Create a Simple Animation

Animations are an effective way to visualize data changing over time. This example shows the basic steps for creating a simple animation. For more ways to create animations, see Animation Techniques.

Set Up Figure and Axes

Start by setting up the figure and axes for your animation. Use the xlim, ylim, and zlim functions to set the limits of each axis. Setting the limits disables the automatic axis limits calculation, which can cause the animation to flicker and slow down.

figure
xlim([0 10])
ylim([-1 1])
zlim([-1 1])

Initialize Objects

Create the objects you want to animate. For example, to create an animation of a marker moving along a sine wave, first plot the wave. Then create a marker and save it to a variable so that you can access its properties later.

x = linspace(0,10,500);
y = sin(x);

plot(x,y)
hold on
mkr = scatter(NaN,NaN,[],"red","filled");
hold off

Create Loop to Update Animation

Use a loop to update the properties of your objects. This loop defines how your objects change over time. In some cases, MATLAB^® does not update the screen until the code finishes executing. Use the drawnow function to display the updates on the screen throughout an animation.

for i = 1:length(x)
    mkr.XData = x(i);
    mkr.YData = y(i);
    drawnow
end

Control Speed

To control the speed of the animation, use the pause function after updating the figure data. Adjust the pause duration to control how fast the animation plays. For example, use pause with a duration of 0.05 seconds in the loop to slow the animation down. The pause function updates the figure, so you do not need to use the drawnow function to force an update.

for i = 1:length(x)
    mkr.XData = x(i);
    mkr.YData = y(i);
    pause(0.05)
end

Optimize Performance

There are several techniques for optimizing the performance of animations. For example, when creating line animations, you can use the animatedline function, which is optimized for creating line animations of streaming data. You also can improve the performance of animations using general graphics techniques, such as disabling the automatic axis limits calculation and strategically limiting the use of the drawnow function.

For more information, see Improve Graphics Performance.

Save Animations

You can record and playback animations using the getframe and movie functions. You also can save an animation to a GIF file using the exportgraphics function. For more information and examples, see Animation Techniques.

In live scripts, playback controls appear within the figure window after an animation is done playing. You can use these playback controls to replay the animation and explore individual frames without having to rerun the entire live script. To export animations in live scripts to movies or animated GIF files, use the Export Animation button in the animation playback controls. Animation playback controls do not appear for animations with 10 or fewer frames, and are not supported for animations generated by the movie function.

For example, if you run the sine wave animation in a live script, playback controls appear within the figure window after the animation finishes.