AS3 Tween Engines Getting Lighter with GTweeny, ByteTween, TweenLite and TweensyZero
Recently two compact tweening engines have been released. Grant Skinner’s GTweeny and laborat’s ByteTween. This adds to the two that focus on micro-tween kit sizes in TweenLite and TweensyZero
Basically these engines look to be micro and provide pretty nice features while being so small. Micro tweening engines like GTweeny (3k), ByteTween (1.7k), TweenLite (2.7k), TweensyZero (2.9k) and Tweener (9k) have varying levels of support of features (Tweener being the most loaded with color and filter support without other kits just init, also TweenLite with a nice configurator to include only what you need). Micro kits have benefits when used for banners, animated assets (where you have many assets and the per asset savings is worthwhile) and other places you just want really small output.
Light Transition ByteTween
(1.7k)
This kit has a c# version as well as a small as3 bytetween version.
The ByteTween static class eats only 1.7K of compiled clip! With this size it supports:
- Creation of tweens of any numeric property (not color/uint properties).
- Pause,Unpause,Cancel operations based on the tween target and property.
- Overlap system that cancel tweens of same property in order to avoid erroneous behavior
- Alpha tween with negative alpha support (negative alpha sets the MovieClip visibility to false)
- ’scale’ tween of both ’scaleX’ and ’scaleY’ properties.
- OnComplete callback with any number of parameters
- Easy interface for creating new tweens!
TweenLite
(2.7k) base
- SPEED - I’m not aware of any popular tweening engine with a similar feature set that’s as fast as TweenLite. See the speed comparisons yourself.
- Feature set - In addition to tweening ANY numeric property of ANY object, TweenLite can tween filters, hex colors, volume, tint, saturation, contrast, frames, and even do bezier tweening, plus LOTS more. TweenMax extends TweenLite and adds even more capabilities like pause/resume, rounding, event listeners, timeScale, and more. Overwrite management is an important consideration for a tweening engine as well which is another area where the GreenSock tweening platform shines. You have options for AUTO overwriting or you can manually define how each tween will handle overlapping tweens of the same object.
- Expandability - With its new plugin architecture, you can activate as many (or as few) features as your project requires. Or write your own plugin if you need a feature that’s unavailable. Minimize bloat, and maximize performance.
- Management features - TweenGroup makes it surprisingly simple to create complex sequences and groups of TweenLite/Max tweens that you can pause(), resume(), restart(), or reverse(). You can even tween a TweenGroup’s “progress” property to fastforward or rewind the entire group/sequence.
- Ease of use - Designers and Developers alike rave about how intuitive the GreenSock tweening platform is.
- Updates - Frequent updates and feature additions make the GreenSock tweening platform reliable and robust.
- AS2 and AS3 - Most other engines are only developed for AS2 or AS3 but not both.
TweensyZero
(2.9k) base
Here are some simple steps to help you get started with creating your first animations with TweensyZero. TweensyZero is a light weight version of Tweensy most core features found in Tweensy are available to TweensyZero. Documentation for TweensyZero can be found under the folder ‘documentation/zero’ or online
gTweeny
(3k)
gTweeny is gTween’s lightweight younger sibling. It strips a lot of the secondary features of GTween (proxy, timing modes, etc) in favour of smaller file size. It is currently under 3kb…
Here is a list of all open AS3 “Micro” Tweening engines < 5k
- ByteTween (1.7k)
- TweenLite (2.7k)
- TweensyZero (2.9k)
- gTweeny (3k)
Here is a list of all open AS3 Tweening engines and base kits
- Animation Package
- AS3 Animation System 2.1
- AS3Easing
- Go (base animation kit - create your own tween engine)
- gTween
- KitchenSync
- Twease
- Tweener (9k)
- Tweensy
- TweenLite (TweenMax)
The decision on which to use can be affected be features you want, how it feels (many use the same object syntax so it is dynamic), what performance do they have (all are orders of magnitude faster than the built in tween (flash) or transitions (mx/flex)), which size is ok, author/community support needed (some are more active than others adding features or simplifying and tweaking performance methodically), and many other factors. There are definitely plenty to choose from.
Speed Tests for many Tween Engines
- Green Sock Tweening Comparison Tool
- Moses Benchmarking Tool (relative comparison against SimpleAS3Tween sample)
For more on each features see their sites or these previous lists on tweening engines:
Ref: http://drawlogic.com
