Physics Animation Layout

Overview

PhysicsAnimationLayout works with implementations of PhysicsAnimationController to configure and run physics-based animations for each of its child views. During the initial construction of the animations, the layout queries the controller for basic configuration settings such as which properties to animate, which animations to chain together, and the default physics parameters to use.

Once the animations are built, the controller can access PhysicsPropertyAnimator instances to run them. The animator behaves similarly to the familiar ViewPropertyAnimator, with the ability to animate alpha, translation, and scale values. It also supports additional functionality such as followAnimatedTargetAlongPath for more advanced motion.

The controller is notified whenever children are added or removed from the layout, so that it can animate their entrance or exit, respectively.

An example usage is Bubbles, which uses a PhysicsAnimationLayout for its stack of bubbles. Bubbles has controller subclasses including StackAnimationController and ExpansionAnimationController. StackAnimationController tells the layout to configure the translation animations to be chained (for the ‘following’ drag effect), and has methods such as moveStack(x, y) to animate the stack to a given point. ExpansionAnimationController asks for no animations to be chained, and exposes methods like expandStack() and collapseStack(), which animate the bubbles to positions along the bottom of the screen.

PhysicsAnimationController

PhysicsAnimationController is a public abstract class in PhysicsAnimationLayout. Controller instances must override configuration methods, which are used by the layout while constructing the animations, and animation control methods, which are called to initiate animations in response to events.

Configuration Methods

Diagram of how animations are configured using the controller's configuration methods. The controller must override the following methods:

Set<ViewProperty> getAnimatedProperties() Returns the properties, such as TRANSLATION_X and TRANSLATION_Y, for which the layout should construct physics animations.

int getNextAnimationInChain(ViewProperty property, int index) If the animation at the given index should update another animation whenever its value changes, return the index of the other animation. Otherwise, return NONE. This is used to chain animations together, so that when one animation moves, the other ‘follows’ closely behind.

float getOffsetForChainedPropertyAnimation(ViewProperty property) Value to add every time chained animations update the subsequent animation in the chain. For example, returning TRANSLATION_X offset = 20px means that if the first animation in the chain is animated to 10px, the second will update to 30px, the third to 50px, etc.

SpringForce getSpringForce(ViewProperty property) Returns a SpringForce instance to use for animations of the given property. This allows the controller to configure stiffness and bounciness values. Since the physics animations internally use SpringForce instances to hold inflight animation values, this method needs to return a new SpringForce instance each time - no constants allowed.

Animation Control Methods

Once the layout has used the controller’s configuration properties to build the animations, the controller can use them to actually run animations. This is done for two reasons - reacting to a view being added or removed, or responding to another class (such as a touch handler or broadcast receiver) requesting an animation. onChildAdded, onChildRemoved, and setChildVisibility are called automatically by the layout, giving the controller the opportunity to animate the child in/out/visible/gone. Custom methods are called by anyone with access to the controller instance to do things like expand, collapse, or move the child views.

In either case, the controller can use super.animationForChild to retrieve a PhysicsPropertyAnimator instance. This object behaves similarly to the ViewPropertyAnimator object you would receive from View.animate().

PhysicsPropertyAnimator

Like ViewPropertyAnimator, PhysicsPropertyAnimator provides the following methods for animating properties:

  • alpha(float)
  • translationX/Y/Z(float)
  • scaleX/Y(float)

...as well as shortcut methods to reduce the amount of boilerplate code needed for common use cases:

  • position(float, float, Runnable…), which starts translationX and translationY animations, and calls the provided callbacks only when both animations have completed.
  • followAnimatedTargetAlongPath(Path, int, TimeInterpolator), which animates a ‘target’ point along the given path using a traditional Animator. As the target moves, the translationX/Y physics animations are updated to follow the target, similarly to how they might follow a touch event location. This results in the view roughly following the path, but with natural motion that takes momentum into account. For example, if a path makes a 90 degree turn to the right, the physics animations will cause the view to curve naturally towards the new trajectory.

