If you want to learn more about matplotlib animations you should really follow this tutorial. It explains in great length how to create animated plots.
Note: Creating animated plots require ffmpeg or mencoder to be installed.
Here is a version of his first example changed to work with your scatterplot.
# First import everthing you need
import numpy as np
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
from matplotlib import animation
from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import Axes3D
# Create some random data, I took this piece from here:
# http://matplotlib.org/mpl_examples/mplot3d/scatter3d_demo.py
def randrange(n, vmin, vmax):
return (vmax - vmin) * np.random.rand(n) + vmin
n = 100
xx = randrange(n, 23, 32)
yy = randrange(n, 0, 100)
zz = randrange(n, -50, -25)
# Create a figure and a 3D Axes
fig = plt.figure()
ax = Axes3D(fig)
# Create an init function and the animate functions.
# Both are explained in the tutorial. Since we are changing
# the the elevation and azimuth and no objects are really
# changed on the plot we don't have to return anything from
# the init and animate function. (return value is explained
# in the tutorial.
def init():
ax.scatter(xx, yy, zz, marker="o", s=20, c="goldenrod", alpha=0.6)
return fig,
def animate(i):
ax.view_init(elev=10., azim=i)
return fig,
# Animate
anim = animation.FuncAnimation(fig, animate, init_func=init,
frames=360, interval=20, blit=True)
# Save
anim.save('basic_animation.mp4', fps=30, extra_args=['-vcodec', 'libx264'])