Temporal interpolation in NumPy/matplotlib

Question

When creating animations in ParaView there is a function to temporally interpolate input files. When generating an animation via multiple contour plots in NumPy/matplotlib is there a similar function which can help make the animation smoother or do I have to temporal interpolate the data manually?

Answer 1

VTK's TemporalInterpolator is for interpolating data on unstructured spacial meshes between time steps. You have your data in two-dimensional NumPy arrays, and the task of interpolating it is far easier. For this reason, there is no dedicated function for this, and you'll have to do it manually.

Let's assume a0 is your two-dimensional data array at the time t0, and a1 is the data at t1. For some time t0 <= t <= t1, the linearly interpolated data a_t is

delta_t = t1 - t0
a_t = (t1 - t) / delta_t * a_0 + (t - t0) / delta_t * a_1

There are more advanced interpolation schemes than this simple linear interpolation, but VTK's TemporalInterpolator also uses this simple scheme.