Intro to Cavalry - A guide for motion designers who want to ditch After Effects

Are you a motion designer that's interested in checking out Cavalry, but find it hard to get started? Cavalry is more than just a tool to make weird digital art, and this quick intro will help you get started. The trick is to think in Systems and how to make something Dynamic, rather than just animating linearly. Start by putting a shape into a duplicator, see how connecting a color array changes things, slap an oscillator on an attribute.
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[@oluwafemigabriel6255]

Cavalry needs more of this - we need this.

[@IDGs_space]

the fact that you're this small a channel and yet your editing is so good and i'm genuinely so inspired by this is insane, this is some excellent stuff ♥

[@ElliotMosher]

Thank you!

[@AntonyNorthcutt]

Cavalry needs more content like this :)

[@muji_kngr]

Few minutes back i was keyframing for oscillator effect in cavalry, now i know the easy way 😄

[@jozef_s]

Elliot, Thanks!

[@Cutsii]

You need to create a lot of this bro! Some of the people might not know this yet but imagine if they notice this! It can also grow this channel. I can suggest this good ideas that you can add up to your content.
Make an insane lyric video compare it to ae , Make a photo slide show that ae is using. Or check templates in AE that is possible to create on this software, and multiple motion graphics that content creators are using, or create a motion graphics for manga or animation! This will help a lot. We'll wait for that bro!

[@Amer99927]

I'll do one better... make a course!!

[@kiddpenn]

Looks pretty cool! Would you be able to attach a video to the shapes in this program so it could have duplicates of that video flying around in 3D space? Or is there a better AE alternative for that?

[@heeeeeresrossy]

Nice content. Subbed 😁

[@ultracoolboy4733]

I'm trying to use the program and I just wish they had keyframes work the same way with after effects like just having to click the dot to add it instead of all this dragging

[@nedschi]

Thanks for the overview. I've seen some TouchDesigner videos. And it seems to be a great software. But also hard to learn. What would you say about the comparison between TouchDesigner and Cavalry?

[@ElliotMosher]

I don't really know what TouchDesigner is so I can't really speak to that at the moment.

[@nedschi]

@@ElliotMosher OK, thanks for the reply. Probably I will install both free versions. I couldn't find a comparison of the two programs. Although you can make similarly crazy animations with both. TouchDesigner is purely node-based.

[@benbunch4159]

Really feels like this would benefit from being node based.

[@ElliotMosher]

It's like... almost node based, and I know there's been a lot of talk about that and the devs have thought about it as well. I think last I heard was that some of the ways things can be connected are hard to show coherently in a 'node' environment. It might go that way in the future, but I don't really know tons about that

[@helenxue1548]

Gona name all my layers "something good" now. 😆

[@meta_inc]

Brother please make some tutorial like i wanna ads some charts like bar graph , pie charts and show some data in my videos so how can I use cavalry for this please help us

[@ElliotMosher]

I cover bar charts in my ‘practical mograph in cavalry - duplicator sequence’ video. But it’s a good topic to cover in more detail, so I’ll add it to my list of videos to make. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@DoubleSupercool]

Any way to visualise the connections, ala Nuke/Houdini/TouchDesigner etc?

[@ElliotMosher]

Yes you can view connections with the Flow Graph, but it's currently a bit limited. I know the Cav team is working on making that more robust, so it will get better over time.

[@drpepa09]

Rotate type on a circular path ?

[@helohalo3106]

I haven't tested it out yet but o man this seems like a life and TIME saver. would you say Cavalry can completely replace AE?

[@ElliotMosher]

I'd say it depends on the task. It's still relatively young so there are things that haven't been fully implemented yet. I do Motion Design 100% in Cavalry, still use AE for sound design or advanced comping stuff. Also, After Effects can do VFX and Video editing etc, but Cavalry is currently focused on Motion Design. I do believe that in time Cavalry will be all you need for full Motion Design projects though.

