Interactive ViewController transition triggered by pinch and pan gesture recognisers simultaneously

I have two viewControllers:

ViewController1

A complex stack of sub viewcontrollers with somewhere in the middle an imageView

ViewController2

A scrollView with an imageView embedded in it

What I'm trying to achieve is a transition between the two viewControllers which gets triggered by pinching the imageView from viewController 1 causing it to zoom in and switch over to viewController 2. When the transition has ended, the imageView should be zoomed in as far as it's been zoomed during the pinch gesture triggered transition.

At the same time I want to support panning the image while performing the zoom transition so that just like with the zoom, the image in the end state will be transformed to the place it's been panned to.

So far I've tried the Hero transitions pod and a custom viewController transitions I wrote myself. The problem with the hero transitions is that the image doesn't properly get snapped to the end state in the second viewController. The problem I had with the custom viewController transition is that I couldn't get both zooming and panning to work at the same time.

Does anyone have an idea of how to implement this in Swift? Help is much appreciated.

The question can be divided in to two:

1. How to implement pinch zoom and dragging using pan gesture on an imageView
2. How to present a view controller with one of its subviews (imageView in vc2) positioned same as a subview (imageView in vc1) in the presenting view controller

Pinch gesture zoom: Pinch zooming is easier to implement using UIScrollView as it supports it out of the box with out a need to add the gesture recogniser. Create a scrollView and add the view you'd like to zoom with pinch as its subview (scrollView.addSubview(imageView)). Don't forget to add the scrollView itself as well (view.addSubview(scrollView)).

Configure the scrollView's min and max zoom scales: scrollView.minimumZoomScale, scrollView.maximumZoomScale. Set a delegate for scrollView.delegate and implement UIScrollViewDelegate:

func viewForZooming(in scrollView: UIScrollView) -> UIView?

Which should return your imageView in this case and,

Also conform to UIGestureRecognizerDelegate and implement:

func gestureRecognizer(_ gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer, shouldRecognizeSimultaneouslyWith otherGestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) -> Bool

Which should return true. This is the key that allows us have pan gesture recogniser work with the internal pinch gesture recogniser.

Pan gesture dragging: Simply create a pan gesture recogniser with a target and add it to your scroll view scrollView.addGestureRecognizer(pan).

Handling gestures: Pinch zoom is working nicely by this stage except you'd like to present the second view controller when pinching ends. Implement one more UIScrollViewDelegate method to be notified when zooming ends:

func scrollViewDidEndZooming(_ scrollView: UIScrollView, with view: UIView?, atScale scale: CGFloat)

And call your method that presents the detail view controller presentDetail(), we'll implement it in a bit.

Next step is to handle the pan gesture, I'll let the code explain itself:

// NOTE: Do NOT set from anywhere else than pan handler.
private var initialTouchPositionY: CGFloat = 0
private var initialTouchPositionX: CGFloat = 0

@objc func panned(_ pan: UIPanGestureRecognizer) {

    let y = pan.location(in: scrollView).y
    let x = pan.location(in: scrollView).x

    switch pan.state {
    case .began:
        initialTouchPositionY = pan.location(in: imageView).y
        initialTouchPositionX = pan.location(in: imageView).x
    case .changed:
        let offsetY = y - initialTouchPositionY
        let offsetX = x - initialTouchPositionX
        imageView.frame.origin = CGPoint(x: offsetX, y: offsetY)
    case .ended:
        presentDetail()
    default: break
    }
}

The implementation moves imageView around following the pan location and calls presentDetail() when gesture ends.

Before we implement presentDetail(), head to the detail view controller and add properties to hold imageViewFrame and the image itself. Now in vc1, we implement presentDetail() as such:

private func presentDetail() {
    let frame = view.convert(imageView.frame, from: scrollView)
    let detail = DetailViewController()
    detail.imageViewFrame = frame
    detail.image = imageView.image

    // Note that we do not need the animation. 
    present(detail, animated: false, completion: nil)
}

In your DetailViewController, make sure to set the imageViewFrame and the image in e.g. viewDidLoad and you'll be set.

Complete working example:

class ViewController: UIViewController, UIScrollViewDelegate, UIGestureRecognizerDelegate {

    let imageView: UIImageView = UIImageView()
    let scrollView: UIScrollView = UIScrollView()

    lazy var pan: UIPanGestureRecognizer = {
        return UIPanGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(panned(_:)))
    }()

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        imageView.image = // set your image

        scrollView.delegate = self
        scrollView.minimumZoomScale = 1.0
        scrollView.maximumZoomScale = 10.0

        scrollView.addSubview(imageView)
        view.addSubview(scrollView)

        scrollView.frame = view.frame

        let w = view.bounds.width - 30 // padding of 15 on each side
        imageView.frame = CGRect(x: 0, y: 0, width: w, height: w)
        imageView.center = scrollView.center

        scrollView.addGestureRecognizer(pan)
    }

    // NOTE: Do NOT set from anywhere else than pan handler.
    private var initialTouchPositionY: CGFloat = 0
    private var initialTouchPositionX: CGFloat = 0

    @objc func panned(_ pan: UIPanGestureRecognizer) {

        let y = pan.location(in: scrollView).y
        let x = pan.location(in: scrollView).x

        switch pan.state {
        case .began:
            initialTouchPositionY = pan.location(in: imageView).y
            initialTouchPositionX = pan.location(in: imageView).x
        case .changed:
            let offsetY = y - initialTouchPositionY
            let offsetX = x - initialTouchPositionX
            imageView.frame.origin = CGPoint(x: offsetX, y: offsetY)
        case .ended:
            presentDetail()
        default: break
        }
    }

    // MARK: UIScrollViewDelegate

    func viewForZooming(in scrollView: UIScrollView) -> UIView? {
        return imageView
    }

    func scrollViewDidEndZooming(_ scrollView: UIScrollView, with view: UIView?, atScale scale: CGFloat) {
        presentDetail()
    }

    // MARK: UIGestureRecognizerDelegate

    func gestureRecognizer(_ gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer, shouldRecognizeSimultaneouslyWith otherGestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) -> Bool {
        return true
    }

    // MARK: Private

    private func presentDetail() {
        let frame = view.convert(imageView.frame, from: scrollView)
        let detail = DetailViewController()
        detail.imageViewFrame = frame
        detail.image = imageView.image
        present(detail, animated: false, completion: nil)
    }
}

class DetailViewController: UIViewController {

    let imageView: UIImageView = UIImageView()
    var imageViewFrame: CGRect!
    var image: UIImage?

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        imageView.frame = imageViewFrame
        imageView.image = image

        view.addSubview(imageView)
        view.addSubview(backButton)
    }

    lazy var backButton: UIButton = {
        let button: UIButton = UIButton(frame: CGRect(x: 10, y: 30, width: 60, height: 30))
        button.addTarget(self, action: #selector(back(_:)), for: .touchUpInside)
        button.setTitle("back", for: .normal)
        return button
    }()

    @objc func back(_ sender: UIButton) {
        dismiss(animated: false, completion: nil)
    }

}