Caddis Adds Particles, Loops and Animated Layouts

For those who don’t know the tool: Caddis is Mike Gaynor’s standalone motion-design and compositing application for macOS, Windows and Linux. It combines a layer timeline with a node graph inside each layer. Its Rust/wgpu engine accelerates effects, blends, transforms and fields through Metal, Vulkan and D3D12.

We were promised particles. Bring a broom.

When we first covered Caddis, it invited a familiar timeline and a node graph to share a desk. In our subsequent interview with Mike Gaynor, the developer put particles among the bigger systems he wanted to get right before shipping. Now 1.1.0 delivers particles, animated layouts and graph loops. A roadmap item you can turn into confetti: we do enjoy a practical celebration.

A little order in the party popper

Point Solver advances the particles one frame; an enclosing Solver retains their state. Gravity, drag, vector fields and collision responses control the motion, while separation, alignment and cohesion handle flocking. Put a colour change or deletion inside that Solver and it persists; put it downstream and it only changes that frame’s output. Think of it as the difference between giving the confetti a new outfit and asking it to hold up a coloured card.

Fast particles can tunnel through thin colliders at low substep counts. Increase substeps or collider thickness, and track individual particles by their stable IDs rather than list position: the population reorders as particles die. Name badges for confetti sound excessive until half the guests have left.

Caddis’s developer overview of the 1.1.0 additions, including particles, layouts and loops; a product demonstration, not an independent performance test.

Once more, with fewer mouse clicks

Loops repeat graph operations within a frame. Feedback passes the previous result onward; Join collects successive results. For Each Point and For Each Path apply a graph to individual elements. Solvers instead carry values between frames, supporting accumulating paint or image feedback as well as particles.

Wiring determines what belongs inside a loop, not where the nodes sit on screen. Route results through its Out node; a wire escaping directly from an internal node yields nothing. Give the result a proper route home. The nodes appreciate directions, however nicely you have arranged the furniture.

Bento boxes that make room for dessert

The Layout node animates row and column proportions, mixes relative shares with pixel widths, and nests grids for uneven arrangements. With Collapse gutters, a shrinking track takes its gap with it. Animate neighbouring tracks to zero and the remaining cell can fill the frame without a last-moment gap closing up. The neighbouring tiles politely scoot over. If only everything on a deadline were this willing to make room.

Keep the chair on the guest list

The new Cryptomatte node extracts object, material or asset mattes from tagged OpenEXR files. It compares IDs on the CPU before sending coverage to the GPU; selecting several objects combines their coverage into one matte. It preserves visible antialiased edges, not hidden geometry behind an occluder.

Use ZIP or PIZ compression for Cryptomatte-bearing renders. Lossy treatment of ID data can change which object a pixel identifies. Give those IDs a lossless ride home; the chair has had a lovely evening and would prefer to remain a chair.

A little focus, a tidy send-off

The rebuilt Lens Blur adds viewer-based focus picking and a pixel-based Blur Size control. Precompose also moves selected layers into a nested composition, checking for relationships such as mattes or parenting that would cross the selection boundary. A helpful check that everyone has their coat, their keys and the correct matte before leaving together.

Export options include ProRes 422 HQ and 4444, H.264, WebM VP9, PNG sequences and linear 16-bit half-float EXR sequences. The export guide specifies sRGB for other outputs. Choose the format with the receiving compositor in mind. Sending the right colour data is a small kindness; sending biscuits as well remains optional.

https://www.caddis.app/

Availability:

Caddis 1.1.0 is available from the official download page for Apple Silicon Macs, Windows 10/11 x64 and Linux x64, with AppImage and .tar.gz Linux downloads.

The listed price is $129 as a one-time purchase, permanently unlocking export and including all 1.x updates. Export is free for the first seven days; afterwards the application remains free to use, with export requiring a licence. Optional AI image and video generation uses separately billed credits.