Manim is an animation engine for explanatory math videos. It's used to create precise animations programmatically, as seen in the videos at 3Blue1Brown.
Manim runs on python 3.7. You can install it from PyPI via pip
pip3 install manimlib
System requirements are cairo, ffmpeg, sox, latex (optional, if you want to use LaTeX).
You can now use it via the manim
command. For example:
manim my_project.py MyScene
For more options, take a look at the “Using manim“ sections further below.
If you want to hack on manimlib itself, clone this repository and in that directory execute:
# Install python requirements
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
# Try it out
python3 ./manim.py example_scenes.py SquareToCircle -pl
-
Install Cairo. Download the wheel from https://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pycairo. For most users,
pycairo‑1.18.0‑cp37‑cp37m‑win32.whl
will do fine.pip3 install C:\path\to\wheel\pycairo‑1.18.0‑cp37‑cp37m‑win32.whl
-
Install a LaTeX distribution. MiKTeX is recommended.
-
Install the remaining Python packages. Make sure that
pycairo==1.17.1
is changed topycairo==1.18.0
in requirements.txt.git clone https://github.com/3b1b/manim.git cd manim pip3 install -r requirements.txt python3 manim.py example_scenes.py SquareToCircle -pl
- Install sox and latex as above.
- Create a conda environment using
conda env create -f environment.yml
- WINDOWS ONLY Install
pyreadline
viapip install pyreadline
.
After installing virtualenv
and virtualenvwrapper
git clone https://github.com/3b1b/manim.git
mkvirtualenv -a manim -r requirements.txt manim
python3 -m manim example_scenes.py SquareToCircle -pl
Since it's a bit tricky to get all the dependencies set up just right, there is a Dockerfile and Compose file provided in this repo as well as a premade image on Docker Hub. The Dockerfile contains instructions on how to build a manim image, while the Compose file contains instructions on how to run the image.
In order to do this with the Compose file, you must set the INPUT_PATH
environment variable to the directory containing your source code and the
OUTPUT_DIRECTORY
environment variable to the directory where you want media
to be written.
- Install Docker
- Install Docker Compose
- Render an animation
INPUT_PATH=/path/to/dir/containing/source/code \
OUTPUT_PATH=/path/to/dir/for/media \
docker-compose run manim example_scenes.py SquareToCircle -l
The first time you execute the above command, Docker will pull the image from Docker Hub and cache it. Any subsequent runs until the image is evicted will use the cached image. Note that the image doesn't have any development tools installed and can't preview animations. Its purpose is building and testing only.
Try running the following:
python3 -m manim example_scenes.py SquareToCircle -pl
The -p
flag in the command above is for previewing, meaning the video file will automatically open when it is done rendering. The -l
flag is for a faster rendering at a lower quality.
Some other useful flags include:
-s
to skip to the end and just show the final frame.-n <number>
to skip ahead to then
'th animation of a scene.-f
to show the file in finder (for OSX).
Set MEDIA_DIR
environment variable to specify where the image and animation files will be written.
Look through the old_projects
folder to see the code for previous 3b1b videos. Note, however, that developments are often made to the library without considering backwards compatibility with those old projects. To run an old project with a guarantee that it will work, you will have to go back to the commit which completed that project.
While developing a scene, the -sp
flags are helpful to just see what things look like at the end without having to generate the full animation. It can also be helpful to use the -n
flag to skip over some number of animations.
Documentation is in progress at manim.readthedocs.io.
Todd Zimmerman put together a tutorial on getting started with manim, which has been updated to run on python 3.7.
To live stream your animations, simply run manim with the --livestream
option.
> python -m manim --livestream
Writing to media/videos/scene/scene/1080p30/LiveStreamTemp.mp4
Manim is now running in streaming mode. Stream animations by passing
them to manim.play(), e.g.
>>> c = Circle()
>>> manim.play(ShowCreation(c))
>>>
It is also possible to stream directly to Twitch. To do that simply pass --livestream and --to-twitch to manim and specify the stream key with --with-key. Then when you follow the above example the stream will directly start on your Twitch channel (with no audio support).
Is always welcome. In particular, there is a dire need for tests and documentation.
All files in the directories active_projects and old_projects, which by and large generate the visuals for 3b1b videos, are copyright 3Blue1Brown.
The general purpose animation code found in the remainder of the repository, on the other hand, is under the MIT license.