g.gui.animation(1)

📦
version 8.4.2 · 10 versions
, in fedora 44

✨ g.gui.animation ✨

okay bestie, so this is a page from the GRASS GIS User's Manual — it's all about g.gui.animation, the tool that makes your maps move. like, actually move. let's get into it 💖

🌸 NAME 🌸

g.gui.animation — the Tool for animating a series of raster and vector maps or a space time raster or vector dataset. yes, animating. it's giving cinema. 🎬

🎀 KEYWORDS 🎀

general, GUI, display, animation

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

g.gui.animation
g.gui.animation --help
g.gui.animation  [raster=name[,name,...]]   [vector=name[,name,...]]
[strds=name]   [stvds=name]   [--help]  [--verbose]  [--quiet]  [--ui]

✨ Flags:

  • --help — prints the usage summary so you know what's up
  • --verbose — verbose module output, aka it tells you everything
  • --quiet — quiet module output, aka it keeps it cute and silent 🤫
  • --ui — forces the GUI dialog to launch

💅 Parameters:

  • raster=name[,name,...] — the raster maps you wanna animate
  • vector=name[,name,...] — the vector maps you wanna animate. or data source(s) for direct OGR access, your call
  • strds=name — the space time raster dataset you wanna animate
  • stvds=name — the space time vector dataset you wanna animate

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

The Animation Tool is a wxGUI component for animating series of GRASS raster or vector maps or space time datasets (the ones created by t.* modules). it's the glow-up your data deserved.

so, the Animation Tool lets you:

  • display up to 4 synchronized animations — four!! at once!! 👑
  • each animation can consist of base map layer(s) and (multiple) series in arbitrary order (for example, raising water level with elevation — iconic behavior tbh)
  • control the animation speed
  • interactively change active frame using a slider
  • visualize space time datasets with unequally spaced intervals
  • animate 3d view (partially implemented, not supported on Windows — yeah, sorry Windows girlies 😭)
  • export animation as a series of images, animated GIF, AVI or SWF
  • choose format of time labels in case of animating maps with absolute time
  • choose background color
  • set starting and ending region in order to change region during animation (alternatively you can set N-S/E-W values instead of the ending region; these are used for making the region smaller or larger for each step)

3D view animation enables you to animate raster (as an elevation map or a color map) or vector map (points, lines). Internally, module m.nviz.image is used. To display 3D view animation follow these steps:

  1. open GRASS GUI, load maps and start 3D view
  2. set view, light and other parameters as you like
  3. save workspace file
  4. add new animation in Animation Tool, choose 3D view mode
  5. choose data (series of maps or space time dataset) used for animation
  6. set workspace file
  7. choose parameter (parameter of m.nviz.image) to animate (e.g. color_map)

🌈 NOTE 🌈

The Animation Tool follows the computational region settings, so please be sure your computational region is set to the geographic extent of maps you are animating. You can change the computational region (using g.region) and then reload the maps to update the animation.

fr fr, check your region first. do not skip this step bestie, i'm begging 🙈

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

g.gui.animation raster=rmap1,rmap2,rmap3
g.gui.animation vector=vmap1,vmap2,vmap3
g.gui.animation strds=precipitation_2000_2010

The loading of a series of maps into the Animation Tool can be simplified with g.list (back ticks syntax works for Linux and Mac only):

g.gui.animation raster=`g.list type=raster mapset=. separator=comma pattern="precip*"`

Using extended regular expressions, the list of a series of raster maps can be subset by e.g., numeric range (here: precipitation for the years 1997-2012):

g.gui.animation raster=`g.list -e type=raster mapset=. separator=comma pattern="precip_total.(199[7-9]|200[0-9]|201[0-2]).sum"`

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

wxGUI, wxGUI components

g.gui.timeline, g.list, m.nviz.image

See also related wiki page.

💜 AUTHOR 💜

Anna Kratochvilova, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic — shoutout to the queen who built this 🫶

⭐ SOURCE CODE ⭐

Available at: wxGUI Animation tool source code (history)

Accessed: Saturday Jan 17 05:42:35 2026

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© 2003-2025 GRASS Development Team, GRASS GIS 8.4.2 Reference Manual

and that's the whole page, no cap 🧚 this was GRASS 8.4.2, manual page g.gui.animation(1) — go animate something gorgeous, bestie 💅✨

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