LINZ, July 1, 2026 – Candera GmbH is expanding its HMI software portfolio with the Candera CGI Studio Community Edition (short CE). Available free of charge for non-commercial use, the edition offers an accessible entry point into the development of modern graphical user interfaces for embedded systems.

Candera CGI Studio CE is aimed at makers, students, developers, and small businesses that want to turn their own interface ideas into reality, learn the fundamentals of HMI development, or create initial prototypes for new products. Users can design interfaces visually, build interactions, and bring their concepts to life on real displays and embedded hardware.

At launch, Candera CGI Studio CE supports the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 platforms. Further embedded platforms and support for Android devices will follow.

Whether it is a smart home controller, the user interface for a DIY device, a university project, an interactive display prototype, or the first concept for a new product. Candera CGI Studio CE helps turn an idea into a visible and interactive result more quickly.

“With the Community Edition, we are making it much easier to get started with HMI development,” says Roland Winkler, Senior Product Development Manager at Candera. “It gives users the opportunity to learn, experiment, and turn product and interface ideas into reality in a professional development environment.”

Candera CGI Studio CE combines an accessible workflow with the core strengths of CGI Studio Enterprise Edition. Users can create graphical user interfaces, connect logic and data, and experience their projects directly as interactive applications on embedded hardware.

Key benefits include:

• intuitive, visual development of user interfaces
• flexible design options for different ideas, applications, and displays
• an efficient workflow from the first concept to a running prototype
• a powerful runtime for embedded HMI projects
• a solid foundation for the next step towards professional product development

Fast, visible progress matters especially in learning, maker, and early product projects. Candera CGI Studio CE helps users test initial GUI and HMI concepts early, explore interactions in practice, and make their own ideas visible on hardware.

Small businesses can also use the Community Edition to evaluate initial operating concepts, visualize product ideas, and develop internal prototypes for new devices or applications. This makes it easier to assess design, user interaction, and technical feasibility at an early stage.

The edition is designed for everyone who wants to do more than understand Human-Machine Interface development in theory. It helps users build practical know-how and creates room for experimentation, prototypes, and first applications of their own.

With community.candera.eu, Candera provides a central platform for users of the Candera CGI Studio Community Edition. It offers templates, sample projects, practical resources, and support for first HMI projects.

The platform helps users get started faster, develop their ideas further, and share experiences within the community.

The Community Edition is part of the Candera CGI Studio ecosystem. It helps HMI beginners, makers, students, and small businesses build know-how, validate initial concepts, and get to know CGI Studio for future projects.

For professional series development, individual requirements and comprehensive project support, Candera offers commercial solutions and services. These include the Candera CGI Studio Professional Edition as well as tailored Enterprise offerings with consulting, development and support services.

Candera CGI Studio CE will be available free of charge for Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 5 from July 1, 2026. Additional platforms and Android device support will be added step by step.

get.candera.eu

Candera is a pioneer in the field of HMI design software, offering innovative solutions for the automotive industry, wearables, medical, and household appliances. With a focus on user-centric design and cutting-edge technology, Candera continues to set the standard for HMI software development. For more information, please visit www.candera.eu

LINZ, February 5, 2025 – Candera GmbH is proud to announce the release of CGI Studio 3.15, the latest version of our industry-leading Human-Machine Interface (HMI) development software. This update delivers a wide range of innovations aimed at simplifying development workflows, improving graphics performance, and enabling AI-powered user interfaces for developers across industries.

“CGI Studio 3.15 reflects our ongoing commitment to providing developers with the tools they need to create intuitive and visually stunning user experiences,” says Roland Winkler, Senior Product Development Manager at Candera.  “With powerful new features like integrated SoundHound AI speech recognition and enhanced importing capabilities, we are empowering teams to work faster, smarter, and more creatively than ever before.

Quick overview of the improvements in Candera CGI Studio 3.15:

• Integration of SoundHound AI Speech Recognition
• Candera CGI Studio 3.15 Professional Edition

Candera CGI Studio 3.15 now integrates SoundHound AI, enabling users to control HMIs through natural voice commands. Supporting more than 25 languages, this technology uses state-of-the-art speech-to-meaning® capabilities to interpret complex instructions in real time.

