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The majority of the visual effects used throughout the iOS 4 user interface on the iPad and iPhone are performed using Core Animation. Core Animation provides a simple mechanism for implementing basic animation within an iPad application. If you need a user interface element to gently fade in or out of view, slide smoothly across the screen or gracefully resize or rotate before the user’s eyes these effects can be achieved using Core Animation in just a few lines of code.
In this chapter we will provide an overview of the basics of Core Animation. The next chapter, entitled [[An iOS 4 iPad Core Animation Tutorial (Xcode 4)|An iOS 4 iPad Core Animation Tutorial]], will work through a simple example that animates the rotation, resizing and motion of an object on the iPad screen.
While much can be achieved with Core Animation, however, it should be noted that if you plan to develop a graphics intensive 3D style application then it is more likely that OpenGL ES will need to be used. That said core animation still provides a surprising amount of functionality for very little effort on the part of the iPad application programmer.
