I spend time nearly every day with CA5, and it is an amazing product which I love. However, I'd like to offer some ideas about future updates for you to think about. Thanks in advance for thinking about these.

Reallusion CA5 Update Wish-List

* Default Keyframe option in preferences: I would like an option in the preferences that allows me to choose the default curve on keyframes. For example, I may 90% of the time want to use smooth and only use linear occasionally. So, being able to set the default to smooth (or something else) would save a lot of time.

* Be able to select multiple keyframes across multiple channels and change them all with one option. I know you can do this on one channel, but doing it on multiple channels would be really helpful.

* I’ve already talked about this elsewhere, but having panels that exhibit ‘sticky settings’, so that when you shut down the software, unless you do a reset, all panels will ‘remember’ the last choices you made.

* A much better marker option, so that different colour markers can be added to the ruler and maybe even to a channel… This will help in blocking out animations and making choices/notes/handoffs etc. And, if I can colour code a specific channel, it will make selection easier. For example, Left bone channels set to Red and Right bones set to Green...

* An ‘Uber key’ keyboard shortcut to show all animated channels on any selected item. This way, I could quickly find all the keyframed channels on an item if I am switching between say sprite and bone modes without having to select all the bones again to reveal the animated bones.

* SVG support for Affinity Designer and Inkscape would be really helpful.

* Minor change, but when I create a folder in my custom content panel, it would be nice if that folder was created ready to be named, rather than being a folder I need to choose to rename. It would save time.

* Copy paths from vector editors and paste them into an object in CA5. For example, to create a swirl in a vector editor and then paste it into a dummy object in CA5 and replace the dummy object with the path would make things like animating writing easier.

* An Align tool or panel of some kind that would align to other objects or to the screen.

* Depth of field or a fake DOF on the camera so that we can add some kind of blur to objects at a distance. OR, a blur filter that can blur items in our scene slightly.

* I’d like to be able to take a GIF/APNG/Video Clip and import it to the project by dragging it to the time ruler at a specific point so that it starts at that point and only plays through from that point with the normal option of play once or loop forever. In other words, it would stay hidden until the point I put it in the time ruler and then become visible/start playing. It would be nice to be able to do this with props etc as well.

* I’d love the ability to add lights to a scene to be able to control the mood of a scene – spotlights and general ambient lighting. AND, if the spotlights could also cast shadows, that would be amazing!

* Auto-scrolling the timeline when you pull the playhead off the side of the screen.

* Much better text tools. The present ones are very limited. For example, I couldn't animate kerning or leading or character changes.

* Animatable colour changes for SVG objects.

* Global 'Hide' button and channel icons. So, if I don't want to see the O channel of a sprite, I could click an icon at the head of the channel and then by hitting a global 'Hide' button, I could hide that channel until I click that button again. (This would be the equivalent of the 'Shy Guy' buttons in After Effects. The advantage of this would be the ability to have more usable screen space for items I am actually animating.)

* The option to have the Bone panel, Sprite panel, facial animation panel, Prop editor etc dock rather than float so that I can just click between them once launched rather than always using the icons and then having to open them again.

* The ability to have multiple scenes in a single project.

* Here's an odd one... an 'Auto Animate' panel. So, static characters are a sign of bad animation, but it takes a lot of work to make things move well. So, if there was an option to select a bone and add a level of 'Auto Animation' to that bone, ranging from rare to busy, and from constant to spaced, then I could say take a neck bone and apply the option and the head would move say, slightly using rare and occasionally using spaced... I hope I've explained this clearly. In After Effects, I could use a 'wiggle' expression to animate something, but I am sure you can do something better. And, to explain 'spaced' better, it would make a move, wait, then make another move and wait again, but with a more random space between movements. A classic example may be eye movements, which are option very fast with pauses.

I'll stop at that, but I hope these are helpful - the last one especially would help CA to become a much more powerful animation tool for users.

I realize that this is just a wish list, and you may not ever get to do some of these, but I thought it would be worth giving you this list as a regular user. Thanks for looking at it.