dotween

DOTween Animation Library

DOTween (Demigiant) is the standard tweening library for Unity. It provides fluent, chainable methods for animating transforms, UI elements, materials, and arbitrary values with minimal boilerplate.

Basic Tweens

Every shortcut method follows the pattern target.DO[Property](endValue, duration).

// Transform tweens
transform.DOMove(new Vector3(0, 5, 0), 1f);           // World position
transform.DOLocalMove(new Vector3(0, 5, 0), 1f);      // Local position
transform.DOScale(Vector3.one * 1.5f, 0.3f);          // Scale
transform.DORotate(new Vector3(0, 180, 0), 0.5f);     // Euler rotation
transform.DOLocalRotateQuaternion(targetRot, 0.5f);   // Quaternion rotation

// UI tweens (CanvasGroup, Image, etc.)
canvasGroup.DOFade(0f, 0.5f);                         // Alpha fade
image.DOColor(Color.red, 0.2f);                       // Color change
image.DOFillAmount(1f, 1f);                            // Fill bar
rectTransform.DOAnchorPos(Vector2.zero, 0.3f);        // UI position

// Material tweens — NEVER use renderer.material (clones material, breaks batching).
// Use MaterialPropertyBlock for per-instance changes, or tween a shared material if all instances share the tween.
private static readonly int ColorId = Shader.PropertyToID("_Color");
private MaterialPropertyBlock _propBlock;

Color from = Color.black;
DOTween.To(() => from, c =>
{
    from = c;
    _propBlock.SetColor(ColorId, c);
    renderer.SetPropertyBlock(_propBlock);
}, Color.white, 0.1f);

// Arbitrary value tween
float value = 0f;
DOTween.To(() => value, x => value = x, 10f, 1f);

Sequence Composition

Sequences let you chain, overlap, and orchestrate multiple tweens as a single unit.

Sequence seq = DOTween.Sequence();

// Append — plays after previous tween finishes
seq.Append(transform.DOMove(targetPos, 0.5f));
seq.Append(transform.DOScale(Vector3.one * 1.2f, 0.3f));

// Join — plays at the same time as the previous tween
seq.Append(transform.DOMove(targetPos, 0.5f));
seq.Join(transform.DORotate(new Vector3(0, 360, 0), 0.5f));

// Insert — plays at a specific time position in the sequence
seq.Insert(0.2f, canvasGroup.DOFade(1f, 0.3f));

// Intervals and callbacks
seq.PrependInterval(0.5f);                             // Delay before sequence starts
seq.AppendInterval(0.2f);                              // Pause between tweens
seq.AppendCallback(() => Debug.Log("Done!"));
seq.InsertCallback(1f, () => PlaySound());

// Sequence settings
seq.SetLoops(3, LoopType.Yoyo);
seq.SetUpdate(true);                                   // Unscaled time
seq.OnComplete(() => Destroy(gameObject));