Timeline based animations on the iPhone/iPad

Question

How would you go about creating a timeline animation for an iPhone or iPad application? I'm looking for something like a timeline animation in Flash. I don't need a technical explanation on how to program it, though.

So here are some general questions: - I read something about UIView for PNG sequences, but aren't these kind of animations resource intensive? And what about filesize? PNG can't be compressed like jpeg. - What about vector-like animations? These would save a lot of kb's. - Are there animation frameworks like TweenLite/TweenMax/Tweener/... (some well known frameworks for animations in ActionScript) ? - Any good references on how to make animations (like Text animations, ...)

Thanks in advance.

Bart

Answer 1

Apple pretty much spells it out in Getting Started with Graphics and animation.

In general just stick with the highest possible API, and test to see if it's going to meet your needs or not. Moving around a UIView or UILabel (text) as in a Timeline Animation not only takes just a couple of lines of code but it will probably perform just fine.

Answer 2

This only just came out, but have you heard of Hirameki?

It's a flash animation parser that lets you drop SWF animations directly into Xcode projects for iPhone. A demonstration and beta sign up is here http://www.flash-on-iphone.com