Connector Patch Between Subplots With Animation Not Visible (matplotlib)

I am using an artist animation method with 5 subplots. There is one static plot on the left, with 3 smaller animated imshow plots to the right (the colorbar is the 5th). I have suc

Solution 1:

Without a minimal working example, I can only tell you that it is possible to use a ConnectionPatch in an animation. However, as seen below, one has to recreate it for every frame.

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np; np.random.seed(0)
import matplotlib.gridspec as gridspec
from matplotlib.patches import ConnectionPatch
import matplotlib.animation
plt.rcParams["figure.figsize"] = np.array([6,3.6])*0.7

x = np.linspace(-3,3)
X,Y = np.meshgrid(x,x)
f = lambda x,y: (1 - x / 2. + x ** 5 + y ** 3) * np.exp(-x ** 2 - y ** 2)+1.5
Z = f(X,Y)

bins=np.linspace(Z.min(), Z.max(), 16)
cols = plt.cm.PuOr((bins[:-1]-Z.min())/(Z.max()-Z.min()))

gs = gridspec.GridSpec(2, 2, height_ratios=[34,53], width_ratios=[102,53])
fig = plt.figure()
ax=fig.add_subplot(gs[:,0])
ax2=fig.add_subplot(gs[0,1])
ax3=fig.add_subplot(gs[1,1])

ax.imshow(Z, cmap="PuOr")
rec = plt.Rectangle([-.5,-.5], width=9, height=9, edgecolor="crimson", fill=False, lw=2)
conp = ConnectionPatch(xyA=[-0.5,0.5], xyB=[9.5,4], coordsA="data", coordsB="data",
                      axesA=ax3, axesB=ax, arrowstyle="-|>", zorder=25, shrinkA=0, shrinkB=1,
                      mutation_scale=20, fc="w", ec="crimson", lw=2)
ax3.add_artist(conp)
ax.add_artist(rec)
im = ax3.imshow(Z[:9,:9], cmap="PuOr", vmin=Z.min(), vmax=Z.max())
ticks = np.array([0,4,8])
ax3.set_yticks(ticks); ax3.set_xticks(ticks)
ax2.hist(Z[:9,:9].flatten(), bins=bins)

defins(px,py):
    global rec, conp, histpatches
    ll = [px-.5,py-.5]
    rec.set_xy(ll)
    conp.remove()
    conp = ConnectionPatch(xyA=[-0.5,0.5], xyB=[px+9.5,py+4], coordsA="data", coordsB="data",
                      axesA=ax3, axesB=ax, arrowstyle="-|>", zorder=25, shrinkA=0, shrinkB=1,
                      mutation_scale=20, fc="w", ec="crimson", lw=2)
    ax3.add_patch(conp)
    data = Z[px:px+9,py:py+9]
    im.set_data(data)
    ax3.set_xticklabels(ticks+px)
    ax3.set_yticklabels(ticks+py)
    ax2.clear()
    ax2.set_ylim(0,60)
    h, b_, patches = ax2.hist(data.flatten(), bins=bins, ec="k", fc="#f1a142")
    [pat.set_color(cols[i]) for i, pat inenumerate(patches)]

deffunc(p):
    px,py = p
    ins(px, py)

phi = np.linspace(0.,2*np.pi)
r = np.sin(2*phi)*20+np.pi/2
xr = (r*np.cos(phi)).astype(np.int8)
yr = (r*np.sin(phi)).astype(np.int8)

plt.subplots_adjust(top=0.93,bottom=0.11,left=0.04,right=0.96,hspace=0.26,wspace=0.15)
frames = np.c_[xr+20, yr+20]
ani = matplotlib.animation.FuncAnimation(fig, func, frames=frames, interval=300, repeat=True)

plt.show()