To run this you will need the Enthought tool suite ETS (only traits with wx backend and chaco are required)
Hope this is useful for someone.
You can get the code animate.py from here that is:
http://home.iitb.ac.in/%7Epankajp/web/downloads/animate.py

Friday, September 18, 2009

cutie kitten


cutie kitten, originally uploaded by pankaj86.
Such a lovely pair of kitten.
So much contrast yet so much togetherness.
Friendship knows no barriers.
Hope men could learn.

(Courtesy Suchit, this pic was taken by Suchit http://suchit-de-fundae.blogspot.com/ using his mobile cam in the mess of hostel 6)

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

No smoking

All the junta out there, listen, please STOP smoking. Ya thats right, stop smoking, stop it NOW.
FREEZE,
Now throw away that cigarette in your hand and empty you wallets of the packets.
Now repeat with me thrice
    I will not smoke
    I will not smoke
    I will not smoke
If you are feeling withdrawal symptoms, contact me, i can help you and take you to rehab. Don't worry, its not worse than dying of choked lungs and killing many others in the process. Its also better than some fanatic like me shooting your brain at point blank range just for that single smoke.

join us in the mission, spread the word
http://www.thetruth.com/

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Blend it like Blender

Few days back this summer, i decided to be a bit creative and joined a free (as in freedom) workshop on blender in my college. I attended only a few days, but blender was really impressive. The main aim of the workshop was to teach sufficient blender to enable you to create educational content. As such it was not meant to teach character animation. So in just a few days, i learnt a lot of basics of 3D modeling. Most of the initial time was taken up in learning the interface, but i can assure you that once you learn it, it enables you to be highly productive.
So here's a sample of what i did after just 3 days of learning blender. Of course as you know what happens in life, i've never been able to spend any time on blender since then...


The blend files can be downloaded from here Blender .blend file, Textures
Hope sometime i do get time to learn all the cool features of blender