animate: Animate a temporal network over its measurement grid

In Dynet: Tidy Temporal Network Analysis

Animate a temporal network over its measurement grid

Description

Draws the network bin by bin over the measurement grid and writes the frames to an animated GIF or a video. The grid is the same four arguments every measuring verb takes, so an animation shows exactly what snapshots() tabulates and what plot(dn, type = "snapshots") draws as a filmstrip, with the bins joined by motion.

Usage

animate(
  dn,
  start = NULL,
  end = NULL,
  step = NULL,
  window = NULL,
  sessions = c("bounded", "collapse"),
  layout = "spring",
  measure = NULL,
  tween = 6L,
  fps = 12,
  file = tempfile(fileext = ".gif"),
  loop = TRUE,
  width = 800L,
  height = 800L,
  res = 120,
  palette = "okabe",
  tie_states = TRUE,
  timeline = TRUE,
  absent = c("fade", "away", "hide"),
  isolates = c("fade", "show", "hide"),
  ease = c("dwell", "continuous"),
  max_displacement = 0.08,
  anchor_strength = 1,
  layout_args = list(),
  seed = 42L,
  ...
)

Arguments

dn	A temporal network from dynet().
start, end, step, window	The measurement grid, as in snapshots(). NULL, the default, takes each from the network's own observation window and bin width.
sessions	How to treat sessions, as in centrality_series(): "bounded" (the default) or "collapse". An animation draws calendar bins, so "separate" is not offered.
layout	"spring" (the default), "relaxed", "circle", "oval" or "groups", or a data frame of coordinates. See details.
measure	What node size follows. NULL, the default, keeps every vertex the same size. The name of a snapshot node measure from centrality_series(), such as "degree" or "betweenness", computes it on the animation's own grid, so a vertex grows and shrinks bin by bin. A node-level result of centrality_series() is matched by vertex and time; one computed with window = "all" holds a single value per vertex, so every vertex keeps one size for the whole film, for instance its degree over the whole period. The name of a numeric vertex attribute supplied through dynet(nodes = ) does the same with the attribute's values, which is how a two-tier size (a circle of interest against everyone else) is drawn.
tween	Frames drawn per bin. One positive whole number, 6 by default.
fps	Frames per second. One positive number, 12 by default.
file	Path to write to, ending in .gif, .mp4 or .webm. Defaults to a GIF in the session's temporary directory; nothing is written to the working directory unless the path says so.
loop	For a GIF: TRUE, the default, repeats for ever; FALSE plays once; a positive whole number repeats that many times. Ignored for a video.
width, height	Frame size in pixels, 800 by default. A video needs both to be even.
res	Resolution passed to grDevices::png(), 120 by default.
palette	Palette specification, as in plot.dynet(). "okabe" by default.
tie_states	Whether to draw forming, persisting and dissolving ties differently. TRUE by default.
timeline	Whether to draw the timeline strip. TRUE by default.
absent	How a vertex is drawn in a bin where it is not present. "fade", the default, keeps it in place at a quarter of its opacity; "away" parks it, invisible, at the edge of the layout on its own side and glides it in over the transition in which it arrives and out over the one in which it leaves, opaque for most of the glide and, with tie_states = TRUE, wearing a thick ring in the forming colour on the way in and the dissolving colour on the way out; "hide" keeps it in place, invisible.
isolates	How a vertex that is present but has no tie in a bin is drawn. "fade", the default, at 35% of its opacity; "show" at full opacity; "hide" invisible.
ease	"dwell", the default, holds each bin still before it changes; "continuous" keeps everything moving, with positions on a spline through the bins and linear fades. See details.
max_displacement	How far a vertex may move between bins under layout = "relaxed", in layout units. 0.08 by default; ignored otherwise.
anchor_strength	How strongly a vertex is pulled back towards its previous position under layout = "relaxed". 1 by default; ignored otherwise.
layout_args	A named list of further arguments for cograph::layout_spring(), used by layout = "spring" and "relaxed": repulsion, attraction, area, gravity, iterations or cooling. Empty by default. A larger repulsion opens a dense core.
seed	Seed for the spring layouts, so "spring" and "relaxed" are reproducible; 42 by default. Under a seed the caller's random state is restored on exit. NULL draws from the current random state instead and leaves it advanced, which is what makes successive unseeded calls differ.
...	Passed to cograph::splot() for every frame, so the whole drawing surface of plot.dynet()'s network view is available. labels may also be the name of a vertex attribute supplied through dynet(nodes = ), such as a short form of each name, which is then drawn in place of the vertex names; label itself is reserved by the node table, so give the attribute another name. Seven arguments are read as the animation's baselines rather than passed on: edge_width_range (the widths the weight scale maps onto, c(0.5, 3.5) by default), edge_alpha (0.6), edge_color (the colour of a tie when tie_states = FALSE), node_size (the size a vertex has without a measure) and node_size_range (the smallest and largest radius a measure maps onto; by default 0.55 and 1.8 times node_size), node_alpha (1) and node_border_color ("white"), the last two being what absent and isolates fade from.

