| name | manim-headless-rendering |
| description | Guidelines for rendering Manim animations in a headless Linux environment (no GUI). Includes troubleshooting common errors, choosing correct renderer, managing long renders, and concatenating partial video files produced by Manim. |
| version | 1.0.0 |
Overview
When to Use
Guidelines for rendering Manim animations in a headless Linux environment (no GUI). Includes troubleshooting common errors, choosing correct renderer, managing long renders, and concatenating partial video files produced by Manim.
Overview
This skill contains a reusable operational workflow. Follow the existing task-specific steps and examples in the sections below.
Pitfalls
- Do not hardcode credentials, tokens, or personal secrets.
- Verify external service URLs, paths, and permissions before making changes.
- Keep generated outputs reproducible and record input assumptions.
Verification
- Confirm required inputs and credentials are available.
- Run the smallest safe command or example before scaling up.
- Check produced files, API responses, or plots before reporting success.
When running Manim on a server or CI environment without a display, the default OpenGL renderer may fail or hang. Use the cairo renderer, which works without an X server.
manim -qh --renderer=cairo path/to/script.py SceneName
If the animation is long, run it in the background to avoid the 600 s foreground timeout:
manim -qh --renderer=cairo path/to/script.py SceneName \
--media_dir /tmp/manim_media \
&> /tmp/manim.log &
