6 ms·

Manim: Animation engine for explanatory math videos

434 points by pykello 1y ago

GTP 1y ago
Wanted to look for this a while back. Thank you for sharing the link.
reactordev 1y ago
This is cool. I immediately clicked because I thought of this awesome video from a couple years ago, Animation vs Math: https://youtu.be/B1J6Ou4q8vE https://youtu.be/B1J6Ou4q8vE I like math but showing someone a giant graph isn’t always the best approach. :)
- maxbond 1y ago
  > I like math but showing someone a giant graph isn’t always the best approach. :) Agreed. 3Blue1Brown has, by making their videos, publishing Manim, and critically by fostering a broader community of math YouTubers instead of trying to hoard the audience for themselves (through SoME), moved mathematics pedagogy forward immensely. (Sal Khan also deserves credit here.) He's created a genre that makes math feel like an exciting and approachable journey, rather than a process of memorization and symbol manipulation.
  - reactordev 1y ago
    Made math like building blocks vs a foreign language.
sachinaag 1y ago
I have been using this with cursor to make videos to explain papers and math concepts to myself. Some of the results are not perfect (AI sometimes misaligns some shapes), but it's quite helpful and with a couple of iterations you get to a really good explainer video.
jasonjmcghee 1y ago
This gets submitted quite regularly to HN with many good discussions- so instead of posting the discussions I'll just link the search. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=manim https://hn.algolia.com/?q=manim
- nikolayasdf123 1y ago
  aren't HN supposed to deduplicate links? I thought duplicate URL submissions not allowed..
  - yen223 1y ago
    HN allows duplicate submissions after a certain amount of time has passed
    - dang 1y ago
      Yup. "In the last year or so" is the cutoff: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#reposts https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#reposts
- westurner 1y ago
  Is there an awesome list for manim the software? Manim: Math Animation Src: ManimCommunity/manim: https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim Docs: https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/ https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/ GH topic: manim: https://github.com/topics/manim https://github.com/topics/manim : manimML, manim-physics, chanim, manim-web (dart), JAnim (java), ranim (rust), manim-voiceover, git-sim, TheoremExplainAgent, reactive-manim, jupyter-manim, manim-sideview (vscode), manim-studio (Qt, Cairo) ManimCommunity/awesome-manim has a list of creators that create with manim: https://github.com/ManimCommunity/awesome-manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/awesome-manim /?youtube manim: https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Manim+ https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Manim+
  - westurner 1y ago
WayToDoor 1y ago
See also : https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim
esperent 1y ago
It seems like the community fork would be the better link for most people. https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim/ https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim/
- Waterluvian 1y ago
  For good reasons or for drama reasons? I read the blurb about the fork and can’t tell why exactly if Grant is continuing to maintain the original.
  - Jorge1o1 1y ago
    Well, to me it seems like he just shared the original so that others could benefit from the work he had already done, but that since his main priority is to continue making new videos, he may not have the time resources to: - Avoid breaking changes - Keep APIs stable - Test and document everything, etc. I personally think there's nothing wrong with that. We wouldn't say that a musician is *obligated* to put out a second album or a remaster. We wouldn't say that an author *must* make a sequel to their popular book. But when it comes to code sometimes we feel like the original author has an obligation to keep working on it just because it would convenience us. (edited for formatting)
    - Waterluvian 1y ago
      Yeah for sure! Listing that kind of thing would probably be helpful. I think this is one of those “you’ve gotta already be on the inside and already know” things as the fork’s read me doesn’t seem to explain it.
      - mistercow 1y ago
        This is pretty clear from the readme though? > While Grant Sanderson continues to maintain his own repository, we recommend this version for its continued development, improved features, enhanced documentation, and more active community-driven maintenance. If you would like to study how Grant makes his videos, head over to his repository
emaro 1y ago
Grant's work with 3blue1brown and Manim is simply amazing. The quality of the videos is so high, not the least thanks to the visualizations. Not an easy task given the abstract nature of the topic. It's linked in the readme, but I want to highlight the demo video [0], where Grant explains how he works with Manim. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbu7Zu5X1zI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbu7Zu5X1zI
throawayonthe 1y ago
another youtuber-math-video-library: https://github.com/2swap/swaptube https://github.com/2swap/swaptube from what i can tell they render their whole videos start to finish using it?
lordnacho 1y ago
3b1b is truly a wonder of the internet world. Such beautiful animations, such well thought out explanations. What I don't quite understand is how one library can animate so many different concepts. To me they seem like they'd all be a custom job, but I guess he works on a higher plane of mathematical existence.
- jxf 1y ago
  > What I don't quite understand is how one library can animate so many different concepts. It's because there are a _lot_ of community objects built from the core primitives that are good starting points that you can customize from there: https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/reference_index/mobjects.html https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/reference_index/mobje...
billfruit 1y ago
Can in it do interactive 3d diagrams.
- lock1 1y ago
  I don't think base manim support interactive 3D env. But Grant & Ben Eater built "an interactive video" back then about quaternion which you can interact with. Links: - https://eater.net/quaternions https://eater.net/quaternions - https://eater.net/quaternions/video/intro https://eater.net/quaternions/video/intro
- n0n0n4t0r 1y ago