Developers can define custom speech events and actions,
using the intuitive Houndify web interface to configure speech domains and input scopes.

The Candera CGI Studio Player receives SoundHound speech events via the integrated SoundHound component. In Scene Composer specific speech events can be filtered and forwarded to state machines or behaviors for action handling.

A built-in sample project (a blood pressure monitoring device) showcases how speech events can be linked to conditions and actions through the Scene Composer.

Another highlight of this release is the fully integrated wireframe support, which provides developers with an intuitive way to switch between solid and wireframe rendering for rigid, skinned, and morphed meshes. This feature improves the visualization and manipulation of complex 3D assets directly within the Scene Composer with just a click. Developers can also export wireframe-rendered meshes as assets, streamlig both prototyping and final design workflows.

Performance improvements continue with CGI Studio’s font-handling capabilities, now optimized through integration of latest Monotype’s iType technology. By utilizing a prepopulated glyph cache, the application eliminates the need for real-time font rendering during startup, significantly reducing initialization time for performance-critical interfaces like automotive dashboards and industrial control systems.

To enhance the visual experience further, the update includes a Masked Blur Effect, allowing developers to blur pop-up backgrounds and improve focus on key interface elements.

The AI assisted Smart Importer enhances UI design by enabling automatic mapping of assets from Adobe Photoshop and Figma. Developers can easily apply map layered images to custom controls, with auto-mapped layouts reducing manual setup time. For example, images like a multi-layered petrol gauge can be directly imported and mapped to interactive controls in seconds.

Set initial property values, like the fill rate of the petrol gauge in Basic Properties tab.

Map imported content directly to your custom UI-Control MyProgressBar with the Apply-Button.

Once applied, the Scene Composer creates the custom MyProgressBar UI-Control with the images from Photoshop and initial values from your configuration.

This Smart Importer also includes now font replacement options, ensuring seamless font management across projects.

The new auto-mapping of Figma layouts to CGI Studio’s Stack Layout or Text Layout reduces manual configuration efforts.

Navigation within complex nested scenes is made easier with color-coded scene tree indicators, which provides instant feedback on scene structure without the need to expand individual nodes.
The Tooltip explains all color-coded attributes while hovering over the matrix.

CGI Studio 3.15 enhances overall usability within the Scene Composer through a range of optimizations. The new image retention feature preserves original file formats within solution folders, ensuring both fidelity and traceability of imported assets.

Additionally, the text size report tool has been updated to boost performance by analyzing and optimizing font sizes across the application.

The orbit camera has been extended to further improve the user experience, offering smoother control for navigating and editing 3D environments.

These improvements streamline workflows, reduce the number of clicks, and significantly enhance productivity for developers working on complex designs

Data integration has also been upgraded with the introduction of CGI Connector, which replaces the previous Matlab Connector. Notably, the connector features a generic interface for inte-grating also external state machines with minimal effort.
This tool provides a versatile interface for defining input/output relationships, supporting complex data types and dynamic events.

Developers can group logical interfaces into modules and automatically generate named ports.

The CGI Connector simplifies project integration with a more flexible build system, making data-driven applications faster and easier to build and maintain.

Additionally, data simulation features allow users to load and manipulate data models (XHCDL) directly in the Player, providing real-time feedback during testing.

Candera CGI Studio 3.15 caters to both small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs)
and enterprise clients.

The new CGI Studio Professional Edition is tailored for SMBs and rapid development, offering pre-built players for Linux-based targets such as STM32MP1 and Python-script access to the data model. Dedicated documentation and samples guarantee an easy entry to HMI development on host and target.

The CGI Studio Enterprise Edition is designed for the automotive market. It provides full access to source code and C++ interface. With this highly flexible edition you get support for premium extensions like Memory Manager, Analyzer, CGI Connector, Asset Shaper, and Scene Composer plug-ins.

A Game-Changer for Developers Across Industries

Candera CGI Studio 3.15 is already being hailed as a transformative update for developers building HMIs in automotive, appliances, and medical sectors. By integrating cutting-edge AI capabilities, simplifying the design-to-deployment process, and enhancing performance, Candera empowers its
clients to deliver smarter, more interactive user experiences with less complexity.

