What’s next
Roadmap
Four tracks run side by side after 0.7.0: character deformation and rigging, a studio pipeline for teams, the look — blending, filters, light, motion and particles — and AI with optional cloud services.
This is a plan, not a promise. Version numbers group planned work; they are not release dates, and the order may change.
Characters Deformation & rigging · 0.8–1.2
Studio Studio pipeline · 0.8–1.4
Look & effects Blending, filters, light, particles · 0.8–1.2
AI & cloud Generated backgrounds, live sessions · 1.3–1.4
Done Partly there Planned
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0.7.0 Today
Drawing, rigging, animation, render with sound, MCP for every command, and a multi-core performance pass.
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Already working
- 360° view dials: turn one control to step a character through front, side and back views Done
- Bone poses per view Done
- Switch layers driven by a view dial Done
- A character control panel Done
- AI agents can run every command over MCP Done
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0.8
Characters Mesh foundation
- Mesh deformation under vector drawings, with stable points and safe project upgrades Done
- Skinning: up to four bones per point, mixed with today’s rigid and flexi binding Done
- Weight painting: paint, add, subtract, smooth, normalize, mirror, with a heat map Done
- Fills and outlines follow the mesh without tearing, in preview and export Done
- Skinning on the GPU, with a CPU fallback Partly there
Skinning runs on the CPU for now, the same in preview and export - Mesh editing, rebinding without losing weights, weight copy, quality profiles, and a deformation check that finds folds Done
Studio Foundation for teams
- Project file with a schema version and automatic migrations Done
- Portable project packages: relative paths, checksums, a missing-file report Done
- Show, sequence and shot identity with frame ranges and handles Done
- Command line to validate, inspect, render and package projects Done
validate, inspect, frame/PNG/GIF render, package and verify - Preflight checks before publishing Done
- Project Doctor: one check for the app, command line and AI agents — missing files, broken rigs, bad meshes and weights, each with a fix Done
Look & effects Look foundation
- Blend modes on every layer and group: multiply, screen, overlay, add, darken, lighten, colour dodge and burn, erase Done
- An effect stack on every layer and group: ordered, switchable, every parameter keyable Done
Outline and tint; more effects arrive with the filters in 0.9
Both tracks
- Reproducible renders: the same project renders the same frames on another machine — later also for baked simulations Partly there
Identical frames on every render, guarded by reference-frame tests; other machines still to be checked
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0.9
Characters Morphs & rig logic
- Morph targets (blendshapes) with keyable weights Done
- Helper bones and constraints: follow, midpoint, look-at, parent space, copy transform Done
Targets within the same skeleton - A driver graph: bone angles, controllers, audio and time drive morphs, visibility and bones Done
Templates for elbows, head turns and talking; older Smart-Bone drives keep working - Pose-space corrective morphs for elbows, knees, neck and head turns Done
Interpolates between recorded poses; older correctives keep working - An ordered deformation stack you can see and reorder Done
- Reference layers: a live copy of a layer placed elsewhere in the layer tree — same drawing and animation as its source, so a part can sit behind the body in one pose and in front of it in another; with keyable layer order Done
Studio Assets & shots
- Versioned publishing of characters, props, backgrounds, rigs, palettes and audio Done
- Linked references with per-shot overrides and explicit upgrades Done
- Dependency graph: find every shot a change affects Done
- A shared cache that stores identical assets once Done
- Show templates and naming rules Done
Frame rate, size and naming rules checked; nothing is renamed automatically
Look & effects Filters & looks
- Filters per layer, group or the whole scene: blur, glow, sharpen, noise, colour adjustments (hue, saturation, levels, curves) Done
- Colour looks with LUTs (.cube), previewed live on the GPU Done
- Custom shaders: write your own GPU effects, with their parameters as keyable controls Done
Checked before use; vignette, posterize and edge-glow examples included
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1.0
Characters Secondary motion
- Spring-follow wobble for bellies, cheeks and hair
- Dynamics on the GPU, with a CPU fallback
- Paint where things wobble and where they stay pinned
- Bake simulations so scrubbing, export and command line match
- A ready-made “jelly” demo scene
Studio Review & teams
- Team mode without a mandatory cloud: file locks and conflict detection
- Frame-accurate review notes, draw-over and A/B compare
- Approval states: work in progress, review, approved, published
- A lightweight shot board with CSV/JSON exchange
Look & effects Light, shadow & motion
- Drop shadows and layer shading
- 3D shadows: a light in the scene, layers cast shadows on the ground and on each other by depth
- Motion blur from real in-between motion (shutter angle, samples), the same in preview and export
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1.1
Characters Shape-preserving physics
- Stretch and bend constraints (XPBD)
- Collisions with circles, capsules and segments
- Clean outlines and line widths under squash and stretch
Studio Interchange & colour
- Editorial round-trip with OpenTimelineIO
- Colour management with OpenColorIO
- OpenEXR image sequences Partly there
ProRes 4444 and WebM with transparency, PNG sequences since 0.6.0 - Audio turnover with stems and handles Partly there
Soundtrack in sync with the timeline since 0.1.0
Look & effects Forces & particles
- Physics forces: gravity and wind with gusts and turbulence, also moving spring-follow hair and cloth
- Particle systems on the GPU: emitters, lifetime, gravity and wind, collisions, vector or image particles, baked for reproducible renders
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1.2
Characters Production presets
- Rig templates: humanoid, face, 360° head, spring hair, soft belly Partly there
360° view dials already work - A performance inspector with timings per pass Partly there
Live stats since 0.7.0 - An example production shot, built end to end
Studio Render at scale
- Frame-range render workers with retries
- Optional render-farm adapters (OpenCue, Deadline)
- Job metrics and provenance
Look & effects Animated effects
- Animated and procedural effects: wiggle and noise on any parameter, effects driven by audio and drivers
- Effect presets: rain, snow, fire, smoke, sparkles, speed lines, impact frames
Both tracks
- A scriptable pipeline API: typed commands, batch transactions, dry runs, clear errors and event hooks Partly there
Every command is undoable and available over MCP since 0.1.0
- Rig templates: humanoid, face, 360° head, spring hair, soft belly Partly there
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1.3
Studio Studio integrations & security
- OpenAssetIO prototype
- Production tracker connectors: CSV/JSON and webhooks first, ShotGrid, ftrack or Kitsu optional
- Optional single sign-on, roles and scoped tokens
- Audit trail for publishing, approvals and render inputs
- OpenUSD feasibility study
AI & cloud AI backgrounds
- Generate backgrounds from a prompt into an image layer at the project’s size; the prompt and seed stay with the layer to regenerate later
- Edit by prompt: repaint a selected area (inpainting)
- Extend a picture beyond its edges (outpainting) — wider backgrounds for camera pans
- Your choice of service or a local model with your own keys; nothing is sent without asking
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1.4
Studio Production readiness
- Migrations, upgrade dry runs and rollback
- Benchmarks for studio-scale workloads Partly there
Benchmarks for 1, 5 and 20 characters since 0.7.0, with skinned meshes and effects since 0.8 - Backup and recovery
- Pipeline SDK and a reference setup
AI & cloud Live sessions
- Stream the canvas live — others follow the stage as you draw and animate
- Chat in the session, and notes pinned to a frame and a spot on the stage
- The cloud stays optional: everything works without it, sessions are by invitation