  In some of grant’s video, it sort of do 3d, not’interacively though: https://youtu.be/KTzGBJPuJwM https://youtu.be/KTzGBJPuJwM
anthk 1y ago
As we are in HN: https://github.com/vydd/sketch https://github.com/vydd/sketch Math animaton package for Common Lisp.
pkoird 1y ago
I used Manim for one of my class presentations, absolutely a delight to use and as expected many people recognized the style and overall the presentation was well received. Incredibly, I had the opportunity to meet Grant as well a few years back. I told him I have used Manim and he was genuinely excited. Such a cool person with so much contribution to human knowledge and understanding.
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
Fwiw this absolutely works amazingly well with modern coding assistants. “I want a diagram of equation X morphing into Y” or similar is always a one shot success for me. Part of it is the simplistic syntax and the sheer amount of open source manim examples to train on but it’s a pretty great demonstration of ai coding agents time saving. Especially since the output video looking correct is all you care about here. Ie. I don’t actually care about the specifics of how my explanatory videos were created, just that they were created via a simple prompt and it gave me what i wanted.
- pkoird 1y ago
  Curious to see how it'll combine with a RAG on its documentation.
- sansseriff 1y ago
  I remember listening to a podcast where Grant Sanderson basically said the opposite. He tried generating manim code with LLMs and found the results unimpressive. Probably just goes to show that competence in manim looks very different to us layman than it does to Grant haha
  - AnotherGoodName 1y ago
    I’m having 100% success even when doing transitions between screens etc on the latest agents. Wonder if this is due to time and the agents vastly improving lately. Possibly also grant knows manim so well he can beat the time to type a prompt. For the rest of us i’m tempted to make a website for educators to type a prompt to get a video out since it’s been that reliable for me.
    - sansseriff 1y ago
      If you're passionate about it, then go for it! Though be aware that several others have tried similar things: - https://www.befreed.ai/knowledge-visualizer https://www.befreed.ai/knowledge-visualizer - https://kodisc.com/ https://kodisc.com/ - https://github.com/hesamsheikh/AnimAI-Trainer https://github.com/hesamsheikh/AnimAI-Trainer - https://tiger-ai-lab.github.io/TheoremExplainAgent/ https://tiger-ai-lab.github.io/TheoremExplainAgent/ - https://tma.live/ https://tma.live/, HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42590290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42590290 - https://generative-manim.vercel.app/ https://generative-manim.vercel.app/ No doubt the results can be impressive: https://x.com/zan2434/status/1898145292937314347 https://x.com/zan2434/status/1898145292937314347 Only reason I'm aware of all these attempts is because I'm betting the 'one-shot LLM animation' technique is not scalable long term. I'm trying to build an AI animation app that has a good human-in-the-loop experience. Though I'm building with bevy instead of manim
voat 1y ago
Is there a typescript alternative?
- dleeftink 1y ago
  https://motioncanvas.io/ https://motioncanvas.io/
dang 1y ago
Related: Show HN: Python library to add voiceovers to Manim videos programmatically - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35961318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35961318 - May 2023 (6 comments) Manim: Animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31636657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31636657 - June 2022 (16 comments) Manim – Python library for creating mathematical animations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30658390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30658390 - March 2022 (25 comments) Manim: An animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28245277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28245277 - Aug 2021 (67 comments) Manim – an animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26498527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26498527 - March 2021 (75 comments) Show HN: I made a parser visualizer using manim - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26382729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26382729 - March 2021 (15 comments) A Manim Code Template - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24985609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24985609 - Nov 2020 (1 comment) Manim: Animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926947 - Oct 2020 (19 comments) Manim – 3Blue1Brown's animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716019 - April 2019 (80 comments)
closetkantian 1y ago
I'd love to see this for English grammar
divan 1y ago
I'm searching badly for a similar tool (code-based animation renderer) but not focused on math, but rather on general-purpose infographic/charts/motion graphics. The traditional approach for that, of course, is to use After Effects/Davinci Fusion/Blender/Cavalry/etc., but since I've first tried PovRay back in the early 2000s and then tools like Manim, I can't stop thinking about a code/text-based motion graphics tool. It would shine in use with LLMs, of course, and while I see some new "ChatGPT-wrappers for Motion Graphics" pop up now and then, I don't need yet another chat to send me cloud-rendered videos in the Electron app. I want a templated code/language for the graphics and style I'll settle on to use with different data and be able to render it locally (or event automate) as much as I want.
- EMIRELADERO 1y ago
  If you're ok with C++ you can try https://github.com/2swap/swaptube https://github.com/2swap/swaptube
  - divan 1y ago
    That's cool, thanks for sharing! In my perfect finding I would see some primitives for infographic/charts/etc. This library is great for pendulums :) (currently watching your video on non-chaotic double pendulums and it's awesome!)
    - EMIRELADERO 1y ago
      Thanks, but it's not my channel! I just stumbled upon it and made a mental note to remember the repo.
IshKebab 1y ago
When I tried to use it about 4 years ago it definitely suffered from kwargs-itus. Everything is kwargs. No type annotations (it wasn't even possible to write type annotations for kwargs at the time). Definitely made it unnecessarily difficult to use. I did make an attempt at fixing that but it got zero traction. I wonder if they've made any progress.