[@Cutsii]

@@ElliotMosher Can you make lyrics video or manga animation for this?

[@mj_creanovo]

@@ElliotMosher Do you have an efficient workflow to combine the strenght of AE and Cavalry? Or is it just like rendering a png-sequence and import it into AE for complex projects?

[@ElliotMosher]

@@mj_creanovo It partly depends on what you need to do, but I recently had a project where I rendered out some elements from Cavalry individually using the prores codec, so it's a video with transparency. This makes it easy to comp things in AE or Davinci. I think it's easier to use prores rather than export a ton of PNGs. I'm hoping to do a breakdown video on that project soon to show how I handled it.

[@maurolima4274]

Hi ELLIOT, good??? i exporte for MP4, and not possible, what the solution for this message ----> " failed to gl context "

[@ElliotMosher]

hey, the best way to get help with things like that is to check out the Cavalry discord server and post it in the Bugs channel. The dev team for Cavalry is really active there and can help solve issues like that

[@rcguy2175]

Have you heard of the rive app

[@AhmedSaber313]

i really love the software it's so powerful in motion graphics but why the pro version cost more than after effect ( almost double the price in my local currency) sadly I will still using after effect for know

[@ElliotMosher]

Pricing is always a tricky subject, but keep in mind that Adobe is an insanely large company so they can afford to undersell their products to try to keep their almost-monopoly on the industry. The problem with Adobe though is that they tend to not listen to their customers, not fix years old issues, and continually bloat their software with half-baked new features that just keep making their software slower and slower. Cavalry is a small team that directly listens to their customers, actively and quickly fixes issues, and dedicates time/resources to the features that their users are actually asking for. Plus, their free version is still super powerful and a great tool to add to your skillset even if you don't pay for the Pro license.

[@siyaram2855]

Hey Elliot,
Can we make videos like dan koe in it?

[@ElliotMosher]

Right now Cavalry doesn't have many 'comping' tools, it's mainly focused on Motion Design. Dan Koe's videos look like mostly 'real' footage with stock inserts.

[@dfsdferfsd]

I don't know, keyframes have solid roots in animation for a reason, I don't know when they become a limit and why a more mathematical should be better. Maybe a nice integration

[@mattstark9144]

I love my keyframes and curves too much

[@ElliotMosher]

You can totally still use keyframes and curves in Cav! You just also have access to the more procedural way of working which can make certain setups easier. But I do agree that sometimes you need that custom touch on the easing

[@mattstark9144]

Good to know!@@ElliotMosher

[@udopiarecords]

Pacing of the video is a bit fast, try slowing it down just a tiny bit. Especially since its an informational sort of tutorial video. Other than that, very nice job, thank you.

[@Tekkerue]

Instructions unclear, I named everything 'Something Good' but now I can't tell what anything is. Plz help! 😭😭

[@Posimistic]

You just saved me $30/mo lol

[@user-gj5ml9ik2s]

The lack of keyframes puts me off, I was hoping it was basically just gonna be a free / cheaper alternative to AE 💔

[@ElliotMosher]

There are keyframes in Cavalry. In terms of 'motion design' (not vfx or compositing) it can do pretty much After Effects can. I was more focusing on what Cavalry can do that AE can't do. In my opinion it's much more powerful, and being able to do things without having to keyframe everything makes things much more flexible. You should definitely try out the free version if you are at all interested.

[@user-gj5ml9ik2s]

Thanks I'll check it out in that case!@@ElliotMosher

[@2424rocket]

Nobody can follow your video… It sucks! Is there some purpose to this other than an advertisement for the program??

[@Geloandall]

hmmm, not really an attractive feature to be honest for me to even consider ditching after effects, heavy after effects users like me won't even bother themselves with calvary for now, maybe few years more. also the integration and workflow between illustrator, Photoshop, Cinema4D and after effects can't be beaten for now.