Timeline-Based Animations in Quick

We should consider adding support for complex graphical animations in Qt Quick (elements and tooling).

Current Support

The QDeclarative elements have direct support for animations and transitions. However, this is about manipulating individual properties of elements. Typical effects are moving/scaling elements, or fading out effects. More complex graphical animations aren't very well supported.

Instead, QtDeclarative support animations coded in external image formats like animated GIF, and MNG (Maybe also animated SVG?). This is done via the AnimatedImage element, which uses the capabilities of the QMovie element. However, the interface of this class is very limited: One can basically just pause & play animations.

Typical Animations

• Spinning indicator (http://www.andrewdavidson.com/articles/spinning-wait-icons/)
• Sprites like in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky4FseDy9dE
• Treats demo

Observations:

• Animations are timeline based, repeat themselves
• Sometimes they have to 'react' to external events (e.g. think of a character in a jump&run game: Depending on the users action it might jump, run, change appearance ...)

Performance

TODO: Are e.g. animated GIFs already optimized when played in a scene? Can we do any better with something directly understood by a SceneGraph?