General 2d tweening question

I'm coming to Unity from simple 2D game engines like Corona SDK, where tweens are done by calling transition functions with some params. From what I've read, 2D tweening in Unity is done either with lerping or by using a 3rd party tweening engine. I'm curious to know, do devs usually choose between lerping/tweening engines just by preference or are there certain cases where one works better than the other?

 

I use a free plugin called iTween! Its awesome and easy to use. Basically it adds tons of functions which allow you to do simple smooth movement, rotation and scaling.

Try it out!

 

Seconded. iTween is a must have and handles many simple animation use cases way better than Unity's built-in animation system does. You can get it in the asset store.

 

Interesting — I never knew there was a need for something like that. Between Lerp, SmoothDamp, and good ol' fashioned math, it seems like you can accomplish any sort of "tweening" you might want with only a line or two of code.

But this may be a case where I've been doing it a certain way for so long that I don't even realize there might be an easier way. I'll check out iTween just to see what I may have been missing!

 

iTween is fire and forget, Lerp et cetera aren't, which will save you a couple of lines of code.

 

So it seems like you just choose one or the other? I was just afraid that if I went with a tween engine i might be missing some commonly used functionality and have to end up having to combine it with lerping. But I'll check out this iTween, it seems more similar to what I'm used to.

 

You can animate some things with iTween, others with Lerp and/or the Unity animation system. So, if you find that iTween can't handle a more complicated task, you can switch to another system for just this one task.

 

The tweening tools available for Unity usually have some extra functions to make movement along curves simpler too.

 

I personally switch between the two, And I don't use iTween; I use DOTween: http://dotween.demigiant.com (it's nicer to use, and is faster).

For things like menu animations, small effects etc i'd use the tweening engine. Then actual gameplay things I'd use leaping, or my own tweening stuff

 

Thanks for pointing out DOTween. I had already made my own tweening/sequencing fire-and-forget classes, but DOTween looks like it may be even better!

 

I use HOTween. Its the pre DOTween, DOTween. Its great. Very light, but super powerful.

Cant wait for DOT to be ready.Will be using on any future projects.

 

It really is amazing, I've created entire games that look like they've had months of development on in like a weekend with the help of DOTween