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2.6 Release Notes

Release date: 4th February 2026

New Features​

General​

  • Editable Motion Paths - manipulate motion paths in the Viewport.
  • Enable Color Management for Scenes. See Color Management.
  • Pivot tool - The addition of the Manipulator and editable Motion Paths has meant a new tool is required to edit pivots. Note that this replaces the previous workflows when using the Select tool.
  • Manipulator - A new 3d-like Viewport manipulator for the Select tool. It's used with the new Lattice and Lattice Controller and can be optionally enabled for use with Shape Layers.
  • File > Reduce Scene - Remove any unused Compositions and Assets from the Scene.
  • New Systems Diagnostics window available via the Help menu. This can be used to help debug any issues and share useful information in support tickets when troubleshooting.

Shapes​

Behaviours​

  • Lattice - Deform Shapes using a flexible grid of control points.
  • Four Point Warp - Deform Shapes using a four corner warp with bézier handles.
  • Path Relax - Move path points away from each other.
  • Path Average - Smooth Path points by averaging their positions.
  • Mesh Solver - Connect deformers to create drawing machines or iterative effects like differential growth.

Utilities​

Effects​

Scripting​

API​

Cavalry​

Deformer​

Script UIs​

Enhancements​

  • Performance improvements - some complex Scenes now playback at up to 5x faster.
  • New Matte tab for Filters allowing for other Shapes to be used as a matte for the Filter's effect.
  • When dragging one Shape onto another Shape, holding Shift will reset the child's transform meaning it will 'snap' to its parent's position, rotation and scale.
  • The Viewport options for Motion Paths have been moved to a dedicated button.
  • The Knot Behaviour has a new Geometric mode for use with simulations.
  • New Align Animation options for Auto-Animate expanding on what was Offset by In Frame.
  • Improvements have been made to the resulting bézier handles created when adding keyframes to the start/end of an animation.
  • ui.Modal() is now supported outside of normal UI scripts.
  • New Apply Mode for Filter Masks.
  • Inline Flags for Regex.
  • ui.ColorPalette() now renders a checkerboard for hex colours with alpha.
  • 16-bit Viewport. This can be set via Preferences.
  • New Rotation attribute for the Image Shader.
  • Gradient along a Path now supports tapered Strokes.
  • A new Spread attribute for the Inner Shadow Filter.
  • Sub-Mesh can now position pivots by aligning them to the bounding boxes of the child-meshes.
  • Improvements to Playback Caching:
    • Caching will abort if the available RAM becomes too low.
    • Caching is now represented in the Timeline with a purple bar.
    • The cache is used when scrubbing the Timeline.
    • RAM usage reduced by around 85%.
  • The background UI for the number that represents the index of an Array now dynamically resizes to fit the number of digits of the highest index. This also now supports the UI Font Size = Large Preference.
  • Cavalry’s JavaScript engine has been upgraded to V8 12.4, adding support for ECMAScript 2024 features including Array.fromAsync, Set methods (union, intersection, difference), and iterator helpers.
  • Dependency Graph:
    • Backdrops - Create a container to visually group and move several Layers together.
    • Wire Styles - Set the style of the connecting wires between Layer ports.
    • Mini-Map - Show/hide a Mini-Map of the window which can be used to navigate the graph.
    • Bookmarks - Save the current view of the graph.
    • Show/hide grid - Show/hide the background grid.
  • Forge Dynamics:
    • New modes for breakable Constraints.
    • Tension and Damping for the Pin Constraint.
    • New Complex Polygon Collision Shape Type bringing concave shape support.
    • New Soft Body Collision Shape Type.
    • Collision Groups - Assign collision groups by entering comma separated strings (e.g. text, rocks) to filter the affect Fields have on individual bodies or how bodies interact with other bodies.
  • New Threshold attribute for Subdivide.
  • New Radius Mode and Minimum/Maximum Angle attributes for Bevel.
  • Color Names - it's now possible to enter the names of the current Library Palette and any Project Palettes into a hex field and for those labels to resolve as the corresponding hex value.
  • New Orientation attribute for Rectangle Pattern Shape. Note that Bar Size has also been renamed to Dynamic Bar Size.
  • Sampling Quality for the Bulge and Spherise Filters.
  • General improvements to Viewport rendering and Filters.
  • New Arc Angle Mode for Extend Open Paths.
  • New custom presets for the Graph attribute.
  • New Oklab and LCH Interpolations for the Gradient Shader, Multi-Point Gradient Shader and Gradient Map Filter.
  • Importing MP4 files on macOS now uses hardware acceleration.

