Animator is a Python library that allows you to easily create 2D animations and visualizations. I started this as a hobby project a long time back to learn more about Python and graphics programming. I've went through many iterations of this project, but I think I'll stick with this one for a while. I'm still working on the actual animation part in this version, but you can create some simple animations still.
Animator uses Skia as its graphics backend, so it's fast and supports a wide range of platforms. I used to use skia-python for this project, but I decided to create my own bindings for Skia to make it easier to add new features and fix bugs. The earlier versions of Animator even used pycairo as the graphics backend, but I switched to Skia since it provides more features.
Installation is kind of a pain right now. I'll work on making it easier. You'll need to build Skia from source and then install Animator using pip. Clone this repository. Visit the Skia website to download and build Skia.
Current Skia commit used: c56f38d79fe0f3bcf36abf20953848f35390cc2f
These are the basic steps I use to build:
export PATH="${PWD}/depot_tools:${PATH}"
cd skia
python3 tools/git-sync-deps
bin/gn gen out/StaticMin --args='is_debug=false is_official_build=true skia_enable_tools=true skia_use_system_harfbuzz=false skia_use_libfuzzer_defaults=false skia_use_gl=false text_tests_enabled=false skia_enable_pdf=false skia_enable_gpu=false skia_use_dng_sdk=false skia_enable_skvm_jit_when_possible=true skia_enable_skgpu_v1=false skia_enable_fontmgr_android=false skia_enable_discrete_gpu=false skia_build_fuzzers=false paragraph_tests_enabled=false cc="clang-14" cxx="clang++-14" extra_cflags_cc=["-frtti"] extra_ldflags=["-lrt"]'
ninja -C out/StaticMin/skia_use_system_harfbuzz=false: Use Skia's internal HarfBuzz library. I didn't have the system HarfBuzz library installed, so I had to use Skia's internal one. You might not need this flag or need similar flags for other libraries.skia_use_gl=false: Disable OpenGL. No GPU support in Animator yet.text_tests_enabled=false: Disable tests.skia_enable_pdf=false: No PDF support.skia_use_dng_sdk=false: No DNG support, whatever that is.skia_enable_fontmgr_android=false: Not building for Android.extra_cflags_cc=["-frtti"]: Enable RTTI for pybind11.
After running ninja, you should have 12 *.a (or your platform's equivalent) files in out/StaticMin. These should be libharfbuzz.a, libpathkit.a, libskcms.a, libskia.a, libskottie.a, libskparagraph.a, libskresources.a, libsksg.a, libskshaper.a, libsktext.a, libskunicode.a, libsvg.a. They might be different depending on the build flags you used. Copy these files to animator/skia/lib. Required header files are already included.
After this, you can build and install Animator using pip:
pip setup.py installHere's a quick example to help you get started with Animator:
import animator as am
scene = am.Scene()
scene.add(am.Circle(100))
scene.play_frames()There are more examples in the examples directory.
No tests. Animator is a visual library, so tests are visual! I'll add some tests later.
Contributions to Animator are welcome! If you find any bugs, have feature requests, or want to contribute code, please open an issue or pull request.
Why is licensing so complicated? I'm not a lawyer, so I'll try to explain this as best as I can. Animator is licensed under the MIT License. However, Skia is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License. This means that you can use Animator for any purpose, but you must include the Skia license too.