Animation Made Easy

Netscape and Internet Explorer both support animated GIF images. An animated GIF image contains several images that are displayed one at a time for a specified duration. The result is just like a flip book as seen here.

The Mathematica code used to generate the frames in the above GIF image is given here:

Table[ Show[ Graphics3D[{ Cuboid[{Cos[2\[Pi] t]+Sin[3\[Pi] t]-.3,Sin[2\[Pi] t]-.3, Cos[4\[Pi] t]+Sin[2\[Pi] t]-.3},{Cos[2\[Pi] t]+Sin[3\[Pi] t]+.3, Sin[2\[Pi] t]+.3,Cos[4\[Pi] t]+Sin[2\[Pi] t]+.3}],RGBColor[1,0,0], Thickness[0.01], Line[Table[{Cos[2\[Pi] \[Tau]]+Sin[3\[Pi] \[Tau]],Sin[2\[Pi] \[Tau]], Cos[4\[Pi] \[Tau]]+Sin[2\[Pi] \[Tau]]},{\[Tau],0,t,2/60}]]}] ,PlotRange->{{-2.3,2.3},{-2.3,2.3},{-2.3,2.3}},Boxed->True, BoxRatios->{1,1,1} ],{t,0,2,2/60}]

Each image (i.e., frame) was copied into Microsoft GIF Animator to generate the animated GIF file. Much more on GIF animation and software can be found at The Software ToolBox