I'm trying to get an animated 2D data surface on MatPlotLib. After a bit of search on the internet, i've found an example that almost works:from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import axes3dimport matplotlib.pyplot as pltimport numpy as npimport timedef generate(X, Y, phi):    R = 1 - np.sqrt(X**2 + Y**2)    return np.cos(2 * np.pi * X + phi) * Rplt.ion()fig = plt.figure()ax = axes3d.Axes3D(fig)xs = np.linspace(-1, 1, 50)ys = np.linspace(-1, 1, 50)X, Y = np.meshgrid(xs, ys)Z = generate(X, Y, 0.0)wframe = Nonetstart = time.time()for phi in np.linspace(0, 360 / 2 / np.pi, 100):    oldcol = wframe    Z = generate(X, Y, phi)    wframe = ax.plot_wireframe(X, Y, Z, rstride=2, cstride=2)    # Remove old line collection before drawing    if oldcol is not None:        ax.collections.remove(oldcol)    plt.draw()print 'FPS: %f' % (100 / (time.time() - tstart))reference: http://www.mail-archive.com/matplotlib-users@lists.sourceforge.net/msg14674.htmlThe problem with this plot is that is not interactive, the window does not rotate.It seems the computation and/or the rendering blocks the UIis there a better approach for animated 2D data surface plotting?
plotting a 2D animated data surface on MatPlotLib
python;data visualization
Use the animation module. Here is a nice tutorial.Tweaking your code a bit,from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import axes3dimport numpy as npimport matplotlib.pyplot as pltimport matplotlib.animation as animationdef generate(X, Y, phi):    R = 1 - np.sqrt(X**2 + Y**2)    return np.cos(2 * np.pi * X + phi) * Rfig = plt.figure()ax = axes3d.Axes3D(fig)xs = np.linspace(-1, 1, 50)ys = np.linspace(-1, 1, 50)X, Y = np.meshgrid(xs, ys)Z = generate(X, Y, 0.0)wframe = ax.plot_wireframe(X, Y, Z, rstride=2, cstride=2)ax.set_zlim(-1,1)def update(i, ax, fig):    ax.cla()    phi = i * 360 / 2 / np.pi / 100    Z = generate(X, Y, phi)    wframe = ax.plot_wireframe(X, Y, Z, rstride=2, cstride=2)    ax.set_zlim(-1,1)    return wframe,ani = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, update,         frames=xrange(100),         fargs=(ax, fig), interval=100)plt.show()