# Animation Produces extremely large files **URL:** \ **Category:** đź“Š Plotly Python\ **Created:** [October 22, 2018, 12:34am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812 "2018-10-22T00:34:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cmccully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@cmccully](https://community.plotly.com/u/cmccully)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 12:34am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/1 "2018-10-22T00:34:26Z")
I am trying to animate simple particle trajectories. I have 2 particles currently. Below is a stripped down example of what I am trying to do. At even 2000 frames, the output html is 91 MB and that appears to be scale about n^1.5. For ~2x3x2000 data points I would expect that data itself to take ~100 kB. We appear to be taking 1000 times more than that for the plot. I was able to turn relayout off and and that cut things down by a factor of 5 or so. Any other suggestions for performance would be appreciated. It would also be a useful thing to add to the docs. Thank you for your help. ````python from plotly.offline import init_notebook_mode, plot import numpy as np init_notebook_mode() t = np.arange(2000) x = np.cos(2.0 * np.pi /365.0 * t) y = np.sin(2.0 * np.pi /365.0 * t) z = np.zeros(len(t)) figure = {'data': [{'x': [0, 1], 'y': [0, 0], 'z': [0, 0], 'type': 'scatter3d', 'mode': 'markers', 'marker': {'color': ['#ff7f0e', '#1f77b4'], 'size': [100.0, 20.0]}}, {'x': [0, 1], 'y': [0, 0], 'z': [0, 0], 'type': 'scatter3d', 'mode': 'lines', 'line': {'color': '#1f77b4', 'width': 2.0}}], 'layout': {'autosize': False, 'width': 1000, 'height': 1000, 'showactive': False, 'scene': {'xaxis': {'range': [-1.5, 1.5], 'autorange': False, 'dtick':1}, 'yaxis': {'range': [-1.5, 1.5], 'autorange': False, 'dtick':1}, 'zaxis': {'range': [-2, 2], 'autorange': False, 'dtick':1}, 'aspectratio': dict( x=1, y=1, z=1), 'aspectmode': 'manual',}, 'updatemenus': [{'type': 'buttons', 'buttons': [{'args': [None, {'frame': {'duration': 30, 'redraw': False, 'relayout': False, 'restyle': False}, 'fromcurrent': True, 'mode': 'immediate', 'transition': {'duration': 30} }], 'label': 'Play', 'method': 'animate'}, {'args': [[None], {'frame': {'duration': 0, 'redraw': False, 'relayout': False, 'restyle': False}, 'mode': 'immediate', 'transition': {'duration': 0}}], 'label': 'Pause', 'method': 'animate' }]}]}, 'frames': [{'data': [{'x': [0.0, x[i]], 'y': [0.0, y[i]], 'z': [0.0, z[i]], 'type': 'scatter3d'}, {'x': x[:i], 'y': y[:i], 'z': z[:i], 'type': 'scatter3d'}]} for i in t], } plot(figure, validate=False, filename='test_plot.html',) ``` ```` ---
**Author:** ![jmmease](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/community.plotly.com/jmmease/32/3706_2.png) [@jmmease](https://community.plotly.com/u/jmmease)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2018, 10:06am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/2 "2018-10-22T10:06:10Z")
Hi @cmccully, I did two quick experiments: First, I wrote your figure dict out to a JSON file… ```python import json from plotly.utils import PlotlyJSONEncoder with open('animation.json', 'w') as f: json.dump(figure, f, cls=PlotlyJSONEncoder) ``` which resulted in a 92.6MB json file. Then I wrote the dict to a pickle file… ```python import pickle with open('animation.pickle', 'wb') as f: pickle.dump(figure, f) ``` which resulted in a 48.7 MB file. This factor of ~2 is about what you would expect given that the pickle file can store the numpy arrays as binary buffers and the JSON file stores them as lists in string form. I haven’t looked at the details of what’s in `figure`, could you elaborate on why you would expect the data to take ~100kB? -Jon ---
**Author:** ![cmccully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@cmccully](https://community.plotly.com/u/cmccully)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 3:22am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/3 "2018-11-20T03:22:22Z")
> [@cmccully](#): > > 2x3x2000 Sorry for the delay. I didn’t see the response until now. For 2x3x2000 data points, that gives 12,000 total data points that you need to store. Assuming they are 8 byte floats (as they would be in the pickle file you mention), that 8 bytes \* 12000 = 100 kB for the raw data. I understand that there is going to be some overhead, but a factor of 500 seemed a little excessive. My overall goal is to make an animation of a very simple N-body simulator, but currently the animations I produce are just too large to be practical. ---
