Was hoping someone could help with this please? I've scanned through the forum and apple docs and can't find anything that matches my problem exactly.
I'm trying to animate a custom 'Composite' UIView derived class (with overidden drawRect) by changing a custom colour property (not one of the standard view properties like centre, alpha, backgroundColour etc), calling setNeedsDisplay and redrawing the view using drawRect over X seconds duration to produce a slow colour change from say, red to blue.
At the moment, all Composite::drawRect does internally is clear the context (the view has a default background colour set to clear) and fill the view using the colour provided. This works fine the first time it's called - the view appears on screen in the correct red colour.
My problem is that when I try to animate the view by updating the colour property, even though drawRect is being called everytime I call setNeedsDisplay and the colour being fed into the view instance is correct the view doesn't update on screen until I stop calling setNeedsDisplay (or rather, stop updating the custom view colour property). It's like every call to setNeedsDisplay pushes the view to the back of a list so it doesn't get updated on screen until it stops getting called (even though drawRect is being called).
For example - trying to change the colour from red to blue over 10 seconds, the view stays red for 10 seconds, then turns to blue in a single frame at the end of the property changing (and presumably when I stop calling setNeedsDisplay) rather than a slow fade between the two over the time duration.
Any ideas what's going on? I'm guessing I need to animate this using apple's own animation property stuff but I'd really prefer not to - I'm trying to make this cross platform if possible and I don't see why my own method shouldn't work.
The basics:
In case it matters, my composite view instance is a subview of an UIImageView. (I know imageview drawRect doesn't get called but I can't imagine this is a problem for it's subviews - after all, my Composite::drawRect is definitely being called).
I'm setting the right colour on my view instance - I've debug printed this to be sure - so the colour provided to the view goes from red to blue over however many seconds / frames.
I'm setting setNeedsDispay and drawRect is being called every time - again, debug printing confirms this.
This is happening over multiple frames and the app goes through the drawing update at the end of every frame - I.e I'm not blocking the render thread or anything - the app runs fine, it just doesn't update the view on screen even though its drawRect is being called, until I stop manipulating the property. Someone mentioned a similar problem where they were blocking the render thread in a single frame but I'm definitely not doing anything like that.
I've tried messing around with the following but they all produced the same results (i.e. view changed from red to blue in a single frame rather than a slow change over).
Updating the colour every frame but only calling setNeedsDisplay on my view every Xth frame (5, 10, 20, 30 etc)
Updating the colour every frame but not calling setNeedsDisplay unless the corresponding drawRect call from the last setNeedsDisplay has happened (i.e. set a flag to false in SetColour func, set same flag to true in drawRect, test against it when decided to call setNeedsDisplay) - same results.
setting the view bounds with ContentMode set to redraw to force an update - same results
tried calling setNeedsDisplay on the parent image view too - no change.
I'm guessing that this just isn't possible - can anyone explain why its not updating the v view onscreen even though drawRect is being called? Any ideas how I should do this? I don't think I would be able to do what I want to do if I tried animated one of the default view properties using apple's internal animation system but if I've got to use that....
Thanks!
:-)
Related
How do I produce an animation that simulates the burning effect of fire consuming an UIView from top to bottom in Swift?
I found Fireworks, an app that allows users to tweak and try out different settings of CAEmitterLayer with instant results. The effects are great for applying to a whole screen but how would I use it for my purpose - where the UIView must disappear as the fire consumes it from one end to the other?
Is there some tutorial on consuming UIViews with fire using the particle emitter anywhere? I know that I’m supposed to show some code but anything I put here would be irrelevant. I’ve also exhausted my search engine looking for something similar. That’s how I found the Fireworks app actually.
This seems to be a use case that shouldn't be uncommon.
I haven't done much with CAEmitterLayer, so I decided to try my hand at this.
