Flash Speaks Actionscript

As of late, the creation of AS3 tween engines have been very popular and active with the latest on being gTween.  Now it’s time to turn the spotlight to a new speedy tween engine called Tweensy.

What is Tweensy?

Tweensy is an extremely efficient Actionscript 3 property tweener.  Tweensy offers 2 versions of it’s tween engine: TweensyZero and TweensyOriginal.  TweensyOriginal is a fully featured Object property tweener it is extremely efficient and is intended for everyday use. TweensyZero is a light weight version of TweensyOriginal this product is intended for users who are file size conscious.

The big plus behind Tweensy besides being efficient is the extras it supplies.   The extras that Tweensy contains are classes which help you to do complicated animations in a very easy manner.   These tweens include Matrix transformations around a registration point.   As well ColorMatrixFilter effects such as brightness, contrast, colorize and threshold.

Tweensy also contains an expansion package called Tweensy FX which allows for motion effects to be applied onto DisplayObjects.  This includes directional motion blurring, pixelation, xray, bulge/dent displacements, reflection, rgb channel splitting and bump mapping.

Overall, Tweensy looks very promising and I can’t wait to jump into it.

Additional Resources:

• Getting started with Tweensy
• Speed render comparison with TweenMax
• Download Tweensy

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The latest popular ActionScript 3.0 tween engine, gTween, has been updated and released.  gTween beta 3 looks to add support for 3D rotation with smartRotation, rotating in the shortest direction, along with many bugs fixes. You can read the documentation, and download the latest version of gTween by clicking here.

Features to be expected with beta 3 release:

• Fixed a bug with smart rotation
• Added rotationProperties static property to specify properties to apply smartRotation to
• Fixed bug with proxy method calls not returning the return value
• RoundValues renamed to useSnapping
• Added snappingProperties static property to specify properties to apply snapping to.
• Fixed a bug that could cause setSize to be called twice
• Fixed a problem with copyInitProperties firing too many times
• Made the data parameter on addProgressPoint optional
• Changed removeProgressPoint to accept an optional data parameter
• Rewrote the progress point logic, fixing a problem that would prevent progress point events from firing if more than one progress point was passed in a single tick.
• Progress points will no longer fire when doing manual positioning, including using position=value, beginning() and end().
• Made it so that autoHide only applies while tweening alpha.
• Added a defaultEase static property, which allows you to define the default easing function for all new tweens
• Made linearEase a public static method
• Added useSetSize property to allow you to turn off the setSize behaviour if necessary

Grant Skinner continues to keep himself pretty busy as he announces the creation of gtween, a new tweening engine for AS3 developers.  Unlike many of the tweening engines availables to AS3 developers, this new tweening engine comes equipped with an impresive set of features like:

Developer Oriented

gTween is built for ActionScript 3 developers from the ground up. It uses a more conventional instance-oriented model, rather than a static interface.

Proxy Tweening

gTween provides a unique proxy property that allows you to work with tween destination values the same way you would work with them on the target object.

Interrupting Tweens

With gTween, you can modify your tween while it is playing, and it will attempt to accommodate those changes.

Sequencing Tweens

gTween provides three features to allow for sequencing multiple tweens: child tweens, delay, and nextTween.

Timing Modes

Another unique feature of gTween is support for multiple timing modes. You can use the common time based timing, frame based timing, or a hybrid timing model.

Pause All

gTween offers a class level pauseAll property that will pause all tweens, without affecting their per instance paused property.

Robust Events

gTween offers three built in events: an activate event that lets you know when a tween starts running, an init event that fires when the tween finishes delaying and starts tweening, a change event that fires each time the tween updates, and a complete event that fires when it reaches its end.

Resource Management

gTween also uses a couple of strategies to allow unreferenced tweens to be collected when they are no longer needed, while preventing them from being destroyed when they are needed.

Be sure to check out Grant’s blog for more information on gTween.

Additional Resources:

• Sequencing demo
• Simple performance demo
• Download gTween