Important: The animate3d command has been deprecated. Use the superseding command plots[animate], which can generate both 2-D and 3-D animations, instead.

A typical call to the animate3d function is animate3d(F(x, y, t), x=a..b, y=c..d, t=p..q, where F is a real function in x, y, and t, and  and  specifies the range on which F is plotted while  specifies how the frame coordinate varies from one frame to the next.

The animate3d function provides support for three-dimensional plots of one or more functions specified as expressions, procedures, or parametric functions. (When animating a procedure, operator notation must be used.) See ?plot[function)] for more information on plotting functions.  For two-dimensional animation, see ?animate.  A call to animate3d produces a PLOT3D data structure, which is then printed.  For information on the PLOT3D data structure, see ?plot3d[structure].

Range arguments define the axis labels and the range over which the function(s) are displayed.  They take one of the following forms:  string, low..hi, or string=low..hi, where low and hi are real constants.  See ?plot[range] for further information.

Remaining arguments are interpreted as options which are specified as equations of the form option = value.  In particular, the frames option allows one to specify the number of frames to be displayed.  The default is 8.  The rest of the options are the same as those available for the plot3d command. For example, one can specify alternate coordinate systems such as spherical or cylindrical, various coloring schemes including a two dimensional coloring function to individual frames. See ?plot3d[options] for further information.

It is also possible to create an animation from individual 3-D plots by using the display function and the insequence option. In particular, this is useful when you have discrete sets of points you wish to animate.

For information on viewing animations, see Overview of Animation Menu.

Note that one can save animations as an animated GIF file.  See plot[device] for further information on producing GIF files.

Setting the global variable plotdevice (via the interface command) to one of the values listed under plot[device] controls the type of plots which will be produced.

animate3d may be defined by with(plots) or with(plots[animate3d]). It can also be used by the name plots[animate3d].