434 points by pykello 1y ago

GTP 1y ago

Wanted to look for this a while back. Thank you for sharing the link.

This is cool. I immediately clicked because I thought of this awesome video from a couple years ago, Animation vs Math: https://youtu.be/B1J6Ou4q8vE https://youtu.be/B1J6Ou4q8vE I like math but showing someone a giant graph isn’t always the best approach. :)

maxbond 1y ago
> I like math but showing someone a giant graph isn’t always the best approach. :) Agreed. 3Blue1Brown has, by making their videos, publishing Manim, and critically by fostering a broader community of math YouTubers instead of trying to hoard the audience for themselves (through SoME), moved mathematics pedagogy forward immensely. (Sal Khan also deserves credit here.) He's created a genre that makes math feel like an exciting and approachable journey, rather than a process of memorization and symbol manipulation.
- reactordev 1y ago
  Made math like building blocks vs a foreign language.

sachinaag 1y ago

I have been using this with cursor to make videos to explain papers and math concepts to myself. Some of the results are not perfect (AI sometimes misaligns some shapes), but it's quite helpful and with a couple of iterations you get to a really good explainer video.

jasonjmcghee 1y ago

This gets submitted quite regularly to HN with many good discussions- so instead of posting the discussions I'll just link the search. https://hn.algolia.com/?q=manim https://hn.algolia.com/?q=manim

nikolayasdf123 1y ago
aren't HN supposed to deduplicate links? I thought duplicate URL submissions not allowed..
- yen223 1y ago
  HN allows duplicate submissions after a certain amount of time has passed
  - dang 1y ago
    Yup. "In the last year or so" is the cutoff: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#reposts https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#reposts
westurner 1y ago
Is there an awesome list for manim the software? Manim: Math Animation Src: ManimCommunity/manim: https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim Docs: https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/ https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/ GH topic: manim: https://github.com/topics/manim https://github.com/topics/manim : manimML, manim-physics, chanim, manim-web (dart), JAnim (java), ranim (rust), manim-voiceover, git-sim, TheoremExplainAgent, reactive-manim, jupyter-manim, manim-sideview (vscode), manim-studio (Qt, Cairo) ManimCommunity/awesome-manim has a list of creators that create with manim: https://github.com/ManimCommunity/awesome-manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/awesome-manim /?youtube manim: https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Manim+ https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Manim+
- westurner 1y ago

