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Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

taotajima.jp

51–60 of 64 posts

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#51
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash has never been this smooth.

For equal amount of animations Flash is smoother than most HTML5 crap. HTML5 can not even streaming vector animations.

Which is why there are so many braggy blog posts by engineering teams when they manage to build 60fps animations on modern browsers. I remember one article from Flipboard about getting native-like flip animations to work on their mobile site. They made it sound like they'd cracked cold fusion.

Despite all of the improvements in browser support for JS/CSS driven animation since the glory days of Flash 10 years ago, the web seems more static and text/image heavy than ever.

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#52
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flash has never been this smooth. Yes it has. You could even create your own shaders/filters with a specialized language. Frankly it's great that things like that can be done with js/html but people did way more impressive things 15 years ago. I'm really not impressed at all, personally.

Well, show me a link then. We can still run it (not for long). I’m talking about hardware acceleration, antialias, no dropped frame and in sync with the monitor’s refresh rate. Even a simple CSS3 animation beats the shit out of Flash in this regard.

Sorry dude - you have no clue what was posible with stage3d, pixelbender etc.

Take a look here if u care: https://thefwa.com/

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#53
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash has never been this smooth.

Everyone had a bad habit of leaving the FPS at 25 (iirc that was the default. Maybe 24). I wonder how smooth it can be if that was fixed and the same engineering went into it that goes into GSAP? Actually I don’t really wonder; Flash is well dead, but it’s interesting to ponder!

The default was 12, then later 24 IIRC. I believe the highest you could set was 30, though maybe that's changed in recent years.

I work for a company that does both SVG+JS and Flash media, still. The web-tech media is smoother (because 60fps), but the Flash media has a much higher complexity ceiling — which is why we haven't 100% switched to the web yet (and because our clients still prefer and pay for the Flash stuff, sigh)

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#54

Eventhough the transition effect is interesting on first sight, using it more than the initial few seconds made me feel uncomfortable. Can't really pin point it, but I think it's mainly to do with the title always shifting and me having to refocus and trying to read it. Too much stuff is moving at once - you have the videos in the background and in the forground other stuff is moving too - I think that's what's causi…

I'd have to disagree with all of those points. The background transitions first, then the foreground content transitions afterwards; they're not all moving at once. The foreground content then remains stable once the transition finishes. Perhaps some opacity could be applied to the foreground content to discourage users from trying to read while it transitions.

And it makes sense to have the history change with each slide state. Describing it as a 'state' upholds that point. The back button even works with it, which is my main gripe when single-page apps don't 'pollute' the browser's history.

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#55
post #13

I used to make these things with AS3 some 10 years ago... Is there a market for these types of websites? Maybe I should create some kind of "interactive web experience" and see if I can get some clients.

Flash has never been this smooth.

I work for a company that does both SVG+JS and Flash media, and there are some legit cases where we still choose to use Flash, because SVG can't reach the same performance — anything with lots of animated gradients, deep scene hierarchies, transparencies, masking, filter effects, or high vertex counts. SVG rendering in all browsers not named "Chrome" is crazy slow, and in Chrome SVG rendering is not pretty when you look closely at it.

But SVG is the only browser graphics tech with excellent tooling for illustrators (namely, Illustrator). So we've been forced to change both our art style, and our rendering stack, to deal with the death of Flash.

That's life in the tech industry, fine. But it's misguided to say that the browser is unequivocally better or worse performing than Flash. It really depends what you're making, and how you make it.

It's totally possible to make something on the web that looks and performs better than it would in Flash. But you have to put strict restrictions on what kind of art you use, and what technology you use to render that art, which puts restrictions on your production process, which sucks.

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#57

Extracting one part of a conversation I had on Reddit with someone who's worked with GreenSock -- "GSAP is fairly standard on commercial sites. It’s the most mature and cross tested animation option, but it’s best features aren’t free. I’d argue there’s a good reason for that though, because the codebase is pretty impressive and can’t be cheap to maintain. Most people say the biggest advantage of GSAP is the timeline…

Anyone with suggestions on using greensock with react?

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#58
In addition to the animation, I liked the "immersive" feel of the main pages. This effect seems to be created by allowing the navigation elements to "frame" the entire screen and then placing a single piece of content as the focal point in the center of the screen.

Certainly some interesting UI / UX takeaways here.

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#59
I think that for me, one of the most interesting distinctions with such a visual, design-forward experience is the line between what's possible with WebGL animation and what's really just high-production quality video playing in the background. Where most of us developers get stuck approaching this is that we don't have the video assets and design language established, so we see it as just a bunch of tools that you could theoretically put together to do... something arbitrary, and in the future.

Whereas, if a design lead came to you with a strong design/brand and video content, it's really nice to know that the tools exist to make such a thing possible.

You don't have to go crazy on the transitions and scroll jacking, either. Subtle use of these tools can produce humbling results.

Re: Tao Tajima – WebGL and GreenSock Animation

#60
post #49

I get the type of customers that need this sort of site, it's artsy, unique and all, but to be honest this could be the poster child for "UX don'ts"

True,but I work in a UX role and for a moderate-to-large website, "good UX" means a basic responsive design with a logical information architecture and navigation that optimizes conversion (e.g. product purchases). Good UX is business-driven and businesses are often boring. I'm not a huge fan of this particular design but I do appreciate the effort they put into showcasing GSAP's capabilities. The web could use more…

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