No. Every frame is computed from the timeline, so you can jump anywhere. Bake is optional, for faster final renders.

No. It hides the original and builds a new object that reads it. Delete the construct and unhide the original to go back.

Yes. Moving, rotating and scaling objects, rigged characters (armature) and deforming modifiers all work: the construct reads the target's current shape every frame.

Yes. Grain Shape → Shards, Chunks, or Custom (random objects from any collection). Try the Crumble or Ember Shatter dissolve style.

With a floor, yes: turn on Floor in the Collision panel for bounce, friction and debris piles. It's closed-form, so you can still scrub to any frame and nothing needs a cache. Collision with other objects isn't in yet.

Yes. Paint a vertex group and type its name in Dissolve Mask.

Yes. Use the ring (or any object) as the Emitter. Move or animate it and the stream follows.

Yes. Palettes are only starting points; Color, Secondary and Front color are always editable.

Add Image Card turns any image into a camera-facing card that builds and dissolves in the image's own colors.

About 0.3 s per frame for 500k grains (5.2, modern CPU). The viewport shows 25 % of the grains. Lower Grain Count for previews.

Both. The look was tuned in EEVEE with AgX + bloom (Glow Render Setup does this for you).

4.4 and newer, tested on 4.4 and 5.2 LTS. The Curl Grid speed-up needs 5.0+.

Yes. Set Lifecycle to Endless Build, Endless Dissolve or Endless Flow and turn Dissolve off. A share of the grains keeps pouring in or peeling off while the shape stays whole. Still no cache.

No. It only writes bake caches next to your .blend when you press Bake, and Free Bake removes them.

It's experimental in 1.1.x (off by default, Preferences › Experimental Features) and will be finished in a free update.

I'm a VFX compositor. I designed Energy Construct for my own work and used it on a real production shot (a creature being summoned out of energy, not released yet). That job showed it is not only for "energy constructs": the same build / dissolve / shatter rig works for spawns, materialising and disappearing effects in general. I designed the look and controls, judged every result by eye and tested it on real shots; much of the code was written with an AI coding assistant, then reviewed, tested and tuned by me.