Visuscript

Visuscript is a two-dimensional vector-graphics-based animation library for Python, inspired by manim. Visuscript is designed to facilitate the creation of didactic animations for computer-science principles.

Warning

This library is currently in alpha and is subject to breaking changes. APIs, features, and internal structures may change without prior notice. It is not yet recommended for production use. Please use with caution and expect updates that may require adjustments to your code.

Features

• Create arbitrary 2D graphics with Drawing and Path.
• Create arbitrary animations by composing primative Animation objects with bundle and sequence.
• Represent and animate datastructures with AnimatedCollection inheritors.
• Runtime checks for conflicting animations or updaters with PropertyLocker.
• (In my opinion) A cleaner API than manim.
• Strict type compliance with Pyright.

Getting Started

Since Visuscript is still in development and the API is changing, the documentation is incomplete as of now. I will try my best to keep a small set of working examples through these changes in examples/.

I shall now walk you through setup/installation and the creation of a very basic animation.

I have tested this package with Python 3.13.3 on Windows and Mac.

External Dependencies

ffmpeg and librsvg must be installed. You should be able to download these through a package manager. To download with Homebrew, use

brew install ffmpeg
brew install librsvg

Both of these utilities' executables must be in PATH and have names ffmpeg and rsvg-convert.

Package Installation

To install Visuscript, run the following in the root directory of this repository, the directory with setup.py therein:

pip install . 

This will install the Visuscript package alongisde its Python dependencies and the visuscript CLI utility. The utility should be added to PATH automatically when the package is installed. If not, you can use python3 -m visuscript. If all else fails, you can find the script for the CLI at $REPOSITORYHOME/visuscript/cli/visuscript_cli.py.

Hello, World!

For your first visuscript, create a file called hello_world.py and place the following in it:

from visuscript import *
s = Scene()
s << Text("Hello, World!")
s.print()

To run this visuscript, run

visuscript hello_world.py

This will create a new mp4 file called output.mp4, which should be a very boring one frame video with a dark background and text in Arial typeface displaying one of the ancientmost of coding rituals of initiation.

Let us now modify this visuscript to include some animation. Update the file to contain the following and you will get patriotic, rotating, and moving text:

from visuscript import *
s = Scene()
text = Text("Hello, World!")
s << text
s.player << bundle(
    sequence(
        animate_rgb(text.fill, 'red'),
        animate_rgb(text.fill, 'white'),
        animate_rgb(text.fill, 'blue')),
    animate_transform(
        text.transform,
        Transform(
            translation=[100,-30],
            rotation=360,
            scale=2),
        duration = 3))

What next?

Pending the stability of the API and thus the documentation, please refer to the provided examples for further learning.

Future

I plan on seeing this project through to something useful for creating didactic animations. Specifically, Visuscript is planned to have, as time may permit,

• Base classes for common datastructures to facilitate the animation thereof.
• Support for the creation of slideshows with embedded animations.
• Clear and complete documentation.