Getting blitting to work in funcAnimation embedded in PyQT4 GUI

Question

Starting with the working Matplotlib animation code shown below, my goal is to embed this animation (which is just a circle moving across the screen) within a PyQT4 GUI.

Answer 1

After some time I managed to recreate the animation by using the underlying functions directly and not using the animation wrapper:

import sys
from PyQt4 import QtGui, QtCore
from matplotlib.backends.backend_qt4agg import FigureCanvasQTAgg as FigureCanvas
from matplotlib.figure import Figure
from matplotlib.patches import Circle
from matplotlib import animation
from time import sleep

class Window(QtGui.QDialog): #or QtGui.QWidget ???

    def __init__(self):
        super(Window, self).__init__()
        self.fig = Figure(figsize=(5, 4), dpi=100)
        self.canvas = FigureCanvas(self.fig)
        self.ax = self.fig.add_subplot(111)  # create an axis
        self.ax.hold(False)  # discards the old graph
        self.ax.set_aspect('equal', 'box')
        self.circle = Circle((0,0), 1.0, animated=True)
        self.ax.add_artist(self.circle)
        self.ax.set_xlim([0, 10])
        self.ax.set_ylim([-2, 2])
        self.button = QtGui.QPushButton('Animate')
        self.button.clicked.connect(self.animate)

        # set the layout
        layout = QtGui.QVBoxLayout()
        layout.addWidget(self.canvas)
        layout.addWidget(self.button)
        self.setLayout(layout)
        self.canvas.draw()
        self.ax_background = self.canvas.copy_from_bbox(self.ax.bbox)

    def animate(self):
        self.animate_loop(0)

    def animate_loop(self,begin):
        for i in range(begin,10):
            self.canvas.restore_region(self.ax_background)
            self.circle.center=(i,0)
            self.ax.draw_artist(self.circle)
            self.canvas.blit(self.ax.bbox)
            self.canvas.flush_events()
            sleep(0.1)

def main():

    app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
    ex = Window()
    ex.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main() 

Maybe this will be of use to you.