Notable Bug Fixes​

  • A macOS issue where double clicking a .cv file opened Cavalry but did not load the Scene has (finally!) been resolved.
  • Nudging a Footage Shape (video with audio) or a Sound Behaviour in the Scene Tree using the +/- hotkeys now affects the Frame Offset as well as the clip.
  • An issue resulting in rich text edits not saving with the Scene has been resolved.
  • A regression affecting the position of Trails for an aligned Shape has been resolved.
  • An issue affecting replacing the first Deformer in the list via the Scene Tree has been resolved.
  • An issue meaning multiple callbacks were not firing has been resolved.
  • When exporting to Lottie, multiple assets are now copied to the images/ directory as expected.
  • Cmd/Ctrl + F will now fit any visible animation curves in the Graph Editor.
  • Extend Open Paths when Angle Mode is set to Path Curvature now works correctly.
  • Disabling the Start/End of an Extend Open Paths when Angle Mode is set to Arc now works correctly.
  • Fixed an issue with the Viewport Clipping Mask preview drawing in the wrong place.
  • A crash using regex with cyrillic characters has been resolved.
  • It's now possible to import an asset that is also in use with an imported Reference.
  • A crash related to unchecking Combine Meshes for Extrude is resolved.
  • An issue with a Camera Guide's viewport draw has been resolved.
  • Apply Text Material is now working again.
  • Connecting a Pathfinder to a Shape's Position attribute no longer causes a crash.
  • Adding 4 x Inner Shadow Filters to a Shape no longer causes the Shape to disappear.
  • Using Option/Alt + drag to duplicate a Gradient's Color Stop no longer triggers a crash.
  • A 'ghost' window no longer appears when using the Add Layers popover with Live Mode active.
  • An issue with Flatten Shape Layers hiding materials in certain scenarios has been resolved.
  • A regression meaning the Graph Editor was not previewing looping animation curves where the first and last keyframes have identical values has been resolved.
  • Reveal Composition in Assets Window will now open any parent Asset Groups if the related Composition is within one.
  • Several issues related to 'specific indices' and mixing Text Backgrounds with Style Behaviours have been resolved.
  • Render Queue Items are no longer included when importing Scenes or References. These were appearing as 'orphaned' Layers in the Scene Window.
  • When updating the Excel Sheet of a Spreadsheet Utility, the Row Count and Column Count now also updates.
  • Forge Dynamics no longer prints debug messages to the terminal during playback when a Field is connected.
  • Drag/drop Layers from the Add Layers popover ( Cmd/Ctrl + .) has been restored.
  • Renaming Layers where the label is elided (...) is now working as expected.
  • Attribute Editor UIs for Array Layers no longer change their vertical position when the cursor moves across windows.
  • The way a ColorPalette fills the width of a UI has been improved.

Notes​

  • The Create Editable Primitives menu item has been moved from the Shape to the Create menu.
  • Forge Dynamics - 'size' calculations for Shapes containing child-meshes (e.g. Text) were incorrect meaning their Density was wrong. This has been corrected but is considered a bug and so backwards compatibility has not been added. Legacy scenes may require Density values adjusting.
  • The Linear Gamma option has been removed from the Composition Settings and the Color Filter option has been removed from Shaders. If these options were in use, then enabling Color Management in Preferences and setting the Working Color Space to Linear sRGB will match the legacy settings. Shaders will automatically respect the Working Color Space.

Web Player​

  • The Web Player (beta) has been updated to support Cavalry 2.6.