iPhone “slide to unlock” animation

Question

Any ideas as to how Apple implemented the \"slide to unlock\" (also, \"slide to power off\" is another identical example) animation?

I thought about some sort of ani

Answer 1

You can use the kCGTextClip drawing mode to set the clipping path and then fill with a gradient.

// Get Context
CGContextRef context = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
// Set Font
CGContextSelectFont(context, "Helvetica", 24.0, kCGEncodingMacRoman);
// Set Text Matrix
CGAffineTransform xform = CGAffineTransformMake(1.0,  0.0,
                                                0.0, -1.0,
                                                0.0,  0.0);
CGContextSetTextMatrix(context, xform);
// Set Drawing Mode to set clipping path
CGContextSetTextDrawingMode (context, kCGTextClip);
// Draw Text
CGContextShowTextAtPoint (context, 0, 20, "Gradient", strlen("Gradient")); 
// Calculate Text width
CGPoint textEnd = CGContextGetTextPosition(context);
// Generate Gradient locations & colors
size_t num_locations = 3;
CGFloat locations[3] = { 0.3, 0.5, 0.6 };
CGFloat components[12] = { 
    1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5,
    1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0,
    1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 0.5,
};
// Load Colorspace
CGColorSpaceRef colorspace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
// Create Gradient
CGGradientRef gradient = CGGradientCreateWithColorComponents (colorspace, components,
                                                              locations, num_locations);
// Draw Gradient (using clipping path
CGContextDrawLinearGradient (context, gradient, rect.origin, textEnd, 0);
// Cleanup (exercise for reader)

Setup an NSTimer and vary the values in locations, or use CoreAnimation to do the same.