Radi v0.8

What's new in Radi v0.8

2012.01.20

Text Block Editor window with Markdown format and integrated styles.

It's now much easier to write rich text in Radi, as the custom text block layers now use the Markdown format instead of raw HTML.

A new Text Block Editor window is available for editing the layer's content. The editor also has an integrated style list for visual setup of text styles (fonts, margins, etc.)
New Brush tool.

Draw freehand brush strokes with the new Brush tool. The strokes become vector shapes, so they stay editable.

The line width can vary within a brush stroke. Currently this pressure-like width variation is computed based on the speed of cursor movement; i.e. if you start a stroke slowly, it will be thinner at the start. (I'm hoping to add Wacom tablet pressure support in the near future.)

Be careful with complex brush strokes. When exported to HTML5 Canvas, they can create a lot of drawing code due to the complexity of rendering varying-width curves. If you find that your strokes are generating too large files, you can simplify the strokes by deleting points using the Delete Shape Point tool.
Shape Poses.

This new feature allows frame-by-frame animation. By creating shape poses, you can change the content of a Shape Layer at specific frames.

Shape poses can be linked so that a single pose affects multiple frames. This is useful for producing animation that return to a certain frame.

The UI for this feature is basically a work-in-progress. To create shape poses, select a frame and click 'Add Shape Pose'. Right now, you have to do this clicking for every frame, so if you're creating lots of shape poses, it will get annoying to click frames all the time... Suggestions for improved workflow are highly welcome!

There is a bit of documentation available on the Radi wiki: Advanced Animation
New layout for Layer tools panel (below the Timeline).
Added indicator icons to items in the Layers list:

These indicators are, from left to right:
- Clip — this layer is a clipping layer, i.e. it masks the layer below it.
- Parent or child — this layer is either a parent or a child layer.
- Shape pose — this layer has shape poses.
Video publishing can now be cancelled by pressing Esc.
(Finally... Sorry for taking so long to implement this!)
Patterns are now published in either JPEG or PNG format automatically depending on the image content, to optimize for a compromise between image file size and compression quality.
Fixed bugs in Undo/Redo.
Improvements to UI appearance for better looks on Lion.
Fixed bug in Shape Subdivide tool, where subdividing the last point of a closed shape would incorrectly affect the next point instead.
Lots of other bug fixes and small improvements.

Each Radi version tends to focus on slightly different features. The previous version added pattern support, amongst other features. See
What's new in Radi 0.7.1