Animated Plots (GIF)

Malet can animate any plot type over a field, creating a GIF that shows how the plot changes across values of that field. This is particularly effective for visualizing training dynamics over epochs or sweeping through a hyperparameter.

Basic usage

Use -animation_field to specify which field to animate over:

malet-plot -exp_folder ./experiments/my_exp \
  -mode curve-lr-val_accuracy \
  -animation_field 'step' \
  -filter 'step 50:200' \
  -best_at_max

This creates a GIF where each frame shows the curve at a different training step. The output is saved as a .gif file instead of PDF.

How it works

For each unique value of the animation field, Malet generates a complete frame of the plot. A text label in the corner shows the current animation field value (e.g., step=100). Frames are assembled into a GIF at 10 fps using Pillow.

Common use cases

Training dynamics over epochs

Animate a heatmap to see how the hyperparameter landscape evolves during training:

malet-plot -exp_folder ./experiments/my_exp \
  -mode 'heatmap-lr weight_decay-val_accuracy' \
  -animation_field 'step' \
  -best_at_max

Sweeping a hyperparameter

Animate over a hyperparameter to see its effect on the training curve:

malet-plot -exp_folder ./experiments/my_exp \
  -mode curve-epoch-val_accuracy \
  -multi_line_fields 'optimizer' \
  -animation_field 'lr' \
  -best_at_max

Each frame shows the training curves for a different learning rate value.

Combining with multi-line and multi-plot

Animation works with both multi-line and multi-plot fields. For example, animate a multi-line plot over steps:

malet-plot -exp_folder ./experiments/my_exp \
  -mode curve-lr-val_accuracy \
  -multi_line_fields 'optimizer' \
  -multi_plot_fields 'sp' \
  -animation_field 'step' \
  -filter 'step 50:200' \
  -best_at_max

This creates a GIF where each frame contains a grid of subplots, each with multiple lines, at a specific training step.

Output

• Output format: GIF (.gif)

• Frame rate: 10 fps

• Frame interval: 400ms

• Writer: Pillow (PillowWriter)

• Filename encodes the animation field: ...-ani(step)--max.gif