So I'm making a simple trivia game and I have a timerView that shrinks as time passes. When the user selects an answer, it needs to stop shrinking immediately - it must be very responsive. I give the user 10 seconds per question. Originally I would animate 10 times (with a duration of 1.0f), calling the next "segment" of animation in the completion block of the previous animation. In the completion block I would check to see if the user has tapped an answer, and if so I don't continue the chain. That solution works fine except that it's not very responsive because it's on a per second basis-- user taps an answer at the start of the second segment and the bar has a noticeable continuation.
My solution to THAT problem was to instead have 1000 animation calls with a duration of 0.01f. After doing that, the responsiveness was on point - the view stops animating as soon as I tap an answer -- the issue though, is that it's not actually 10 seconds, it takes more like 20.
So question number 1: what's the smallest time interval animateWithDuration can actually process properly?
Question number 2: is there a better way to accomplish what I'm trying to do accomplish?
ill answer question two: yes there definitely is a better way, have a look at CADisplayLink
use it to shrink your view a little bit each frame, and end the display link when you need to
the most responsive way is: the user taps an answer, you response in the touch callback, remove animations. you can remove animations by CALayer's removeAllAnimations method
Another way to do it is to set the view to shrinking using a single animation with linear timing, and then set the speed of the view's layer to 0 to pause the animation. When you set the speed on the layer to 0 the animation pauses instantly.
This works because under the covers, UIView animation actually creates and installs CAAnimation objects on the view's layers. It's possible to pause and continue an in-flight UIView animation just like you can a CAAnimation.
I have a project called KeyframeViewAnimations (link) on github that allows you to pause, continue, or "scrub" UIView and CAAnimations back and forth with a slider. You could use that technique. The tricky bit will be figuring out how far along the animation is.
Related
I want to make a view/header collaspe/expand animation, but I also want to be able to pause or stop from expanding/collapsing while the user takes his finger off the screen.
I have a current implementation for this, but the animation is not very smooth.
I will also add some images to explain better what I want to do.
So the first image is how it should look when expanded.
The second image is how it should look if the user decides to take take his finger off the screen while he would scroll slowly so the animation/the view should stop in a state similar to that.
The third image is how it should look when it is collapsed.
If someone has any recommendation how I could achieve this I would be very grateful.
If you are targeting iOS 10+, use UIViewPropertyAnimator which encapsulates an animation and allows scrubbing and controlling the animation:
Start, pause, resume, and stop animations; see the methods of the UIViewAnimating protocol.
Add animation blocks after the original animations start using the addAnimations(_:) and addAnimations(_:delayFactor:) methods.
Scrub through a paused animation by modifying the fractionComplete property.
Change the animation’s direction using the isReversed property.
Modify the timing and duration of a partially complete animation by pausing the animation and using the continueAnimation(withTimingParameters:durationFactor:) method to finish it.
You just need to wire up touches to UIViewPropertyAnimator object encapsulating the animation.
There are many good tutorials on how to start with it, e.g. this one.
Is there a way to observe the "time progress" of UIView.animateWithDuration...family of methods from UIView /alternatively CA animations?
I am animating a view's frame and I need to be informed how it is progressing.
My line of thinking was I can either
1) tap into CAAnimation related stuff or
2) observe the animated properties (like frame) and do my own calculations each screen frame.
Approach 1) turns out to be a dead end, inspecting the internal of how CAAnimations work told me absolutely nothing...and 2) is flawed as the "model layer tree is updated immediately and tapping into the presentation tree is difficult as the presentation layer is nil when you start.
I am pretty desperate, I was thinking that hooking into CADisplayLink will give me a tick and then I simply check something that is affected by the animation but there is nothing to tap to.
Do you think going the NSTimer way that is launched in the same scope as the animation method is ok? If I know animation duration then I can generate the progress myself.
If all you want is the time value, then you can do math on the CACurrentMediaTime() minus the animation start time. I have a sample project on Github called KeyframeViewAnimations that does exactly that.
That project supports pausing and resuming and scrubbing both UIView and CAAnimation based animations. In both cases it digs into the underlying CAAnimations.
I have another project that uses the values of the animated layer's presentationLayer in order to do hit testing so you can tap on an in-flight view and start/pause the animation. That one can be found here:
iOS-CAAnimation-group-demo
My code uses an NSTimer to update the progress of the animation. It would be better to use a CADisplayLink timer, as you mentioned.
I am also looking at the new UIViewPropertyAnimator class that was added to iOS 10. That makes pausing, reversing, and scrubbing UIView animations easy without having to dig into the underlying CAAnimations. See this thread I just posted:
Is there a way to observe changes to fractionComplete in UIViewPropertyAnimator
What is the best way to implement a smooth reversing animation which tracks touches? I am referring to those animations in which, for example, if the user executes a swipe gesture some elements smoothly animate on screen, and others off, but if the user instead slowly drags a pan gesture back and forth the same objects will move forward/backward as a percent in accordance with the touch position. This is seen in many app intros and also in transitions. I have found
One tutorial which discusses the built-in facility for this but it is only between view controller transitions, not providing the full granular control I see in many apps (http://www.doubleencore.com/2013/09/ios-7-custom-transitions/)
Jazzhands, which is a kit by IFTTT, but this is a packaged solution that might not cover how the solution is best implemented at a lower level (https://github.com/IFTTT/JazzHands)
A question here for which one answer shows how you might execute an animation after a gesture ends (iOS Touch, Gestures, Animation)
What I don't grasp - and I'm comfortable using CAAnimations and gestures - is how something can be both animated and interactive.
