Creating a Cherry Blossom Animation with Python, OpenCV, and Pillow

Wuhan University launched a live‑stream of cherry blossoms and a student used Python to simulate the blooming process, releasing the code for public use.

The tutorial explains that each image consists of pixels whose colors are represented by three integer values (0‑255) for the red, green, and blue channels. When enough pixels are present, the image appears high‑definition; too few pixels cause visible jagged edges.

To generate the animation, the following steps are performed:

1. Save each frame as a JPEG file using OpenCV:

cv2.imwrite("pic/frame%d.jpg" % count, image)  # save frame as JPEG file

2. Create a blank canvas with Pillow, choose a font and size, and prepare a drawing object:

blank = Image.new("RGB", [len(img[0]), len(img)], "white")

drawObj = ImageDraw.Draw(blank)

n = 10

font = ImageFont.truetype("C:/Windows/Fonts/Microsoft YaHei UI/msyhbd.ttc", size=n-1)

3. Loop over the image pixels, write the text "武汉加油" with the corresponding pixel color, and save the canvas:

for i in range(0, len(img), n):

for j in range(0, len(img[i]), n):

text = "武汉加油"

drawObj.ink = img[i][j][0] + img[i][j][1] * 256 + img[i][j][2] * 256 * 256

drawObj.text([j, i], text[int(j / n) % len(text)], font=font)

print("完成处理——", i, j)

blank.save("new/new_" + pic + ".jpeg")

4. Combine the generated images into a video file:

def picvideo(path, size):

# path = r"C:/Users/Administrator/Desktop/huaixiao"  # directory containing images

filelist = os.listdir(path)  # list all files

filelist = resort(filelist)

fps = 24

file_path = "video/new.mp4"  # output video

fourcc = cv2.VideoWriter_fourcc('D','I','V','X')

video = cv2.VideoWriter(file_path, fourcc, fps, size)

for item in filelist:

if item.endswith('.jpg'):

img_path = os.path.join(path, item)

img = cv2.imread(img_path)  # BGR image, values 0‑255

video.write(img)  # write frame

video.release()  # finalize

The article concludes with a disclaimer that the content is collected from the internet and credits the original author.