Why is my animation leaving a trail?

Question

I'm animating a an ImageView from the left to the right of the screen using a translate animation. The ImageView is place inside a RelativeLayout over the top of my main layout using FrameLayout.

When I run the animation on the emulator everything works pretty well but when I use run it on my G1 it leaves visual artifacts behind and effects the rendering of the text component behind it.

Is this a performance issue and I'm being too ambitious or is it a bug I can overcome?

If it is a performance issue is there anything I can do to improve things?

Can you provide any code for us to look at? Are you doing anything else with the frame layout? What version of the SDK are you using (i.e. cupcake?) — jamesh, Jun 22 '09 at 22:12
Is this the class you're using? http://developer.android.com/reference/android/view/animation/TranslateAnimation.html — Jarett Millard, Jun 29 '09 at 16:51
Good question, I've had this problem also, but it shows in the emulator too! Its occurring when I'm animating a 3D rotation of a view in a FrameLayout, perhaps its a function/bug of the FrameLayout? I'm going to see if I can use the surface view... — Andy, Jun 29 '10 at 14:35

score 10 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

10

I was also experiencing the same issue on 2.3.

Invalidating the container of the moving view ( the layout in which the moving view resides ) in Animation.applyTransformation fixed it for me.

See:

Android - Artifacts using Animation

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

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answered Feb 17 '12 at 15:34

Matthijs

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Thanks for reporting back an alternative solution to this old question Matthijs... – Maarten Bodewes Mar 10 '12 at 02:01

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 29 '10 at 14:39

3

I now this may be a little old, but I just found this:

http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/5481450f8b71a26c/e750730b9953d9a8?lnk=gst&q=animation+leaves+trails#e750730b9953d9a8

Not sure what android version your using, but it may be a bug in the android libraries!

Looks like that's what the problem is for me! :)

... Dontcha just love it when its not your fault! :D

answered Jun 29 '10 at 14:39

Andy

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Almost certainly. No longer have the code to retest though :( I gave up on that animation and went with one that wouldn't leave a trail. – Tom Martin Jul 13 '10 at 00:11

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 01 '12 at 22:00

2

Here's a workaround I found that solved this for me: "An easy workaround would be to pad your image with a small (1 pixel should do it) transparent region on the right/bottom - this would have no effect on how it would look, but it would force an invalidation of a region slightly larger than the actual image and thus compensate for the bug."

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=22151

answered Mar 01 '12 at 22:00

Brian Christensen

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By far the simplest solution to this. Thanks! – Ross Hambrick Apr 19 '12 at 20:26
this one works . no idea why it occurs , since one of the main android developers wrote that it was fixed ages ago : http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/5481450f8b71a26c/e750730b9953d9a8?lnk=gst&q=animation+leaves+trails#e750730b9953d9a8 – android developer May 19 '12 at 22:31
Very interesting! I'm guessing that this works because of the conversion from actual to density independent pixels. The ring of invisible accounts for some sloppiness. – SMBiggs Dec 02 '15 at 17:44

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 18 '09 at 20:46

0

Without actually seeing the problem is sounds like you're not clearing the display buffer before writing the next frame. It doesn't sound like a performance issue to me.

Do you have control over whether the device does double buffering or not?

Given that it works on the emulator this could point to either a problem with the emulator or a bug in your code that isn't showing up on the emulator (which I suppose is technically a problem with the emulator!) rather than a performance issue.

answered Jun 18 '09 at 20:46

ChrisF

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I'm using the animation framework provided by the Android framework so I have neither control over the double buffering or the display buffer. To me it looks like a bug. If this were a performance issue because my requirements were too ambitious the animation should just be jerky/have a low framerate. It performs reasonably well, it just leaves what look like pieces of the image behind it. They're cleaned up fairly quickly but it doesn't look good. – Tom Martin Jun 18 '09 at 21:11
@Tom - I think I've reached the limit of what I can suggest. I don't really know the environment you're developing in - but I do know animation having worked with real time 3D graphics for a number of years and I've encountered similar sounding problems. But as I said, without actually seeing what's going on it's difficult to diagnose the problem. – ChrisF Jun 19 '09 at 08:13

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 24 '09 at 23:00

I would suggest using a SurfaceView for animation. It is double-buffered, so it should eliminate flickering if you use it properly. If you want an example, the LunarLander demo included in the sdk shows this really well. Also, if you have a more specific question with code, ask away.

As for general Android performance, it is very possible to have reasonably high frame rates, so you aren't expecting too much.

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 18 '13 at 00:13

I figured this out on Jelly bean i was experiencing this in a gallery view while performing some animation. It looks more like a drawing issue not cpu ....

make your activity implement the interface AnimatorListener ..... override the below method and pick which one you want to redraw your view in

 @Override
public void onAnimationEnd(Animator animation) {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub

    mView.requestLayout();
    Toast.makeText(this, "animation ended", 0).show();
}

@Override
public void onAnimationRepeat(Animator animation) {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    mView.requestLayout();
}

@Override
public void onAnimationStart(Animator animation) {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub
    mView.requestLayout();
}

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 09 '10 at 23:43

This is happening to me as well. I'm using an emulator using 1.6 with the Google APIs, and I just confirmed that it happens on a Nexus One running FRF83. Here's the relevant code:

Animation a = new TranslateAnimation(0.0f, 0.0f, 100.0f, 0.0f);
a.setDuration(2000);
this.myView.startAnimation(a);

Here's the relevant code for instantiating the view:

View v = new View(this.getApplication());
LinearLayout.LayoutParams params = new LinearLayout.LayoutParams(ViewGroup.LayoutParams.FILL_PARENT, 80);
v.setLayoutParams(params);
v.setBackgroundColor(0xFFFF0000);
//
LinearLayout layout = (LinearLayout)this.findViewById(R.id.theLayout);
layout.addView(v);
//
v.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {

        public void onClick(View arg0) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        doAnimation();
    }
});
//
myView = v;

So basically, the double buffering etc, is being handled by the OS, and I have no control over it at all.

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 01 '11 at 12:16

I had a similar problem on Android 2.3, so the bug may still in exist. I was using an ImageView with a PNG which had some transparent parts. This imageview was leaving trails when animated with TranslateAnimation. Using a fake background drawable for the imageview elimanated the trail (I used a drawable as background).

Why is my animation leaving a trail?

8 Answers8