Details

Frames. Each bin is drawn tween times. Between one bin and the next the vertices glide to their new positions, a tie that is about to appear fades in and one that is about to vanish fades out, and a vertex whose measure changes grows or shrinks. Under ease = "dwell", the default, the motion follows the smoothstep curve, so each bin holds still before it starts to change and the bins can be read one by one. Under ease = "continuous" nothing holds still: positions follow a Catmull-Rom spline through the bins, so a vertex moving across several bins traces one smooth path, and fades are linear. tween = 1 gives one frame per bin with hard cuts. A film that feels episodic usually has a grid whose bins do not overlap; a sliding window, step smaller than window, smooths the data itself, since a tie then persists across several bins.

Layouts. Under every layout but "relaxed" a vertex keeps one position for the whole animation, so the only thing that moves is the ties; those are the layouts to read structure from. "spring", the default, lays out the union of every frame once with cograph::layout_spring(), so pairs that met often sit close. "circle" and "oval" are rings, in vertex order. "groups" puts each partition on its own ring and needs a network built with ⁠groups = ⁠. "relaxed" lays each frame out again, seeded from the previous one and held near it by max_displacement and anchor_strength, then smooths every vertex's path with a centred triangular kernel over one bin each side; clusters can form and dissolve without vertices jumping, and no vertex moves further than max_displacement between consecutive bins. Each relaxed frame is framed by its active vertices: a vertex that is absent or has no tie in the bin is held at the border of that frame rather than drifting outward under repulsion, which would shrink the picture. layout_args tunes the spring layout for both. A data frame with columns name (or node), x and y fixes the positions yourself.

What is drawn. Tie width follows weight on one scale fixed across the whole animation, so a tie of the same weight has the same width in a quiet frame and a busy one. With tie_states = TRUE a tie forming during a transition is dotted and green, one persisting is solid and grey, and one dissolving is dashed and vermilion, so the distinction survives without colour. With measure given, node size follows that measure, again on one scale across every frame, with the area of the circle proportional to the measure's position in its range; see the argument for the three forms it takes.

Absence and idleness. A vertex that is not present in a bin, under declared vertex activity or observation bounds, is drawn as absent says: faded in place, parked out of sight at the edge of the layout and gliding in when it arrives and out when it leaves, or hidden in place. A network built without vertex activity has every vertex present in every bin; set_vertex_spells(dn, "ties") declares each vertex present from its first tie to its last. A vertex that is present but has no tie in a bin is drawn as isolates says. With timeline = TRUE a strip under the network shows the grid with a marker at the current time and the key to the drawing.

Files. The extension of file chooses the encoder: .gif is written by the gifski package, .mp4 and .webm by the av package. A video needs even pixel dimensions. Writing the file is the point of the verb, but the tidy bin table is still what comes back, so the animation can be described without opening it.

Value

An object of class "dynet_animation": a tidy data frame with one row per bin and columns bin, frame (the first rendered frame of the bin), time (the bin's label on the network's time scale), window_start and window_end (its bounds), nodes (vertices present), idle (of those, vertices with no tie), ties (ties drawn), forming (ties not active in the previous bin, NA for the first), dissolving (ties not active in the next bin, NA for the last), and file (the same on every row). These are counts of what the picture shows, not the risk-set accounting of events(). The rendered-frame schedule is available through as.data.frame(x, what = "frames"). Returned invisibly, since writing the file is the verb's purpose.

Conditions

Raises dynet_unknown_format for a file extension other than .gif, .mp4 or .webm; dynet_needs_gifski or dynet_needs_av when the encoder that extension needs is not installed; dynet_needs_cograph when cograph is not; dynet_empty_result when the grid holds no bin that can be drawn; dynet_unknown_attribute for layout = "groups" on a network without a partition or a labels naming no vertex attribute; dynet_missing_column and dynet_unknown_node for a coordinate table that is incomplete; dynet_unknown_measure for a measure that is neither a measure centrality_series() offers nor a numeric vertex attribute, and whatever centrality_series() raises for one it refuses; dynet_bad_input for a centrality_series() result that is not node-level or lands on none of the bins, and a warning of class dynet_partial_measure when it lands on only some; and dynet_bad_input for a non-positive fps, tween, width, height or res, an odd video size, a loop that is neither logical nor a positive whole number, or a negative max_displacement or anchor_strength.

See Also

snapshots() for the same grid as a table, plot.dynet() with type = "snapshots" for it as a static filmstrip, and centrality_series() for the measures node size can follow.

Examples

if (requireNamespace("gifski", quietly = TRUE) &&
  requireNamespace("cograph", quietly = TRUE)) {
  dn <- dynet(school_contacts)
  frames <- animate(dn = dn, end = 8, step = 4, window = 4, tween = 2)
  frames
  summary(frames)
}

if (requireNamespace("av", quietly = TRUE) &&
  requireNamespace("cograph", quietly = TRUE)) {
  dn <- dynet(school_contacts)
  file <- tempfile(fileext = ".mp4")
  video <- animate(dn = dn, end = 8, step = 4, tween = 2, measure = "degree", file = file)
  summary(video)
}

Dynet documentation built on Oct. 7, 2026, 5:08 p.m.