Chess Game Animation

This project generates an animated GIF of a chess game from a PGN file.

Features

• Parses PGN files to extract moves
• Generates board images for each move
• Creates an animated GIF showing the game's progression

Installation

Conda (Recommended)

Install dependencies and activate the environment

conda create -n chess-animation -c conda-forge cairo pango gdk-pixbuf ffmpeg python-chess pillow imageio cairosvg
conda activate chess-animation

Install chessanimate with Pip

```sh
git clone https://github.com/djstompzone/chessanimate ~/chessanimate
cd ~/chessanimate
pip install .

Manual Installation with Pip

Install python dependencies

pip install python-chess pillow imageio cairosvg

Install chessanimate

git clone https://github.com/djstompzone/chessanimate ~/chessanimate
cd ~/chessanimate
pip install .

You'll also need to manually install system dependencies

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install libcairo2-dev libjpeg-dev libgif-dev

# macOS
brew install cairo

Usage

Requires a PGN file (e.g., game.pgn)

Basic Usage

python -m chessanimate game.pgn

The output will be saved as chess_animation.gif.

Customization

To customize the frame duration

python -m chessanimate game.pgn -d 500

To specify the output filenane

python -m chessanimate game.pgn -o animation.gif

For a full list of arguments, you can view the help

python -m chessanimate --help

Dependencies

• python-chess - Chess board rendering & PGN parsing
• Pillow - Image processing
• imageio - GIF creation
• cairosvg - Converts SVG to PNG
• Cairo - Required for SVG rendering

Output Example

License

MIT License.

Credits

Author: DJ Stomp Repo: GitHub - chessanimate