Want to test the improvements yourself?

Request a free trial version of Candera CGI Studio.

About Candera:

Candera is a pioneer in the field of HMI design software, offering innovative solutions for the automotive industry, wearables, medical, and household appliances. With a focus on user-centric design and cutting-edge technology, Candera continues to set the standard for HMI software development. For more information, please visit www.candera.eu

Candera Confidential & Copyright 2025

Learn more about Candera CGI Studio:

Website        LinkedIn       Facebook          YouTube

LINZ, August 12, 2024 – Unleash your creativity with the latest release of Candera CGI Studio, now featuring the highly anticipated 3D Skinned Meshes and 3D ADAS solution template for a transformative design experience. Benefit from our clear commitment to continuous software maintenance, ensuring your projects meet the highest reliability standards.

“Candera CGI Studio 3.14 is the next step towards highly efficient and more realistic HMI design,” says Roland Winkler, Candera’s Senior Product Development Manager. “We are grateful for the positive feedback we have received from our customers since our last release and are excited to see the new signature UIs they will create with Candera CGI Studio 3.14.” 

Quick overview of the improvements in Candera CGI Studio 3.14:

Graphic Improvements

These new graphic features in Candera CGI Studio are designed to enhance flexibility and efficiency in developing HMI designs while improving application usability and visual quality.

The 3D Skinned Meshes feature allows you to execute advanced, flexible body transformations. This functionality lets you easily import skinned 3D meshes using FBX and glTF files.

Additionally, an extended 3D effects solution template featuring bone animations is included in the Scene Composer. This feature is particularly useful for integrating realistic movements and animations into your HMI designs.

The 3D ADAS Control feature offers a ready-to-use solution template for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), including 3D animations. This functionality lets you easily customize various ADAS controls to match your design. With this solution template, developers can create interactive and user-friendly ADAS interfaces that enhance driver safety and comfort.

Fully customizable ADAS solution template

The support for custom shaders in 2D scenes allows you to enrich 2D scenes running on OpenGL devices with your own 3D effects. This opens up new possibilities for visual effects and design flexibility. An OpenGL2D Effects solution template is also available for reference. This feature enables you to integrate unique and engaging graphical representations tailored to specific requirements into your 2D applications.

Custom 2D Shader Sample

Custom 2D Shader Properties

UX Improvements

These additional UX features in Candera CGI Studio are designed to improve the user experience by offering sharper visuals, enhanced performance, and more intuitive tools for managing data and documentation.

The Hi-Res Scene Composer in Candera CGI Studio ensures that the user interface remains sharp and clear, regardless of screen resolution. It provides a smooth experience across low- and high-resolution displays, maintaining visual consistency. Additionally, icons stay clear and well-defined at any DPI setting, enhancing the overall visual appeal.

Sharp and clear interface in Scene Composer on any screen resolution 

Fit to Screen mode

Text Size Report executes tests on the target platform

Bookmark your favorite pages

The Courier Data Source Editor provides a graphical user interface for easily composing your data model. This feature simplifies the creation and management of data sources, making developing and maintaining your HMI projects more efficient. The visual approach of this editor makes it intuitive and user-friendly to create and edit data models.

Compose your data model graphically, no need for writing an .xml-file

Deployment improvements

These improvements in Candera CGI Studio aim to enhance the development process by providing modern, user-friendly tools for configuration and updates, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow.

The simplified patch application feature allows for self-extracting patches that include verification of the code base integrity. This ensures that updates are applied securely and correctly. Additionally, users can view the patch history directly in the Scene Composer, providing transparency and ease of tracking changes over time.

Patch history visible in “About” window

Want to test the improvements yourself?

Request a free trial version of Candera CGI Studio.

About Candera:

Candera is a pioneer in the field of HMI design software, offering innovative solutions for the automotive industry, wearables, medical, and household appliances. With a focus on user-centric design and cutting-edge technology, Candera continues to set the standard for HMI software development. For more information, please visit www.candera.eu

Candera Confidential & Copyright 2024

Learn more about Candera CGI Studio:

Website        LinkedIn       Facebook          YouTube

Linz, Austria, 26. April 2024. Candera presented CGI Studio 3.13 on a vast variety of GUIs: From HMIs for smart homes, cars, bikes, medical devices, and industrial automation applications –showing how Human Machine Interfaces (HMI) can easily and quickly be created for a wide range of applications.

