Manim Sequence Diagrams

Installation

Following manim's guide on how to install plugins on this guide, but TL;DR is:

run

pip install manim-sequence-diagram
manim cfg write

this will generate a manim.cfg file somewhere, you'll need to add to it this package

[CLI]
enable_wireframe = False
dry_run = False
tex_template =
plugins = manim_sequence_diagram

You'll know if you have it working if you run

manim plugins -l

and it shows something like

Manim Community v0.16.0.post0

Plugins:
 • manim_sequence_diagram

Generate Examples

manim -pql docs/examples.py ClientRaceDatabaseNetwork

Although one day, we'd like to support proper sequence diagram syntax, for now, it's all in python.

Here's a quick example of how it works

from manim import *
from manim_sequence_diagram import *

class ClientRaceDatabaseNetwork(MovingCameraScene):
    def construct(self):
        actor_client = SeqActor(name="client")
        actor_delivery = SeqActor(name="delivery")
        actor_server = SeqActor(name="server")
        actor_db = SeqActor(name="database")
        for anime in SeqAction.introduce_actors(actor_client, actor_server, actor_delivery, actor_db):
            self.play(anime)

        # Move the camera yourself!
        self.play(self.camera.frame.animate.move_to(DOWN * 3))

        for anime in SeqAction.subject_gives_gift_to_target(
            subject=actor_client,
            gift=SeqObject(name="async getData"),
            target=actor_delivery
        ):
            self.play(anime)

Development

You'll need poetry to properly get this to work, checkout their guide here for how to install. Once you do, do the following to setup

make install
make dev

In order to generate examples, you'll need to setup your manim cfg