animate: Animate a map

In terra: Spatial Data Analysis

Animate a map

Description

Animate (sequentially plot) the layers of a SpatRaster, or a SpatVectorCollection, or the variables or geometries of a SpatVector, to create a movie.

Usage

## S4 method for signature 'SpatRaster'
animate(x, pause=0.25, main, range=NULL, maxcell=50000, n=1, ...)

## S4 method for signature 'SpatVector'
animate(x, pause=0.25, main="", n=1, vars=NULL, range=NULL, add=NULL, ...)

## S4 method for signature 'SpatVectorCollection'
animate(x, pause=0.25, n=1, vars=NULL, range=NULL, ext=NULL, add=NULL, ...)

Arguments

x	SpatRaster or SpatVector
pause	numeric. How long should the pause be between layers?
main	title for each layer. For SpatRaster, if not supplied, the z-value is used if available. Otherwise the names are used.
range	numeric vector of length 2. Range of values to plot, If NULL the range of all layers is used for rasters, or all variables for vectors if they are all numeric. If NA the range of each individual layer is used
maxcell	positive integer. Maximum number of cells to use for the plot. If maxcell < ncell(x), spatSample(type="regular") is used before plotting
n	integer > 0. Number of plotting loops
vars	numeric or character to indicate the variables to animate. If this is NULL, the geometries are animated instead
ext	SpatExtent object (or an object for which ext returns one) setting the spatial extent of the plot.
add	logical. Add the geometries to the current plot? When looping over geometries: if TRUE, add all geometries to the current plot. If NULL, add is set to FALSE for the first geometry and TRUE for the remaining ones. This argument is ignored when vars is not NULL
...	additional arguments passed to plot

Value

None

Author(s)

A. Márcia Barbosa, Robert J. Hijmans

See Also

plot

Examples

r <- rast(system.file("ex/logo.tif", package="terra"))   
animate(r, n=1)

v <- vect(system.file("ex/lux.shp", package="terra"))
animate(v[1:3, ], n=1, pause=0.3)
# animate(v, vars=names(v))

s <- svc(as.lines(v[3:5,]), v, v[1:3,], as.points(v))
animate(s, col="blue", alpha=0.3, pause=0.3)

# you can save an animation to file like this
# animation::saveGIF(terra::animate(v), "animation.gif")

terra documentation built on Aug. 22, 2026, 5:07 p.m.