Animate Graphics Object
This example shows how to animate a triangle looping around the inside of a circle by updating the data properties of the triangle.
Plot the circle and set the axis limits so that the data units are the same in both directions.
theta = linspace(-pi,pi);
xc = cos(theta);
yc = -sin(theta);
plot(xc,yc);
axis equal
Use the area
function to draw a flat triangle. Then, change the value of one of the triangle vertices using the (x,y) coordinates of the circle. Change the value in a loop to create an animation. Use a drawnow
or drawnow limitrate
command to display the updates after each iteration. drawnow limitrate
is fastest, but it might not draw every frame on the screen.
xt = [-1 0 1 -1]; yt = [0 0 0 0]; hold on t = area(xt,yt); % initial flat triangle hold off for j = 1:length(theta)-10 xt(2) = xc(j); % determine new vertex value yt(2) = yc(j); t.XData = xt; % update data properties t.YData = yt; drawnow limitrate % display updates end
The animation shows the triangle looping around the inside of the circle.
See Also
area
| plot
| hold
| drawnow
| axis