I created a project that does this an posted it on Github. It uses the approach in this Youtube video as a starting point. You can download it here:
FireEmitter project
Here is a small thumbnail of what it looks like:
The project includes a custom subclass of UIView called BurnItDownView
The BurnItDownView is meant to contain other views.
It has one public method, burnItDown(). That triggers the animation.
There are multiple parts to the animation:
A CAEmitterLayer set up to simulate flames burning off a flat surface:
An animation that lowers the emitter layer from the top of the view to the bottom,
A CAGradientView applied as a mask to the view that starts ot fully opaque (with colors of [.clear, .white, .white] and locations of [-0.5, 0, 1] (where the clear color is above the top of the view) and animates the locations property of the gradient view to mask away the view contents from top to bottom. (Animating the locations property to [0, 0, 0], so the entire gradient layer is filled with clear color, fully masking the view's layer.)
Once the view is fully masked, it starts lowering the "birthRate" of the emitter layer in steps until the birth rate is 0. It then holds this step for 2 seconds until all the flame particles have animated away.
Once the flame is fully "extinguised", it resets the locations array to the original value of [-0.5, 0, 1]. This causes an "implicit animation" so the view animates back from the bottom, but quickly
Finally, it resets the emitter layer and emitter cells back to newly a newly created emitter layer and emitter cell to get it ready for the next pass of the animation. (I couldn't figure out how to restore the emitter back to its original state. It was simpler to just create new ones.) It also invokes an Optional completion handler passed to the burnItDown() method. (The app's view controller uses the closure to re-enable the "Burn it down" button.
I was once in your shoe before and came across this Open source library called particle animations.
I would NOT recommend using the library itself since it's deprecated. But I would recommend referring to its source code to get an idea of how to use CAEmitterLayer and CAEmitterCell to make the looks of a Fire!
As you could see from its readme, it has direct examples of Fire. It also states that even Apple and Facebook uses CAEmitterLayer and CAEmitterCell to produce the effect of a fire.
Feel free to ask for more questions.
In my app I have a UIButton and when you tap it I have a UIActivityIndicatorView and I want to add diffrent UI Labels as it loads. Its actually not a real loading process its just for looks. How would I go about doing this?
Step 1:
Create a custom UIView (u can xibs if you want). That view should have second UIView as a container in it. When you init the view set it to be the same size as the viewController you are putting it in. Its background color is transparent (or black with a lower alpha if you want to have the greyed out effect). Set the container to be the actual size you want it to appear.
Step 2:
Put a UIActivityIndicatorView and a UILabel in the container. Lay it out how you like.
Step 3:
Write a label updating method that uses a timer. Either performSelector:afterDelay: or dispatch_after. Have this method set the label text, wait a period of time, change then text, wait a period of time, change it again and so on.
Step 4:
Write showIndicator() and hideIndicator() methods. The view and the container's hidden property should be set to true. When showIndicator() is called set the hidden to false and call the label updating method from step 3. When you've reached the end of all your label changes then set everything back to hidden = true
It should work like this. The view controller loads up and adds this view. The view takes up the entire screen but you cant see anything because it is hidden by default. The user hits the button and showIndicator() method is called. The view become visible. Although it takes up the entire screen it appears to be a small overlay because the background is transparent (or back with an alpha for the greyed out look) and the container has a smaller frame and a solid color. The delayed methods are also called now and it changes the label, waits, changes it and so on. When you reach the end of the sequence hideIndicator() is called and all views are set back to hidden = true. Good Luck!!!
I've followed this answer to create an animated circle, and it works just fine. In addition to the path, I draw a text in the center of the view with drawInRect. I would like that text to change during the animation, to reflect the percentage of the path that is visible at each moment. How can I achieve that?
Thanks.
The most promising post would likely be this one. It describes creating a new CALayer that keeps track of the progress, which can then fire a call back.
Otherwise you'll likely need to wangle something together by observing your view's presentationLayer.
