Animation with matplotlib, bringin the Sierpinski triangle to life

Few post ago we have seen how to plot the Sierpinski triangle. This post is an update that shows how to create an animation where at each step a new point of the fractal is plotted:

from numpy import *
import pylab

x = [0, 0];

A = [ [.5, 0], [0, .5] ];
b1 = [0, 0];
b2 = [.5, 0];
b3 = [.25, sqrt(3)/4];

pylab.ion() # animation on

#Note the comma after line. This is placed here because plot returns a list of lines that are drawn.
line, = pylab.plot(x[0],x[1],'m.',markersize=6) 
pylab.axis([0,1,0,1])

data1 = []
data2 = []
iter = 0

while True:
 r = fix(random.rand()*3)
 if r==0:
  x = dot(A,x)+b1
 if r==1:
  x = dot(A,x)+b2
 if r==2:
  x = dot(A,x)+b3
 data1.append(x[0]) 
 data2.append(x[1])
 line.set_xdata(data1)  # update the data
 line.set_ydata(data2)
 pylab.draw() # draw the points again
 iter += 1
 print iter

This is the result: