I try to generate an empty patch to be able to set data later on. In order to explain my problem better, i will give an example: from matplotlib import pyplot as plt import matplotlib.animation as animation x = range(10) y = [i**2 for i in x] figure = plt.figure() ax1 = figure.add_subplot(111, xlim=(0,10), ylim=(0,100)) my_line, = ax1.plot([],[], 'o-') def init(): my_line.set_data([], []) return my_line, i = 0 def animate(_): global i my_line.set_data(x[0:i], y[0:i]) i = (i+1)%(len(x)+1) return my_line, ani = animation.FuncAnimation(figure, animate, repeat=True, blit=True, init_func=init) plt.show() Now, I to add a shape, which I define its edge points randomly. I need to use the same structure as I used for plotting lines inside the init() block: my_line.set_data([], []) . However, I couldn't succeed. I use the same structure as the example provided in the matplotlib tutorial . My verts are generated from a function. When I try using: foo = patches.PathPatch([], facecolor='red', lw=2, alpha=0.0) I get <matplotlib.patches.PathPatch at 0x335d390> But later, I cannot set the path data. I tried using foo.set_data and foo.set_path but PathPatch doesn't have such attributes and therefore, they didn't work. I checked this page but I couldn't get anywhere. I checked all of the tutorials I could find, but none of them helped. As a workaround, I used ax1.add_patch() command and have set the alpha value to 0. This helped to some extend but, as I have to enter data to be able to use this command, all of the shapes become visible at the final step of the animation for a very short time and, as I save my figure in that moment, it yields unfavorable results. Any help would be appreciated... Continue reading...