I have an app that fetches calendar events and displays data to the user. I'm getting some weird behavior when trying to update my labels.
I can fetch the calendar data just fine but when that gets done, my problem is that according to NSLog my label.text property has already changed, but it's another 4-8 seconds before the view gets redrawn.
Therefore, I'm trying to detect when the label gets redrawn, not when it's .text property changes so I can hide a progress view at the same time the data is populated in the labels.
I have already tried setNeedsDisplay and setNeedsLayout on self.view and the labels themselves. after the .text property of the labels has changed - doesn't work.
So unless I'm completely missing something about using setNeedsDisplay (which I understand only updates on the next redraw anyway), my question is, how do I detect when the UILabel and/or the UIView redraws itself?
How my app is setup:
I've been stuck on this for about 3 weeks.
Make sure setNeedsDisplay is being called on the main thread, using performSelectorOnMainThread:withObject:waitUntilDone:, for example:
[view performSelectorOnMainThread:#selector(setNeedsDisplay)
withObject:nil
waitUntilDone:NO];
Quote apple develop document :
The view is not actually redrawn until the next drawing cycle, at which point all invalidated views are updated.
maybe your main thread are blocking by other things , such as deal with many complex calculations
eg:
- (void)testMethod
{
myLabel.mytext = #"aaaa";
[myLabel setNeedsDisplay];
// some complex calculations
// the quickest , it will run finish the method then redraw.
}
When creating an iOS app, I'm confused as to when exactly I need to call setNeedsDisplay? I know that it has something to do with updating/redrawing the UI; however, do I need to call this every time I change any of my views?
For example, do I need to call it:
After programatically changing the text in a text field
When changing the background of a view?
When I make changes in viewDidLoad?
How about in viewDidAppear?
Could someone give me some general guidelines regarding when to use this method?
You should only be calling setNeedsDisplay if you override drawRect in a subclass of UIView which is basically a custom view drawing something on the screen, like lines, images, or shapes like a rectangle.
So you should call setNeedsDisplay when you make changes to few variables on which this drawing depends and for view to represent that change , you need to call this method which internally will give a call to drawRect and redraw the components.
When you add an imageView or a UIButton as a subview or make changes to any subview, you need not call this method.
Example:
You have a view that shows a moving circle, either you touch and move it, or may be timer based animation.
Now for this, you will need a custom view that draws a circle at given center and with given radius.
These are kept as instance variables which are modified to move the circle by changing its center or make it bigger by increasing radius of it.
Now in this case either you will modify these variables(centre or radius) in a loop and timer Or may be by your fingers in touchesEnded and touchesMoved methods.
To reflect the change in this property you need to redraw this view for which you will call setNeedsDisplay.
You only really need to call -setNeedsDisplay on UIView subclasses that draw their contents with -drawRect:.
For labels and other standard controls, changing the text will automatically cause the label to redraw so you don't need to do this yourself.
setNeedsDisplay: should be called when you want to refresh your view explicitly. It just sets an internal flag, and the iOS UI system will call drawRect: at an appropriate time later.
It sounds like it should be always called when you updating any property which may change the presentation. But it's not. Almost all the standard UI controls already handled that. I believe whenever you modify the properties of standard UI components (views), setNeedsDisplay: would be triggered internally, and the affected region will be redrawn. (In all the situations you listed)
However, if you create your own view, implement its own drawRect:, and want to update that when something has been changed, you must call setNeedsDisplay: explicitly.
I think #Amogh Talpallikar make it clear. And I just wanna discuss one thing more.
In the fact that, you should avoid override drawRectunless you really need it because it can cause bad performance. You can refer this https://yalantis.com/blog/mastering-uikit-performance/
If you only wanna change frame, position of buttons, labels, ... you can call setNeedLayout or layoutIfNeeded
You will call setNeedDisplay when you are changing the property on which your view custom drawing depends. It will explicitly call drawRect: method forcefully.