How to achieve a rotating figure animation

Question

I have a figure, in *.eps, say a pentagon which is already drawn and then included in TeX, and I want to achieve a rotating animation. So the polygon will be rotating about some point (usually its center) at some rate. How is this done?

Answer 1

The topic poster seems to want a single graphic file to be rotated around its centre. In that case, animateinline environment may be the better choice, as the image file is included only once (at least in case of pdfLaTeX/XeLaTeX/dvipdfmx), which saves file size.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{animate}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\newlength\imgwd
\setlength\imgwd{2in}
\newlength\imght
\setlength\imght{2in}
\newlength\imgdiag
\setlength\imgdiag{1.4142\imgwd} %should be set to sqrt(imgwd^2+imght^2)

\begin{document}

\begin{animateinline}[controls,loop]{12}
\multiframe{36}{iAng=0+10}{%
  \makebox[\imgdiag][c]{%
    \rule[-0.5\imgdiag]{0pt}{\imgdiag}%
    \rotatebox[origin=c]{\iAng}{%
      \raisebox{-0.5\height}{%
        \includegraphics[width=\imgwd,height=\imght]{tiger}%
      }%
    }%
  }%
}
\end{animateinline}

\end{document}

Answer 2

The animate package allows you to do this by supplying a number of images with some base name. The default format is:

\animategraphics[<options>]{<frame rate>}{<base filename>}{<start>}{<finish>}

There are some examples of animations in TeX using TikZ on TeXample.net.

Answer 3

Here a simple example. I created a list of figures. In your case, if you have a defined picture, you can make a rotation with a \foreach to get the same thing.

animateinline environment is a fine alternativ in AlexG'answer

Update

Step one : Create the pentagon

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node  [draw,regular polygon, regular polygon sides=5, minimum size=4cm,outer sep=0pt] {};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document} 

Step two : the list of pictures in pentagon.pdf with pentagon.tex

\documentclass{beamer} 
\usepackage{tikz} 

\usepackage[active,floats,tightpage]{preview} 
\PreviewEnvironment{tikzpicture} 
\setlength\PreviewBorder{5pt}% 
\begin{document} 
\foreach \a in {0,5,...,360}{% 
   \begin{tikzpicture}
    \clip (-3,-3) rectangle (3,3) ;
    \node[rotate=\a,transform shape] {\includegraphics[width=4cm]{aPentagon}};
 \end{tikzpicture}}
\end{document}

Step three : the final pdf with animate

\documentclass{beamer} 
\usepackage{animate} 
\begin{document} 

\begin{frame}
\begin{center} 
\animategraphics[palindrome]{12}{pentagon}{}{} 
\end{center} 
\end{frame}

\end{document}  

I try animateinline with success to avoid the last two steps but I don't know the options to get a fine result.

The problem here is to get an animated gif because the pdf seems to be wrong.

---

First try

Step 1

You create a list of pictures. I used beamer and I have a correct size for the pictures. I named triangle.tex the source

\documentclass{beamer} 
\usepackage{tikz} 
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usepackage{verbatim} 
\usepackage[active,floats,tightpage]{preview} 
\PreviewEnvironment{tikzpicture} 
\setlength\PreviewBorder{5pt}% 
\begin{document} 

  \newcommand\setC{%
   \pgfmathsetmacro\Cx{5-3*cos(\alpha)}
   \pgfmathsetmacro\Cy{3*sin(\alpha)}
   \fill [blue] (\Cx,\Cy) circle (2pt);
   }%

\foreach \a in {0,10,...,180}{% 
   \begin{tikzpicture} 
    \draw (-1,-1) rectangle (9,5);
    \fill[blue] (0,0) circle (2pt);
    \fill[blue] (4,0) circle (2pt);
    \setC
    \draw (0,0)--(4,0)--(\Cx,\Cy)--cycle;
  \end{tikzpicture} 
 }

\end{document} 

Step 2

I created a new little file animated_triangle.tex. The important line is

 \animategraphics[palindrome]{12}{triangle}{}{} 

palindrome is an option of the animate package (see the doc), 12 number of frames per second (I think ...), triangle is the name of the pdf with the list of pictures. The last two arguments are for the first picture of the animation and the last. Here I use all the pictures.

\documentclass{beamer} 
\usepackage{animate} 
\begin{document} 

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Produit Scalaire} 
\begin{center} 
\animategraphics[palindrome]{12}{tranim}{}{} 
\end{center} 
\end{frame}

\end{document} 

I don't know how to place an animated gif on tex.se, I placed the pdf . With the help of Peter and the explanations of Martin, I get an animated gif but there are some little problems. A first result is :