4- Motion Effects
Motion Effects is a technology that helps implement a parallax effect (like the one we get when rotating the phone on the home screen). These types of animations are a suitable solution if you need a UI that responds to changes in the phone's orientation.
Dual Effect
To get the maximum effect, you should use these two technologies together.
Using both tools simultaneously allows you to engage with the application on a deeper level: they can see how the interface naturally and quickly reacts to their actions.
Simultaneous use of these animation tools for iOS helps you to:
- Apply gravity influence;
- Set boundaries for elements we want to animate and process collisions between them.
- Process notifications when objects collide with each other.
- Adjust properties of elements such as collision elasticity, sliding friction, density (affects acceleration when implementing the motion effect), resistance, etc.
UI Android Animation Tools
Now let's talk about animation applications for Android.
As mentioned earlier, Google provides useful tools for implementing various types of animation.
- Simple motions Many UI animations are based on simple effects such as movement, scaling, rotation, etc.
- Transitions. It's also worth paying attention to animations when switching screens, available since Android version 5. Use special tools to create beautiful and smooth screen transitions.
- Physical effects. In addition, the Android support library provides interesting opportunities for creating animations with basic physics.
1- Lottie
Lottie is an open-source library created by the folks at Airbnb. This library is designed to parse Adobe After Effects animations and render them on a phone. Animations are stored in JSON files exported from After Effects.
The main advantage of Lottie is its support for many After Effects features, which is a good thing if you want to build animation apps for Android.
Lottie animations were previously used in Airbnb apps:
2- Rebound
Rebound is another excellent library written in Java by Facebook developers.
Rebound allows you to create amazing animations. Android provides tools to achieve the same goal, but the effect is much simpler.
Rebound enables the implementation of realistic animations for apps. These moving elements seem to follow the laws of physics, being influenced by a certain force.
3- RippleEffect
The RippleEffect library is also worthy of your attention. Its essence matches its name: it's designed to create a beautiful ripple effect.
RippleEffect helps you make application interaction more visually appealing and impressive. Therefore, you improve the user experience.
This library is easy to customize, meaning you won't have any trouble adapting it to your project.
Of course, these 3 libraries are just a small part of a huge list that is constantly expanding. You are free to choose what seems interesting to you.
How to Choose the Right Animation Tools
To choose the right tools for building animations, we need to clarify the factors affecting the final result:
- Clear requirements. When describing your animation idea to developers, don't spare words. They need to understand what you want to achieve in the end. Such understanding can save a lot of time, effort, and consequently, money.
- Animation design complexity. The more complex the animation, the more effort needs to be put into its implementation.
- It's crucial to determine which animation model will provide a more suitable implementation in your case. Creating some animations for apps is easier, faster, and more economical based on existing libraries. However, if your idea is very specific, custom solutions should be your choice.
- Of course, you need to analyze your time and money resources. How much time and money are you willing to spend on the project?
Conclusion
We've explained the basic principles of animation and discussed the best ways to use animation in applications. Now let's summarize:
- Make animation purposeful. UI animations should help improve user interaction.
- Choose elements suitable for animation. Of course, you can animate anything, including the app's background. But does it make sense?
- Don't animate resource-intensive elements. Such animation effects will significantly slow down your app, and this will negatively impact the user experience.
- Provide animation consistency. If you have a website in addition to the app, implement the animation there as well.
If you want to design a new animation, we are ready to help! Our designers will create a great concept, and the developers will bring this idea to life.