WayToDoor 1y ago

See also : https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim

esperent 1y ago

It seems like the community fork would be the better link for most people. https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim/ https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim/

Waterluvian 1y ago
For good reasons or for drama reasons? I read the blurb about the fork and can’t tell why exactly if Grant is continuing to maintain the original.
- Jorge1o1 1y ago
  Well, to me it seems like he just shared the original so that others could benefit from the work he had already done, but that since his main priority is to continue making new videos, he may not have the time resources to: - Avoid breaking changes - Keep APIs stable - Test and document everything, etc. I personally think there's nothing wrong with that. We wouldn't say that a musician is *obligated* to put out a second album or a remaster. We wouldn't say that an author *must* make a sequel to their popular book. But when it comes to code sometimes we feel like the original author has an obligation to keep working on it just because it would convenience us. (edited for formatting)
  - Waterluvian 1y ago
    Yeah for sure! Listing that kind of thing would probably be helpful. I think this is one of those “you’ve gotta already be on the inside and already know” things as the fork’s read me doesn’t seem to explain it.
    - mistercow 1y ago
      This is pretty clear from the readme though? > While Grant Sanderson continues to maintain his own repository, we recommend this version for its continued development, improved features, enhanced documentation, and more active community-driven maintenance. If you would like to study how Grant makes his videos, head over to his repository

emaro 1y ago

Grant's work with 3blue1brown and Manim is simply amazing. The quality of the videos is so high, not the least thanks to the visualizations. Not an easy task given the abstract nature of the topic. It's linked in the readme, but I want to highlight the demo video [0], where Grant explains how he works with Manim. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbu7Zu5X1zI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbu7Zu5X1zI

throawayonthe 1y ago

another youtuber-math-video-library: https://github.com/2swap/swaptube https://github.com/2swap/swaptube from what i can tell they render their whole videos start to finish using it?

lordnacho 1y ago

3b1b is truly a wonder of the internet world. Such beautiful animations, such well thought out explanations. What I don't quite understand is how one library can animate so many different concepts. To me they seem like they'd all be a custom job, but I guess he works on a higher plane of mathematical existence.

jxf 1y ago
> What I don't quite understand is how one library can animate so many different concepts. It's because there are a _lot_ of community objects built from the core primitives that are good starting points that you can customize from there: https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/reference_index/mobjects.html https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/reference_index/mobje...

billfruit 1y ago

Can in it do interactive 3d diagrams.

lock1 1y ago
I don't think base manim support interactive 3D env. But Grant & Ben Eater built "an interactive video" back then about quaternion which you can interact with. Links: - https://eater.net/quaternions https://eater.net/quaternions - https://eater.net/quaternions/video/intro https://eater.net/quaternions/video/intro
n0n0n4t0r 1y ago
In some of grant’s video, it sort of do 3d, not’interacively though: https://youtu.be/KTzGBJPuJwM https://youtu.be/KTzGBJPuJwM

anthk 1y ago

As we are in HN: https://github.com/vydd/sketch https://github.com/vydd/sketch Math animaton package for Common Lisp.

pkoird 1y ago

I used Manim for one of my class presentations, absolutely a delight to use and as expected many people recognized the style and overall the presentation was well received. Incredibly, I had the opportunity to meet Grant as well a few years back. I told him I have used Manim and he was genuinely excited. Such a cool person with so much contribution to human knowledge and understanding.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

Fwiw this absolutely works amazingly well with modern coding assistants. “I want a diagram of equation X morphing into Y” or similar is always a one shot success for me. Part of it is the simplistic syntax and the sheer amount of open source manim examples to train on but it’s a pretty great demonstration of ai coding agents time saving. Especially since the output video looking correct is all you care about here. Ie. I don’t actually care about the specifics of how my explanatory videos were created, just that they were created via a simple prompt and it gave me what i wanted.

