Getting Started ​

This page gets you from a blank project to your first animated composite.

Watch: 15-minute quickstart ​

A guided tour of the interface and building a simple project from scratch — the fastest way to get oriented. The written walkthrough below covers the same ground.

Install ​

Download Caddis from caddis.app — macOS (Apple Silicon), Windows x64, or Linux (AppImage or .tar.gz). Open the app and create a new project — Caddis scaffolds a project folder with renders/, cache/, generated/, and fonts/ subfolders alongside your .caddis file.

Drop font files into fonts/ and they're loaded automatically when the project opens — so a project folder you hand to someone else renders with exactly the typefaces you designed with, no font installation needed.

Staying up to date ​

New versions download quietly in the background, but nothing is installed until you ask. When one is ready, an Update ready pill appears under the top bar — click Review to open the card, which names the waiting version, links to its release notes, and offers two answers:

  • Restart & Install applies it now. You're prompted to save any unsaved work first, then Caddis restarts into the new version.
  • Not Now installs nothing and stops asking until the next time you open Caddis. Dismissing the pill with ✕ does the same.

Check for Updates… (under Caddis on macOS, Help on Windows and Linux) works at any time, and re-opens the card if an update is already waiting.

On Linux this applies to the AppImage build. Tarball and AUR installs update through the channel they came from. If an automatic update ever fails, the latest build is always downloadable from caddis.app.

The interface at a glance ​

Caddis is organized around a few panels:

  • Viewer — the canvas. Shows the rendered frame, gizmos, and on-screen tools. See Canvas Navigation for pan / zoom and viewport modes.
  • Timeline — layers, clips, keyframes, and the playhead. It has Layers, Dope Sheet, and Graph Editor modes. See Timeline.
  • Node Graph — the graph behind the active layer. Add nodes from the context menu and wire them together.
  • Properties — parameters for the selected node or layer, with keyframing.
  • Assets — images, video, and audio you've imported. See the Assets Panel.

Your first scene ​

  1. Create a composition. Set its resolution, frame rate, and duration.
  2. Add something to animate. Use a shelf tool — press R for a rectangle, O for an ellipse, or T for text — and draw on the canvas. Caddis creates a layer with a ready-made node chain (geometry → transform → draw → output). Or drag an image from the Assets Panel onto the canvas.
  3. Open the node graph. With the layer selected, look at its graph. Each node is one step in producing the layer's image. Add an effect — for example a Blur or Glow — from the context menu; if auto-wire is on, it connects automatically.
  4. Animate it. Move the playhead, then drag the transform gizmo or edit a value in Properties. With auto-key on, Caddis sets keyframes for you. Refine the timing in the Dope Sheet or Graph Editor.
  5. Preview. Scrub the timeline, or use RAM Preview (Numpad 0) for full-quality cached playback.
  6. Export. Open the Export dialog and choose a preset — image sequence, gif, EXR, or video (H.264 / ProRes / WebM).

Next steps ​

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