How can I animate the movement of a view or image along a curved path?

Question

I am developing a commerce application. When I add an item to the shopping cart, I want to create an effect where an image of the item follows a curved path and ends up at the cart tab.

How can I create an animation of an image along a curve like this?

Answer 1

To expand upon what Nikolai said, the best way to handle this is to use Core Animation to animate the motion of the image or view along a Bezier path. This is accomplished using a CAKeyframeAnimation. For example, I've used the following code to animate an image of a view into an icon to indicate saving (as can be seen in the video for this application):

First of all import QuartzCore header file #import <QuartzCore/QuartzCore.h>

UIImageView *imageViewForAnimation = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithImage:imageToAnimate];
imageViewForAnimation.alpha = 1.0f;
CGRect imageFrame = imageViewForAnimation.frame;
//Your image frame.origin from where the animation need to get start
CGPoint viewOrigin = imageViewForAnimation.frame.origin;
viewOrigin.y = viewOrigin.y + imageFrame.size.height / 2.0f;
viewOrigin.x = viewOrigin.x + imageFrame.size.width / 2.0f;

imageViewForAnimation.frame = imageFrame;
imageViewForAnimation.layer.position = viewOrigin;
[self.view addSubview:imageViewForAnimation];

// Set up fade out effect
CABasicAnimation *fadeOutAnimation = [CABasicAnimation animationWithKeyPath:@"opacity"];
[fadeOutAnimation setToValue:[NSNumber numberWithFloat:0.3]];
fadeOutAnimation.fillMode = kCAFillModeForwards;
fadeOutAnimation.removedOnCompletion = NO;

// Set up scaling
CABasicAnimation *resizeAnimation = [CABasicAnimation animationWithKeyPath:@"bounds.size"];
[resizeAnimation setToValue:[NSValue valueWithCGSize:CGSizeMake(40.0f, imageFrame.size.height * (40.0f / imageFrame.size.width))]];
resizeAnimation.fillMode = kCAFillModeForwards;
resizeAnimation.removedOnCompletion = NO;

// Set up path movement
CAKeyframeAnimation *pathAnimation = [CAKeyframeAnimation animationWithKeyPath:@"position"];
pathAnimation.calculationMode = kCAAnimationPaced;
pathAnimation.fillMode = kCAFillModeForwards;
pathAnimation.removedOnCompletion = NO;
//Setting Endpoint of the animation
CGPoint endPoint = CGPointMake(480.0f - 30.0f, 40.0f);
//to end animation in last tab use 
//CGPoint endPoint = CGPointMake( 320-40.0f, 480.0f);
CGMutablePathRef curvedPath = CGPathCreateMutable();
CGPathMoveToPoint(curvedPath, NULL, viewOrigin.x, viewOrigin.y);
CGPathAddCurveToPoint(curvedPath, NULL, endPoint.x, viewOrigin.y, endPoint.x, viewOrigin.y, endPoint.x, endPoint.y);
pathAnimation.path = curvedPath;
CGPathRelease(curvedPath);

CAAnimationGroup *group = [CAAnimationGroup animation]; 
group.fillMode = kCAFillModeForwards;
group.removedOnCompletion = NO;
[group setAnimations:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:fadeOutAnimation, pathAnimation, resizeAnimation, nil]];
group.duration = 0.7f;
group.delegate = self;
[group setValue:imageViewForAnimation forKey:@"imageViewBeingAnimated"];

[imageViewForAnimation.layer addAnimation:group forKey:@"savingAnimation"];

[imageViewForAnimation release];