pkoird 1y ago
Curious to see how it'll combine with a RAG on its documentation.
sansseriff 1y ago
I remember listening to a podcast where Grant Sanderson basically said the opposite. He tried generating manim code with LLMs and found the results unimpressive. Probably just goes to show that competence in manim looks very different to us layman than it does to Grant haha
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  I’m having 100% success even when doing transitions between screens etc on the latest agents. Wonder if this is due to time and the agents vastly improving lately. Possibly also grant knows manim so well he can beat the time to type a prompt. For the rest of us i’m tempted to make a website for educators to type a prompt to get a video out since it’s been that reliable for me.
  - sansseriff 1y ago
    If you're passionate about it, then go for it! Though be aware that several others have tried similar things: - https://www.befreed.ai/knowledge-visualizer https://www.befreed.ai/knowledge-visualizer - https://kodisc.com/ https://kodisc.com/ - https://github.com/hesamsheikh/AnimAI-Trainer https://github.com/hesamsheikh/AnimAI-Trainer - https://tiger-ai-lab.github.io/TheoremExplainAgent/ https://tiger-ai-lab.github.io/TheoremExplainAgent/ - https://tma.live/ https://tma.live/, HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42590290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42590290 - https://generative-manim.vercel.app/ https://generative-manim.vercel.app/ No doubt the results can be impressive: https://x.com/zan2434/status/1898145292937314347 https://x.com/zan2434/status/1898145292937314347 Only reason I'm aware of all these attempts is because I'm betting the 'one-shot LLM animation' technique is not scalable long term. I'm trying to build an AI animation app that has a good human-in-the-loop experience. Though I'm building with bevy instead of manim

voat 1y ago

Is there a typescript alternative?

dleeftink 1y ago
https://motioncanvas.io/ https://motioncanvas.io/

dang 1y ago

Related: Show HN: Python library to add voiceovers to Manim videos programmatically - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35961318 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35961318 - May 2023 (6 comments) Manim: Animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31636657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31636657 - June 2022 (16 comments) Manim – Python library for creating mathematical animations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30658390 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30658390 - March 2022 (25 comments) Manim: An animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28245277 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28245277 - Aug 2021 (67 comments) Manim – an animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26498527 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26498527 - March 2021 (75 comments) Show HN: I made a parser visualizer using manim - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26382729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26382729 - March 2021 (15 comments) A Manim Code Template - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24985609 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24985609 - Nov 2020 (1 comment) Manim: Animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926947 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24926947 - Oct 2020 (19 comments) Manim – 3Blue1Brown's animation engine for explanatory math videos - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19716019 - April 2019 (80 comments)

closetkantian 1y ago

I'd love to see this for English grammar

divan 1y ago

I'm searching badly for a similar tool (code-based animation renderer) but not focused on math, but rather on general-purpose infographic/charts/motion graphics. The traditional approach for that, of course, is to use After Effects/Davinci Fusion/Blender/Cavalry/etc., but since I've first tried PovRay back in the early 2000s and then tools like Manim, I can't stop thinking about a code/text-based motion graphics tool. It would shine in use with LLMs, of course, and while I see some new "ChatGPT-wrappers for Motion Graphics" pop up now and then, I don't need yet another chat to send me cloud-rendered videos in the Electron app. I want a templated code/language for the graphics and style I'll settle on to use with different data and be able to render it locally (or event automate) as much as I want.

EMIRELADERO 1y ago
If you're ok with C++ you can try https://github.com/2swap/swaptube https://github.com/2swap/swaptube
- divan 1y ago
  That's cool, thanks for sharing! In my perfect finding I would see some primitives for infographic/charts/etc. This library is great for pendulums :) (currently watching your video on non-chaotic double pendulums and it's awesome!)
  - EMIRELADERO 1y ago
    Thanks, but it's not my channel! I just stumbled upon it and made a mental note to remember the repo.

IshKebab 1y ago

When I tried to use it about 4 years ago it definitely suffered from kwargs-itus. Everything is kwargs. No type annotations (it wasn't even possible to write type annotations for kwargs at the time). Definitely made it unnecessarily difficult to use. I did make an attempt at fixing that but it got zero traction. I wonder if they've made any progress.