So I am about to start a project for an application (Not a game application) that requires a lot of animation. For example a lot of pie and bar charts that animate on the screen.
If I use cocos2d am I still able to use UI elements such as UITableView, UIButton, UISegmentedControl, etc? Can you combine Cocos2d with normal iOS UI Elements on the same view?
Which one is better for creating simple animations?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using each for a non-game project?
There is the ability to combine Cocos2d and UIKit, but I don’t know to what extent you can take it. Check out this tutorial on combining them: http://www.raywenderlich.com/4817/how-to-integrate-cocos2d-and-uikit
I’m fairly new to iOS programming and did the same research you are currently doing for my project which is very animation heavy, but not a game. I found much more information, forums and tutorials on doing animations with Cocos2d than I did for Core Animation. Not to say it’s not out there, or that 1 is necessarily better than the other for what you’re trying to accomplish, just my 2 cents and several weeks of Googling.