Skip to main content

1.1 Release Notes

New Features​

  • Lottie export - find it in the File menu or in a Render Queue Item's Formats tab.
  • Layout Shape - Horizontal, Vertical and Grid Layouts. To get started, select some shapes and right click in the viewport and choose one of the 'Embed in Layout' options.
  • Bake Animation - support for baking non-keyframe animation. This can be found under the Animation menu.
  • Skew - you can now skew a Shape as part of its Transform.
  • Visibility Sequence- this Behaviour is useful for connecting to Shape Visibility on a Duplicator in order to sequentially show/hide duplicates.
  • Capsule Primitive- a new primitive available in the Tools window.
  • String Length** Utility - counts the number of characters in a string an outputs it as a number.
  • Composition Preferences - you can now set a default resolution, frame rate and composition range via the new tab in the Preferences window.
  • Control Centre window - promote any attribute from the Attribute Editor to this window to create a common place to access important controls in your scene. You can add and remove attributes by right clicking on them in the Attribute Editor and selecting Add to Control Centre or Remove from Control Centre.
  • The Apply Layout Deformer lets you take an existing set of meshes (e.g something created by the Duplicator) and arrange them in a layout.
  • PSD Import (flattened).
  • There’s a new Tip Window! You can get at this from the Help menu, or the pill in the Message Bar. You can turn the pill off in the Preferences window.
  • New Rectangle Pattern Shape. You can use this to create dashed patterns of rectangles in a line, or ring. Useful for creating widgets for FUIs, barcodes, pie charts and stacked bar charts.
  • Get Name Utility will get the name of a layer which you can then pipe into something else, e.g a Text shape.
  • You can now paste images into Cavalry. If you have a project set they will be saved into your assets folder, otherwise if your scene is saved the image will be saved at that location. If you have no scene saved the image will be placed on your Desktop.
  • Press the U key to solo selected layers and their animation in the Scene Window.
  • Shuffle Distribution - can be used to reorder the points from any other distribution.
  • Render notifications. Set these up in the Preferences.

Shape Editing​

  • Join Contours - where you have multiple open contours within a path, with any two end points selected, you can now use the Shape > Join Contours command to connect the two.
  • Open Contour - running the Shape > Open Contour command on a closed contour will open it at the ‘first point’. Note - currently requires at least one point to be selected.
  • Set First Point - running Shape > Set First Point will set the last selected point as Point Index: 0. Also available in the right click contextual menu in the Edit Shape tool.
  • Enable/ Disable Bezier Weight Locking - you can now toggle between weighted and unweighted bezier handles (currently only available from the right click contextual menu for Edit Shape).
  • Point Snapping - a new Snapping option in the Viewport. When enabled you can snap to other points on a path (any selected shape will be available for point snapping).
  • Onion Skinning - Editable Shapes now have an Onion Skinning attribute (on by default). With Onion Skinning enabled in the Viewport you can now preview pre/post frames for any path animation. Use the settings in the Viewport button to customise the look.
  • Points Transform Tool - you can now transform selected points with the Edit Shape tool. This is currently enabled using the checkbox in the tool’s options at the top of the Viewport. Note - rotate and scale are not working for path animation.
  • Delete point and edges - Hold alt when deleting a point on a path to split the path at the deleted point. This will open closed paths.
  • Pencil Tool improvements - the Pencil now draws more optimised (cleaner) paths.
  • The Pen tool now supports angle snapping, snapping to the points on the shape being edited, and the other settings in the Snapping popover.
  • Drawing with the Pen/Pencil will now add to any selected Editable Shape.
  • You can now copy/paste paths between Editable Shapes.
  • Make Editable Primitives checkbox in the Shapes menu.
  • Make Editable (Cmd/Ctrl + E) now deletes the original shape.
  • Make Editable copy (Shift + Cmd/Ctrl + E) will preserve the old behaviour of also keeping the original shape.
  • Make Editable will now attempt to preserve materials. This does not currently support shaders.
  • Separate to Editable has been added to the **Shape menu. **

Edit Shape Tool​

  • The Edit Shape tool has been completely re-written and now supports editing very dense paths.
  • The Edit Shape tool has an updated UI. Handles are now circular and points are square for corner points or circular for bezier points.
  • You can now edit multiple shapes at once with the Edit Shape tool.
  • Tooltips for hovered points when in the Edit Shape tool to reveal the point index.
  • The first point in a contour is now highlighted yellow when in the Edit Shape tool.
  • Double clicking on a point will select all the points in that contour.
  • Shift double clicking on a point will select all the points in that path.
  • Points for non-editable shapes have a new look in the Edit Shape tool.
  • You can now select shape points with a Lasso tool (hold alt and drag to draw a selection).
  • The Edit Shape tool now has a contextual menu (more commands being added here).
  • Holding x and clicking on a bezier handle in the Viewport will delete (zero) that handle.

