Python framework for visualising/animating particles in cartesian space

Question

I have data representing the position of particles for multiple time steps and need to create an animation showing the movement of these particles.

Are there any frameworks or toolkits (ideally Python based) out there does something like this out of the box, or at least something that makes it easy to quickly plot sprites/3d-objects and animate it across multiple time steps?

For the first stage a simple 2D animation is sufficient. However I would like to have the option of extending it further to support 3D and user interaction (changing view, animation control, exporting animation to file, etc).

Just to clarify, I'm not looking to render a complicated scene. Something like the following would do:

This particular image is a screenshot of a single frame for a similar data set.

Answer 1

Pyprocessing is a Python treatment of the processing Java animation library. The processing development environment includes some very nice examples of implementing a particle system.

Answer 2

Houdini by Side Effects Software is an industry-grade 3D animation application with excellent Python bindings, Python expressions and general support. It would be simple to import your data, and Houdini even has a Python shell within the application for tinkering.

After you've imported it you can take advantage of the full range of animation and visualisation tools and the excellent bundled renderer, "Mantra".

There is a free "apprentice" edition with very few restrictions, and various levels of paid licenses.