SwiftyGlyphs

Animate individual glyphs of a UILabel without needing the heavy Core Text library. Turn the glyphs into images for most cases. Optionally you can also turn glyphs into SKSpriteNodes if you need extra animation capabilities via SKActions.

Features

• Generate array of gylph images from a UILabel.
• Preserves font color, style and spacing as individual transparent png's.
• Option to generate SKSpriteNode glyphs instead for SKActions.

Usage

Animate an array of characters.

import UIKit
import SwiftyGlyphs

class ViewController: UIViewController {
   var swiftyLabel = SwiftyGlyphs(fontName: "MarkerFelt-Wide", size:24)

   override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
      super.viewDidAppear(animated)

      swiftyLabel.text = "SwiftyGlyphs!"
      swiftyLabel.setLocation(self.view, pos: CGPoint(x:0,y:100))
      swiftyLabel.centerTextToView()

      exampleAnimation(swiftyLabel.getGlyphs())
   }

   func exampleAnimation(glyphs:[Glyph]) {
      var delay = 1.0
      for glyph in glyphs {
         UIView.animateWithDuration(0.5, delay: delay, options: [.Repeat, .CurveEaseInOut, .Autoreverse], animations: {
            glyph.imgView.center.y = 140
            glyph.imgView.transform = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(CGFloat(-M_PI))
         }, completion: nil)
         delay += 0.01
     }
   }
}

SpriteKit Usage

Requres an SKView. With this example I added a UIView the storyboard UIViewController and then customized it in the side panel as an SKView. Then dragged over the IBOutlet.

import UIKit
import SpriteKit
import SwiftyGlyphs

class ViewController: UIViewController {

   @IBOutlet weak var skview: SKView!
   var spriteLabel = SpriteGlyphs(fontName: "Copperplate-Light", size:24)

   override func viewDidAppear(animated: Bool) {
      super.viewDidAppear(animated)

      spriteLabel.text = "SpriteKit Baby!!"
      spriteLabel.setLocation(skview, pos: CGPoint(x:0,y:30))
      spriteLabel.centerTextToView()

      spriteKitAnimation(spriteLabel.getSprites())
    }
    
    func spriteKitAnimation(sprites:[SKSpriteNode]) {

      let moveSeq = SKAction.sequence([
         SKAction.moveBy(CGVector(dx:30,dy:0), duration: 0.3),
         SKAction.moveBy(CGVector(dx:0,dy:30), duration: 0.5),
         SKAction.moveBy(CGVector(dx:-30,dy:0), duration: 0.2),
         SKAction.moveBy(CGVector(dx:0,dy:-30), duration: 0.3),
         SKAction.moveBy(CGVector(dx:0,dy:30), duration: 0.3),
         SKAction.moveBy(CGVector(dx:0,dy:-30), duration: 0.4),
      ])
      moveSeq.timingMode = .EaseIn

      let rotationSeq = SKAction.sequence([
         SKAction.rotateToAngle(CGFloat(M_PI), duration: 1),
         SKAction.rotateToAngle(0, duration: 2.3),
      ])
      rotationSeq.timingFunction = snappyEaseOut

      var delay = 0.0
      for glyphSprite in sprites {
         let delaySeq = SKAction.sequence([Act.waitForDuration(delay),rotationSeq])
         let group = SKAction.group([moveSeq,delaySeq])
         group.timingMode = .EaseInEaseOut
         let repeatAction = SKAction.repeatActionForever(group)
         glyphSprite.runAction(repeatAction)
         delay += 0.01
      }
   }

   func snappyEaseOut (t:Float) -> Float {
      return (t == 1.0) ? t : 1.0 - pow(2.0, -10.0 * t)
   }
}

Installation

SwiftyGlyphs is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "SwiftyGlyphs"

Manual Installation (copy 4 files)

SwiftyGlyphs.swift, ImageExtractor.swift, Glyph.swift, SpriteGlyphs.swift

Author & licence

Woodie Dovich, woodiewebsafe@gmail.com

SwiftyGlyphs is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.