Hello,
I’ve been using Causality for several years now to develop a series of animated fiction projects, and I’ve worked with many different versions. I’ve been using version 3.2.62, which allowed me to work on character relationships in the Research/Relationships section. However, in the latest version (4.0.22 on macOS), I can’t seem to find the Relationships page in the interface. Has this feature been removed, or has it been moved elsewhere?
Thank you for your help.
Hi,
It’s removed in 4.x. We removed a number of things in 4.x as executive decisions, hoping for as little fallout as possible.
The relationship canvas was only a good idea, but a terrible implementation. It did little else than allow you to place beats into a physical space. And while that’s worthwhile in itself, this was completely disconnected from the rest of the app, basically like a piece of shareware just bolted in. It’s a perfect example of putting in a feature without thinking it through, simply because it looks good.
The correct solution, and where we plan to go, is that Research stops being a list structure, and that every folder instead becomes a canvas, a physical space where you can spread out, brainstorm, mind-map, set up relationships between things, and most importantly, define dependencies between beats or clusters of beats.
Especially the dependency graph is important, because it allows you to define the story logic before writing a single line, for example everything that a detective needs to discover in order to draw a certain conclusion. These creates rules that need to be obeyed for the story to make sense, and it gives you a superior handle on story structure.
The whiteboard actually started as a dependency graph. But everybody understood it as a timeline, so over time, it gradually mutated into a timeline. It still has the ability to create dependencies. But dependencies don’t make as much sense to look at in a final whiteboard. They make much more sense if it’s in a canvas where all the things the detective discovers have to happen before he can get into the beats about making an arrest.
In such a canvas, you can also make relationships simply by how you’re laying our the beats, and we’d let you draw lines and boxes and drop in pictures.
In this world, the relationships are just in your layout. And this was also my problem with the relationship canvas, that none of it had any meaning. Relationships didn’t exist as a concept in the app, and it wasn’t even clear what kind of thing they would represent in the app. It was a terribly shallow concept.
With emotion tracking, there will soon also be a concept of “conflicts”, and this is the first we start having something relationship-like actually be a concept in the app. I still don’t know how that would tie into a relationship canvas, and it’s at least genuinely a relationship.
It has bothered me since the beginning that our relationship canvas had no meaning, and with all the above problems, and the difficulty in maintaining it into the new data models for collaboration (it would need significant rebuilding), we decided to cut it out.
I do strongly believe that the solution is that research folders become canvasses where you can do this, or something similar.
Hi,
Thank you for these valuable insights. The relationship editor was indeed useful for navigating research folders and providing an overview of character connections—almost like a first draft of a mind map. While it had its limitations, it helped visualize links between elements.
That said, I trust your vision for more integrated and meaningful tools. The shift toward dependency graphs and conflict tracking sounds promising, especially for deeper character and story development. I’m looking forward to seeing how these new features will enhance our workflow and storytelling process.
Thx
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