Text Tool​

  • **Per character adjustments. **You can now change the font, style, size and let spacing on a per character basis, just select the characters you're interested in, and make the adjustment.
  • Select tool - with a Text shape selected, pressing enter/return switches to the Text tool.
  • Text tool
    • when in editing mode, clicking outside the box switches to the Select tool
    • when in editing mode, Option/Alt + click outside the box creates a new Text shape
    • with a selection, pressing escape clears the selection.
    • without a selection, pressing escape switches to the Select tool
    • Input Method Editor support.
  • The following platform shortcuts for navigating text in the Text tool are now available:
    • Navigate/ select to the line start/ end
    • Navigate/ select to the next/ prev line
    • Navigate/ select to the next/ prev word
    • Navigate/ select to the document start/ end
    • Navigate/ select to the paragraph start/ end (macOS only)
    • Select all
    • macOS Reference
    • Windows Reference

General Enhancements/ Important fixes​

  • Colours for layer icons!
  • The Transform Tool now works with multiple layers selected. There are two modes available in the Tool settings above the Viewport. Group will transform the selection as a whole (the bounding box will also rotate soon!). Individual will Transform each Shape around its own pivot point.
  • Infinite scrubbing of attribute controls so you're no longer bound by the edge of your monitor when scrubbing attributes.
  • You can now rename Array Attributes. Right click and choose Rename from the contextual menu.
  • Array Attributes (e.g on the Color array) can be reordered via a new Reorder contextual menu (right click on an index).
  • Spreadsheet Lookup now supports mixed data types in the same column.
  • There's now a menu item and shortcut for setting the Composition Alpha to 0. Alt-Ctrl-b on Windows, or Alt-Command-b on macOS.
  • There's a shortcut to toggle Snapping (Cmd/Ctrl + U).
  • **Milliseconds **added to the Local Time utility.
  • Make Editable added to the viewport context menu.
  • You can now right click on the Visibility Bar of an layer in the Time Editor and choose “Always Visible” this will disable the Visibility Bar completely for this layer, meaning it will always be visible. This means for example, you will not need to manage the visibility bar for this item if you increase the comp length.
  • **Select All **and Invert Selection now work with point selections.
  • The Project Settings shortcut is now Option/Alt + P.
  • You can now double click on a layer in the Time Editor to load its UI in the Attribute Editor.
  • The 3D Matrix Deformer can now act on Sub-Meshes, when working in this way it will reorder the meshes in the Viewport by their position.z value.
  • The Sweep Gradient now has a rotation attribute.
  • You can now hold Option/Alt key and drag a Composition from the asset window onto a Composition in the Scene Window to replace it.
  • When grouping layers, the group’s visibility bar will now match the group contents.
  • You can now replace a file asset by right clicking on an asset's attribute row.
  • Alt + [ and alt + ] now truncate the visibility bars of layers.
  • Dragging the end point of a layer will now affect all selected layers.
  • Semicircle option added to the Ellipse shape.
  • New right click > Create Array from Compositions in Group option in the Assets Window.
  • Smart Asset relinking - If you have several missing assets, upon finding one we will search that folder for other missing assets and relink them if any are found.
  • You can now copy keyframes in the Graph Editor.
  • You can now copy/paste Bezier handles in the Graph Editor.
  • Add Background to Selected menu item in the viewport contextual menu.
  • You can now choose ‘Current Frame’ as an option in a Render Queue Item.
  • You can now render a single render item (right click on the Render Queue Item header).
  • Cmd/Ctrl + scroll in the Viewport switches to panning.
  • The Transform Tool now works with multiple layers selected.

What's new in the beta​

  • Noise Shader -
  • Working with audio in Cavalry should be an improved experience. You can now choose the audio track that's playing and mute the audio with the new settings in the viewport control bar.
  • Segment Path deformer. Split a path into several parts, this can be used in combination with the Sub-Mesh Deformer to make multi-coloured dash patterns.
  • Sub-Mesh Bounding Box. Add backgrounds to sub-meshes. Eg. One word of a sentence, or a line of text.
  • The SkSL Shader - Attributes on this Shader can now be float, float2, half4 (colour). Use the + button to add a new attribute and right click on the resulting attribute to rename it; the attributes are available as uniforms (with the same name) in the SkSL code.

Known Issues​

Lottie Export does not support gradient shaders on items inside the Duplicator or Layout Shape.