Comment by jchw
1 day ago
I think you are taking it a step too far. First of all, unlike film, we are not recording reality in any way, every pixel that appears on screen is there because we put it there. I'd argue a closer parallel is a cartoon. And something like cartoon inbetweening is not an example of imperfect frames. These are in fact, perfect and even carefully crafted frames.
It's one thing if the frame halfway through an animation looks a bit "funny", but is still completely logically correct. It is another if the intermediate state of the animation legitimately doesn't make any sense and is just the result of not really caring about what actually goes on during the animation. In that case I'd almost rather just not have the animation at all, or just have a simpler one.
We do this in cartoons as well. Check out this Spider-Verse animator breaking down a shot of Gwen drumming. [1] If you look at individual frames, there are all sorts of details that make no logical sense. In one frame, she actually has three hands! But it looks great if you see it in motion.
[1] https://xcancel.com/hf_rosa/status/1089675426312552449
That is exactly what I'm talking about, though. This is not what is happening with buggy computer UI animations: these are not carefully crafted to look better in motion, they're actually only considered acceptable because it's kind of difficult to see the mistakes in the animation. Whereas cartoon animating, you could argue the details don't make logical sense, but that's only to someone who doesn't understand the principles of animation. You can't explain away glitchy weird UI transitions this way because they're pretty much universally not intentional. They're usually just taking the technical path of least resistance.
I think there's also a major difference between the kind of weird intermediate frames that are acceptable for a highly-stylized cartoon at 24FPS and the kind of intermediate frames that are acceptable for a UI running at 120FPS.
No one is defending outright buggy animations. OP is just saying the idea that every frame should make logical sense on its own ignores how animation actually works (and they're correct).
That's not what TFA is about though.
Look at the youtube example - it has two pieces of UI animating from from a start point to an end point, and the paths are such that they momentarily overlap. There's nothing buggy or janky about it in motion; TFA is just saying that if you ignore the motion and take a screenshot mid-transition it looks odd. Same complaint as what GP describes, and silly for the same reasons.
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Or "squash and stretch" [0] frames cartoons and 3D modeling, where people prefer the final result even though individual frames can be grotesque.
That said, I think it's fair to hold most practical UIs to a different standard. Prioritizing amusement leads to a lot of strange non-ergonomic places.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squash_and_stretch
Of course, even real life can look quite grotesque if you look at it in slow motion, as things get deformed by forces [0], so it makes sense animations would need to simulate that.
[0] https://youtu.be/On1CsbTwlDs?si=0UZADk-jtJvOQGww&t=33
GGP's point is that broken in-between frames are everywhere, in films and animations, and this is a total nothingburger.
GP's point is that those frames aren't broken, but they're intentional and calculated, and so they're not even relevant here.
Oh boy, I wouldn't use Spider-verse animation as an example. I personally hate it. When I saw the first movie I thought something was wrong and asked the staff if I had mistakenly been put in a 3D movie without the 3D glasses.
Impressive and creative yes. Viewable? Not to me.
We're not recording reality, but we're trying to create convincing and aesthetically pleasing effects for brains that evolved in reality.
The point is that if a pixel is in a nonsensical place the only thing that is to blame for that is the code. It doesn't matter if it looks pleasing; there's no good reason for something to be wrong just because it looks acceptable.
If you can't even guarantee internally consistent state then good luck communicating your "convincing and aesthetically pleasing effapt update && apt upgradeects" successfully.
Frame transitions in film do not in fact exist in reality. They are added in the editing room or through manipulation of the recording mechanism fyi.