Project Settings

Set up relative file paths for your Projects

Project Settings create a relationship between Scenes, Assets and Renders (and more). When you set a Project a Project Description is created in a location on your file system of your choosing. A Project Description is simply a .json file specifying default file paths to other directories. The result of this is that when you, for example, double click in the Assets Window to import an Asset , Finder (macOS) or Explorer (Windows) will open in the directory you have specified.

There are various benefits to this. For example, if you work in a studio with other artists you can set a Project and use that to help the team stay organised. Renders go here, scenes go here etc. In other words, a pipeline😉. Or perhaps you need to share a project with a client/ colleague/ freelancer outside of your studio. With a Project set, all file paths to images, audio, fonts etc are relative to the Project and so if your client/ colleague/ freelancer also sets their Project to the directory you've sent them (local to their file system), all links to any imported assets are maintained.

Name - the name for the project. By default this will use the name of the directory you set the project to.

Changing the project Name will not change the name of the actual directory on your file system.

Scenes - the default location to save scenes to or open them from.

Renders - the default location to save renders to.

Assets - the default location to import assets from.

Autosave - the default location to store autosave files.

Palettes - .pal files saved here will appear as Library Palettes in the Color Window. See - Palettes.

Example usage:

1. Click the folder icon in the bottom left of the Assets Window (or go File > Project Settings)

2. In the Project Settings window, click Create....

3. Create a new folder/ directory on your file system called 'Cavalry' (or anything you like).

4. Click Choose.

You should now have directories called Assets, Renders, Scenes and Autosave created within your 'Cavalry' (or whatever you named it) directory along with a file called projectDescription.json.

Now, if you go File > Open, Finder/ Explorer will open into the Scenes directory within your Cavalry directory (same with File > Save). If you double click in the Assets Window, Finder/ Explorer will open into Assets. If you open the Render Manager the Path will be pre-populated with 'Renders' and hitting render will write files into that directory.

When a project is set, a file called path-to-project is created alongside any scene files. This is required for scenes which include assets (images, svg, audio etc) to work with Cavalry Player and Cavalry Command. It also means that if you open a scene with a different Project set to the one you're currently using, Cavalry will automatically switch to the correct Project.

You can use the drop down at the bottom of the Assets Window to quickly switch to recently used Projects.

You can edit the directories created when you set up a Project. In the Project Settings Window, either click on the folder icon and browse to a different directory or manually edit the path.

Changing the names of directories in the Project Settings will also change the names of directories on your filesystem. For example, if the path to Assets was @project/Assets and you changed it in project settings to @project/Images the Assets directory on your filesystem will be renamed to Images.

You can manually edit the projectDescription.json file in a text editor but ensure that it is not in use if you do.

{
    "description": {
        "assets": "@project/Assets",
        "autoSave": "@project/Autosave",
        "name": "Cavalry",
        "palettes": "@project/Assets/Palettes",
        "renders": "@project/Renders",
        "scenes": "@project/Scenes"
    }
}