Typically, when I create an animation, I commit the animation and it goes from start to finish. While I could interrupt the animation as touches continue, that seems like it would be stilted.
On the other hand, moving things in response to user input is easy, but that is not animated.
How is the effect achieved where something can change according to an animation, but also have that exact same animation occur tied to touches, and yet still also have it so that although the animation reaches completion it doesn't really "finish" (become irreversible) unless the user releases touch, while at any point during interaction if the user releases panning then the animation either reverts backwards to its starting position or animates to completion depending on the last touch location and velocity. These requirements are baffling.
The glimpses of this technique I see all involve keyframe animations, but what I don't understand is where the touch events intersect with an animation to create these smooth effects I see.
Any tips, examples, or tutorials are most welcome.
What I don't grasp - and I'm comfortable using CAAnimations and gestures - is how something can be both animated and interactive.
It is because, having set up an animation, you can set that animation to any "frame" you wish. Thus you can track the animation in correspondence to the movement of a gesture.
The way this works is that an animation is a feature of the render tree, belonging to a CALayer. CALayer implements the CAMediaTiming protocol. The timeOffset of a CALayer thus determines what "frame" of an animation that layer displays. If a complex animation involves many different layers, no problem; just set the timeOffset of their mutual superlayer, to control the frame of the entire animation.
That in fact is exactly how the new iOS 7 interactive custom transition feature works (to which you rightly refer in your question). For instance, in this example code:
https://github.com/mattneub/Programming-iOS-Book-Examples/blob/master/iOS7bookExamples/bk2ch06p296customAnimation2/ch19p620customAnimation1/AppDelegate.m
... I keep updating the UIPercentDrivenInteractiveTransition to tell it how far through the gesture the user is, and the animation therefore tracks the gesture. Now ask yourself: how the heck is this possible???
Well, the UIPercentDrivenInteractiveTransition, in turn, behind the scenes, keeps adjusting the layer's timeOffset to portray the animation at the corresponding frame. (You can actually add logging code to my example to see that this is true.)
Moreover, when I end the gesture at an incomplete point, the animation either hurries to its end or runs backwards to its beginning - again, this is because of the CAMediaTiming protocol, which lets you change the speed of the animation, including a negative value to run it backwards.
In my current project I've created an app that utilizes the position of the UISlider in relation to a target value displayed to the user. I've got full functionality however I'm now trying to spice it up a bit.
Is it possible to set the UISlider to move from (minimum through maximum) than (maximum through minimum) back and forth on its own when the user enters the app rather than having them drag it?
Thoughts:
Possibly use a looping sequence?
Not looking for someone to code this for me I quite enjoy that part. Just looking for guidance.
Further to the NSTimer answer, I wouldn't suggest using that, but CADisplayLink instead. Similar process, but instead of using NSTimer use CADisplayLink.
CADisplayLink synchronises with the screen refresh rate, so you can adjust the animation and slider value based on current frame, so the animation appears smooth.
http://patzearfoss.com/2011/09/02/more-cadisplaylink/
I think that in this case you would have to setup an NSTimer with a time that you wish per frame, separate out the action code within the slider into a routine that can be called by you, then within the timer action code, call your routine, and then set the slider position manually.
Look here for setting up an NSTimer
How do I use NSTimer?
The NSTimer will essentially allow you to setup any framerate you wish, AND keep it off of the MAIN thread.
UISlider has this method that allows you to programatically change the slider's value:
- (void)setValue:(float)value animated:(BOOL)animated
Be careful about using loops though, you don't want to block your main thread an make your app unresponsive.
Trumpetlick's answer provides good information on using an NSTimer, which should help you with this.
My app consists of an animation of about 25 frames. The animations is triggered by a button, and all is working. However, upon first invoking the animation, there is a few second delay.
I am aware that this is because the images need to be cached upon their first run in an animation, and I have ~2mb to be cached.
I wish Apple would implement an [animation prepareToPlay] method for this reason.
In the meantime, I'm running the animation within viewDidLoad. This caches the images during the splash screen, but then displays the animation.
There are two alternatives that I would like to consider.
This first is to forcibly cache the images upon initialization during the splash screen, without the animation playing upon loading the view. (read: custom UIImageView prepareToPlay method) --- This solution would be ideal.
The second alternative would be to keep my current code, running the animation at start-up once the view has been loaded, but disabling the invoking button until this first animation completes. Since UIImageView doesn't have it's own completion notification, would the best solution be to set up a timer equal to the animation duration and enable the button and the end of said timer?
Thanks in advance,
Greg
TL;DR --- How to forcibly cache animation images upon initialization.
I also faced problem as yours. I had created my own question here, and I got good answers. Check it out here: Does UIImageView cache images?
Good luck!