It also provides the following configuration methods:

  • withStartDelay(int), for starting the animation after a given delay.
  • withStartVelocity(float), for starting the animation with the given start velocity.
  • withStiffness(float) and withDampingRatio(float), for overriding the default physics param values returned by the controller’s getSpringForce method.
  • withPositionStartVelocities(float, float), for setting specific start velocities for TRANSLATION_X and TRANSLATION_Y, since these typically differ.
  • start(Runnable), to start the animation, with an optional end action to call when the animations for every property (including chained animations) have completed.

For example, moving the first child view:

animationForChild(getChildAt(0))
    .translationX(100)
    .translationY(200)
    .setStartDelay(500)
    .start();

This would use the physics animations constructed by the layout to spring the view to (100, 200) after 500ms.

If the controller’s getNextAnimationInChain method set up the first child’s TRANSLATION_X/Y animations to be chained to the second child’s, this would result in the second child also springing towards (100, 200), plus any offset returned by getOffsetForChainedPropertyAnimation.

Advanced Usage

The animator has additional functionality to reduce the amount of boilerplate required for typical physics animation use cases.

  • Often, animations will set starting values for properties before the animation begins. Property methods like translationX have an overloaded variant: translationX(from, to). When start() is called, the animation will set the view's translationX property to from before beginning the animation to to.
  • We may want to use different end actions for each property. For example, if we're animating a view to the bottom of the screen, and also fading it out, we might want to perform an action as soon as the fade out is complete. We can use alpha(to, endAction), which will call endAction as soon as the alpha animation is finished. A special case is position(x, y, endAction), where the endAction is called when both translationX and translationY animations have completed.
  • PhysicsAnimationController also provides animationsForChildrenFromIndex(int, ChildAnimationConfigurator). This is a convenience method for starting animations on multiple child views, starting at the given index. The ChildAnimationConfigurator is called with a PhysicsPropertyAnimator for each child, where calls to methods like translationX and withStartVelocity can be made. animationsForChildrenFromIndex returns a MultiAnimationStarter with a single method, startAll(endAction), which starts all of the animations and calls the end action when they have all completed.
Examples

Spring the stack of bubbles (whose animations are chained) to the bottom of the screen, shrinking them to 50% size. Once the first bubble is done shrinking, begin fading them out, and then remove them all from the parent once all bubbles have faded out:

animationForChild(leadBubble)
    .position(screenCenter, screenBottom)
    .scaleX(0.5f)
    .scaleY(0.5f, () -> animationForChild(leadBubble).alpha(0).start(removeAllFromParent))
    .start();

‘Drop in’ a child view that was just added to the layout:

animationForChild(newView)
    .scaleX(1.15f /* from */, 1f /* to */)
    .scaleY(1.15f /* from */, 1f /* to */)
    .alpha(0f /* from */, 1f /* to */)
    .position(posX, posY)
    .start();

Move every view except for the first to x = (index - 1) * 50, then remove the first view.

animationsForChildrenFromIndex(1, (index, anim) -> anim.translationX((index - 1) * 50))
    .startAll(removeFirstView);

Move a view up along the left side of the screen, and then to the top right of the screen (assume a view that is currently halfway down the left side of the screen). When the translation animations have finished following the target, call a callback:

Path path = new Path();
path.moveTo(view.getTranslationX(), view.getTranslationY());
path.lineTo(view.getTranslationX(), 0);
path.lineTo(mScreenWidth, 0);
animationForChild(view)
    .followAnimatedTargetAlongPath(path, 100, new LinearInterpolator())
    .start(callbackAfterFollowingFinished);

PhysicsAnimationLayout

The layout itself is a FrameLayout descendant with a few extra methods:

setActiveController(PhysicsAnimationController controller) Sets the given controller as the active controller for the layout. This causes the layout to construct or reconfigure the physics animations according to the new controller’s configuration methods, and halt any in-progress animations.

Only the currently active controller is allowed to start animations. If a different controller is set as the active controller, the previous controller will no longer be able to start animations. Attempts to do so will have no effect. This is to ensure that multiple controllers aren’t updating animations at the same time, which can cause undefined behavior.