Candera presented GUIs reaching from a Smart Home washing machine with ‘Guided Maintenance’ features in spectacular 3D design to medical demos highlighting CGI Studios capacities in safety-relevant fields. Making these applications possible are the latest versions of Candera’s high performing HMI tool, CGI Studio 3.12 and CGI Studio 3.13 with the award-winning Smart Importer.

 Fig. 1: Candera’s booth in hall 4 of Embedded World

Smart Homes: Candera HMIs on low-end and high-end devices

Candera presented its latest “Smart Home” Washing Machine with high-end 3D effects. Highlights include the “Guided Maintenance” feature, supporting the user visually by showing the cause of the problem, for example to replace an old filter or connecting to the service hotline, if professional help is necessary.

While the wide screen Washing Machine demo was running on ST Microelectronic’s STM32MP1 on the Candera booth, its sister demo was presented the ST Graphics Wall showing what can be done on smaller devices, such as the STM32U5 series with NeoChrom.

Fig. 2: ST Micro and Candera’s sister Smart Washing Machine demos on STM32 devices

Industrial Applications: Stay in control
Industrial HMIs, be it for machine operations, maintenance panels, logistics management or warehousing, can help avoid costly mistakes, speed up the on-boarding process of new operators and reduce maintenance costs.

At Embedded World, Candera showed how advanced Human Machine Interfaces for Industrial Applications combine usability with brilliant GUIs to ensure users stay in control.

Fig. 3: Candera’s Industrial Automation demo with advanced 3D features

A second Industrial HMI by Candera was presented on ST Microelectronics GUI Partner Wall:

Candera @ partners’ booths

Candera’s partners also appreciate CGI Studio’s reliability and variability. Among them ST Microelectronics, Raspberry Pi, Hy-Line, and Conze, all of whom presented demos either by or in cooperation with Candera at their booths during Embedded World.

ST Microelectronics, for example, used the latest STM32MP2 MCU to present Candera’s “Robotic Teaching” demo. By touching and adjusting the joints of the 3D robot on the GUI, users and re-adjust complex movement patterns of the real robot, save the pattern and check it in re-play.

Fig.4 Candera’s Washing Machine and Robotic demos at ST Microelectronic’s “Graphics Partner Wall”

Conze presented 3 demos made with CGI Studio, on of them the “Blood pressure” with a beating 3D heart at its core. Raspberry Pi included Candera’s HMI for an electronic motorbike with high-end 3D features in its navigation system on their booth.

Fig.5: Candera’s demos at e.g. Raspberry Pi (Electronic Motorbike) and Conze (Blood Pressure) booths during Embedded World 2024

Candera’s award-winning Smart Importer: HMI creation made easy
Based on innovative AI-detection technologies, Candera’s Smart Importer speeds up the whole HMI creation process. While other HMI design tools require the user to import each single element and add functionality to them one after another, Candera’s Smart Importer will do a direct import of a design file and enrich it with functionality automatically.

Fig.6: Candera’s Smart Importer makes HMI creation easy

Users can import graphics files from Adobe Photoshop®, Sketch, Axure RP, Figma or Adobe XD into CGI Studio. Relevant components like gauges, sliders, buttons, and many more are automatically detected, and the most probable functionality can be added to each element.

For more of CGI Studio’s highlight features such as text size verification, dynamic lists with snap function, additional 3D Primitives, rotate and zoom functions in the CGI Studio Player, or support for vector graphics, click here.

Request a trial version of CGI Studio now!

Usability is especially important for complex, large-scale HMI projects. On the one hand, because of the dimension of the project itself, but also due to the large teams working together. The latest improvements of CGI Studio, the 3.13 release, is perfect for such scenarios. Ranging from the new 64-bit scene composer going beyond memory confines to “Easy Mode UI”, for individual UI configurations for different user roles.

