Over a year of continuous iteration—from our earliest custom curve experiments to a full-canvas Viewer instrument for DaVinci Resolve. Here is how RedMunky Cacao has evolved.
Tactile Viewer controls, Ghost Curves, and deeper tonal shaping.
Version 2.2 is our most substantial refinement to how Cacao feels under the hand during long grading sessions—bringing native Resolve-style scrubbers, multi-slot awareness, and smarter spline physics directly into the Viewer.
- Resolve-Style Scrubbable Sliders: Redesigned Luma Blend and Chroma Blend controls with horizontal drag scrubbing, instant double-click reset, and direct numeric entry.
- Three Viewport Link Modes & Shift+Z Fit: Switch effortlessly between Image Pan, Curve Pan, and Linked View—or press Shift+Z to snap any zoomed spline cleanly back to 100% Viewer fit.
- Ghost Curves Across Active Slots: See subtle reference outlines of your other active color zones while shaping the current curve, keeping multi-zone grades visually connected in a single node.
- Point Merge & Clean Endpoint Behavior: Dragging one control point onto another now merges them smoothly without spline spikes, while corner tangents stay tucked away until selected.
- Opt-In Magnetic Spline & Native Presets: Toggle magnetic unity snapping from the three-dot menu and save or recall complete multi-zone grades with lightweight
.cao preset files.
Universal macOS installer (Apple Silicon & Intel) · View bundled installation notes
Dedicated Skin Tone & Neutral zones, plus 13 adjustment modes.
Focused on expanding what a single curve can target without forcing colorists to build sprawling parallel qualifier trees.
- Skin Tone & Neutral Zones: Added dedicated isolation zones alongside the six primary/secondary hues, complete with soft matte roll-off to prevent harsh edges on faces.
- Expanded to 13 Adjustment Types: Introduced subtractive filmic Density, Vibrance, and targeted channel balances alongside Hue, Saturation, and Luminance shaping.
- Floating Navigator HUD: Added a compact mini-map navigator when working at high zoom levels so you never lose your place on the frame.
- Four-Stage Contextual Reset: Clear just the active curve, the current zone, or the entire node with predictable, non-destructive reset steps.
A brand-new full-canvas Viewer architecture.
A ground-up re-engineering of RedMunky Cacao—moving the curve out of cramped inspector panels and turning the entire DaVinci Resolve Viewer into a responsive, GPU-accelerated grading canvas.
- Zone × Range × Adjustment Workflow: Unified our core grading philosophy into three clear top-bar menus, allowing multiple color zones to live together inside one OpenFX node.
- Square Control Points & Dual Bezier Tangents: Replaced standard circular nodes with high-visibility square anchors and independent tangent handles for surgical roll-off control.
- Wacom & Trackpad Deadzone Tuning: Engineered click-and-hold damping so placing a new control point never nudges the curve unintentionally.
Sub-frame GPU responsiveness and smoother chroma roll-off.
Refined the underlying color math after months of real-world commercial and narrative grading feedback.
- Zero-Latency Metal Pipeline: Tuned real-time shader evaluation on Apple Silicon for fluid 4K and 6K playback while dragging complex multi-point splines.
- Luminance & Chroma Blend Separation: Added independent blend sliders so heavy tonal moves never introduce unwanted saturation shifts in shadows or highlights.
- Continuous Endpoint Roll-Off: Engineered smooth mathematical continuation beyond curve endpoints to prevent hard clipping on extreme grades.
Custom tangent handles and deeper secondary range control.
Brought true bezier spline articulation and flexible range drivers to our early studio builds.
- Luma, Hue & Saturation Range Drivers: Enabled driving any curve across Luminance, Hue, or Saturation rather than locking adjustments to fixed pairings.
- Pinned Unity Anchors: Improved endpoint stability so lifting shadows or compressing highlights keeps midtones locked right where you left them.
Where Cacao began.
Our first internal studio release—born from a simple wish for a larger, more expressive curve tool inside DaVinci Resolve.
- Native OpenFX Foundation: Built from day one for macOS and DaVinci Resolve’s Color page with 32-bit floating-point precision.
- Direct On-Screen Overlay: Proved our core conviction that shaping a curve directly over the picture feels more natural than squinting at a docked graph.