**Author:** ![cmccully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@cmccully](https://community.plotly.com/u/cmccully)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 3:31am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/4 "2018-11-20T03:31:55Z")
I guess the real question I have is whether you can have a list of x,y,z coordinates as a function of ~10000 time steps that you can then animate in a 3d graph. The issue may be that I am fundamentally approaching the problem in a way that is not how plotly works. ---
**Author:** ![cmccully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@cmccully](https://community.plotly.com/u/cmccully)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 3:43am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/5 "2018-11-20T03:43:39Z")
As I was working with this, I realized the root of my problem. I am repeating the points for each line for each time step. That is leading to a factorial expansion of the number of points that get saved to the dict. Is there a way in plotly to only save the points once, and then have plotly render a range of points without having to directly repeat them in the frames dict? ---
**Author:** ![jmmease](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/community.plotly.com/jmmease/32/3706_2.png) [@jmmease](https://community.plotly.com/u/jmmease)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 12:51pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/6 "2018-11-20T12:51:36Z")
Hi @cmccully, Yeah, this is the trouble you’re running into. You might be able to do this using a `filter` transform ([https://plot.ly/python/filter/](https://plot.ly/python/filter/)). In this case you would store the full data set in the `data` portion of your figure. And your animate frames would update the filter’s value. `transforms` aren’t supported by the objects in the `plotly.graph_objs` hierarchy, so you would need to build the figure using plain `dict` and `list` objects and then set `validate=False` when saving it to html with `plotly.offline.plot` (and it looks like you’re already doing this). -Jon ---
**Author:** ![cmccully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@cmccully](https://community.plotly.com/u/cmccully)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 1:48am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/7 "2018-11-21T01:48:23Z")
Thanks for this! Is there an example somewhere that I could look at updating filters in animated frames? ---
**Author:** ![jmmease](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/user_avatar/community.plotly.com/jmmease/32/3706_2.png) [@jmmease](https://community.plotly.com/u/jmmease)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 11:45am UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/8 "2018-11-21T11:45:40Z")
Hi @cmccully, I couldn’t find one, so here’s a simple one you can start with ```python from plotly.offline import plot fig = { 'data': [{ 'type': 'scatter', 'mode': 'lines', 'x': [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9], 'y': [0, 2, 2, 3, 2, 4, 1, 4, 3, 6], 'transforms': [{ 'type': 'filter', 'target': 'x', 'operation': '<=', 'value': 0 }] }], 'layout': { 'xaxis': {'range': [0, 10]}, 'yaxis': {'range': [0, 10]} }, 'frames': [{ 'data': [{ 'transforms': [{ 'value': i }] }] } for i in range(10)] } plot(fig, validate=False) ``` ![filter_animate](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex024/uploads/plot/original/2X/f/f534373e48eb1a356a9a3b2d78ae8fcfffc70aaf.gif) Hope that helps! -Jon ---
**Author:** ![cmccully](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@cmccully](https://community.plotly.com/u/cmccully)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 10:34pm UTC](https://community.plotly.com/t/animation-produces-extremely-large-files/14812/9 "2018-11-21T22:34:50Z")
Fabulous! Thank you so much! In fact I think you should add this to the examples section on the plotly site. This is so helpful.