Cavalry 2.0. Sweating the small stuff.
Beyond the headline features new to Cavalry 2.0 there have been various smaller updates and improvements to speed up your workflow and open up new possibilities.
Check out the release notes for a full list of all the updates but here are some notable improvements.
Motion Paths
If you’re old enough to remember rolling a toy car down a slope with some ticker tape behind it during a physics lesson at school, then you’ll recognise a Motion Path!
Motion Paths offer a way to preview the position and speed of a Shape in the Viewport. A dot is drawn to represent the position of a Shape on each frame of its animation. The distance the dots are from each other can then be used as a representation of the Shape’s speed. For example, points far apart from each other indicate a fast moving object (it’s moving a large distance over a single frame). This is particular useful for visualising easing – when a Shape’s acceleration increases or decreases gradually.
Various options for how Motion Paths are drawn can be found in the Viewport settings (the cog icon at the bottom).
Sorting in the Assets Window
It’s now possible to sort assets (images, compositions, groups, data etc) in the Assets Window by Name and Type.
Disabling Attribute Expressions
Cavalry 1.3 introduced Attribute Expressions. They can be added to Attributes with input connections to perform mathematical operations on the values. As a simple example, let’s say you wanted a Shape to move vertically at twice the rate it moves horizontally. This can be set up by connecting position.x to position.y, right clicking on the Attribute, choosing Add Expression… and entering *2 into the Y input. Now the input values from position.x will be multiplied by 2 for position.y.
Cavalry 2.0 introduces the ability to temporarily disable these expressions for checking how the resulting values affect your Composition. Just open an expression by clicking on the π icon and use the checkboxes to enable/disable them.
Font previews
Selecting a font for your creative just got easier with font previews in the Attribute Editor. Now, when you open the Font menu on the Text Shape, each font appears in the list as a preview of how it will render in the Viewport.
Auto-complete hex codes
Entering partial valid hex codes will now auto-complete. For example, entering AB and hitting Return will now result in #ABABAB.
Group selection
Cavalry offers the ability to place Layers into a hierarchy. This means Shapes can be the children of other Shapes creating an interesting paradigm when making selections in the Viewport. This interaction has been overhauled in Cavalry 2.0 meaning you can now select the entire Group or, by holding the S key, select any of its children. Pre-Selection Highlighting (see below) helps identify which Shape will be selected. You can also double click a Shape to drill down to that level. Where a Group has multiple hierarchies within it, once a child is selected, any siblings (Layers on the same level) can be easily selected with a single click.
You can also right click a Shape within a Group to select a parent within that hierarchy.
Pre-Selection Highlighting
When hovering the cursor over Shapes in the Viewport, Pre-Selection Highlighting appears. In previous versions, where artwork being generated contained a high density of Shapes (looking at you Duplicator!), this could create a distracting layer of visual noise when interacting with the Composition. In Cavalry 2.0, the level of detail displayed is now adaptive to the complexity of the Shapes being hovered. For example, rather than highlighting every character in a paragraph, Pre-Selection Highlighting may only show bounding boxes for the words or the entire Text Shape.
Constrain Proportions
The Attribute Editor now includes the ability to constrain values so that when you interact with one, the other will increase/decrease proportionally. For example, if the Width of an Ellipse is 100px and its Height is 150px, when Constrain Proportions is active, doubling the Width, will also double the Height.
Where applicable, a link icon will appear on control rows with two dimensions. Click it to enable the constraint.
Connect multiple Layers at once
It’s now much simpler to create multiple common connections in one interaction. To do this, select several common Layers and hold the Option/Alt key as you make the connection. A connection will be made to each of the selected Layers.
Inline Magic Easing
Double clicking a keyframe in either the Time Editor or Graph Editor will now pop up a window which includes access to the Magic Easing options.
Attribute Editor improvements
The Attribute Editor has enjoyed various improvements including:
- Sticky headers — these are labels that appear to indicate when a Layer‘s UI is only partially visible. Clicking on a sticky header will animate the Attribute Editor to that Layer.
- Animated scrolling — when double clicking Layers to load them into the Attribute Editor, the list will now animate vertically for a smoother experience.
- Header colours — more colour has been added to a Layer’s header for easier visual scanning.
- Dividers — horizontal dividers have been added to visually group common attributes.
- Improved indenting — where Layer’s include Generators (e.g. a Duplicator’s Distribution) their indentation is now more visually uniform.
- Show/hide attributes — certain Layers now show or hide Attributes depending on the state of other Attributes. The new Auto-Animate Behaviour is a good example.
- Inline help — help messages now appear within the UI with hints and tips.
Connections in the Viewport
Connections can now be made by dropping a connection onto a Shape in the Viewport. Simply pick up a connection from the Scene Window or Attribute Editor and drop it onto a Shape in the Viewport. A list will appear containing the compatible Attributes just like they do in the Scene Window.
Flow Rows/Columns
The Grid Distribution now has a new option to adjust the order points are generated in. Points can now be set to flow in columns (then rows) or rows (then columns).
SVG assets hierarchy
When pasting in artwork from apps that export layered SVG (Illustrator/Affinity Designer) into Cavalry, the original artwork’s names and layers are now reflected in the resulting Shapes. Note that Figma do not export SVG to layers.
Procedural Animation Curves
When a Shape is being driven by a Behaviour, the resulting animation curve can now be previewed in the Graph Editor. In the example below, a Noise Behaviour has been connected to the position.x Attribute of a Shape. By selecting the Shape, its movement can be seen in the Graph Editor.
And there’s a lot more to discover! Check out this great video with more tips and tricks from Alex Amor.