Large scale projects are the Champions League of HMI creation. The new 64-bit Scene Composer of CGI Studio 3.13 supports users who want to go beyond past memory confines. Automatic text size verification helps to fit texts into graphical confines, for example to speed up multi-language projects. Candera’s award-winning Smart Importer is improved by a unified import dialog for easy import of all the different types of files users can import. Add to this an all-new ‘Snap feature’ for dynamic lists, various new UI/UX enhancements, and an improved ‘Easy Mode’ of the user interface – and you are ready to play!

Want to test it yourself? Request your free trial of CGI Studio.

Fig. 1: CGI Studio 3.13: Creating large-scale HMI projects – fast and easy.

64-bit Scene Composer

Large-scale HMI projects can be challenging due to strict restrictions in memory and size. CGI Studio’s new 64-bit scene composer helps users to master big-sized projects by going beyond memory confines. It is also compatible with external 64-bit plug-ins for easy implementation of e.g. any kind of navigation solutions.

Text Size Verification

Aligning the length of pre-written texts with the space provided within the GUI can be a difficult, time- and resource-consuming process. CGI Studio now comes with an in-built, convenient report to proof that text size fits within graphical boundaries. Calculations are based on real rendering and provide layout information, for example on height and width of the text.

Smart Importer

Candera’s award-winning Smart importer gets better all the time. Long-time users of CGI Studio know that the Smart Importer imports graphics files directly into CGI Studio. During the import, its innovative AI detects industry-standard controls such as gauges, sliders, and buttons – and automatically adds their proper functionality.

The latest version of the Smart Importer in CGI Studio 3.13 now includes a unified import dialog for different file types, so you can import your graphics file, be it from Adobe Photoshop®, Sketch, Axure RP, Figma or Adobe XD. The improved UI dialog helps you create your HMI faster by guided mapping. As does the Drag&Drop support for your glTF imports.

Fig. 2: Unified import into Candera’s Smart Importer in CGI Studio 3.13

Candera’s Smart Importer speeds up the whole HMI creation process by providing a direct preview, full re-import for quick design iterations, and image merging to reduce the memory footprint.

Extended Help System

When you need help with your HMI project, you need it fast. The new dynamic in-page-search of CGI Studio 3.13 gives you the answers you need when you need them. This includes a history with forward and backward buttons as well as a simple and easy feedback option for each page. Check it out today and find regularly revised as well as interesting new articles and tutorials.

Easy Mode UI

It is always easier to find your way through known territory. Personalize the user interface of your CGI Studio Scene Composer to find your way faster and create your HMIs more effectively. Define the visibility of properties and default values or write protection in the way you need it. You can even create individual UI configurations for different user roles, which comes handy when coordinating big teams working on large-scale projects.

Dynamic List

Dynamic lists can be a hassle to navigate, especially when you’re trying to find a specific item. CGI Studio 3.13 has introduced a new feature that makes scrolling through lists a breeze. The snap function for list items improves touch interaction by stopping the list at the exact point you need it to, instead of somewhere slightly above or below. This feature ensures that you can find the item you’re looking for with ease.

Fig. 3: CGI Studio 3.13’s new snap function for better touch interaction

UX Improvements

The creation of your HMI can only be as fast as you can use your HMI tool. This is why CGI Studio 3.13 provides for better usability of toolbar, list, and text style editor. For example, an extended search panel, the state machine editor now supporting undo and redo, transition order, and state alignment for quick and intuitive HMI composition. But even more, Bird Eye, context menu, as well as a number of short cuts have been added to Fusion and State machine editors.

You can rotate and zoom your display preview for better overview. Also, support for long path names is now larger than 255 characters.

The Fusion editor, incidentally, is Candera’s latest feature for Intuitive visual composition of logic and behaviors. It is for users without any programming skills – making HMI creation more accessible for everyone.

Updated Monotype Libraries

CGI Studio 3.13 further comes with an update of the well-established Monotype Library: iType^® font engine version 6.2.2 and WorldTypeShaper version 5 with Unicode 14 support.

Want to see for yourself?

Request a trial version of CGI Studio.

Learn more about CGI Studio: Website          Facebook          YouTube          Twitter          LinkedIn