6 ms·

Cavalry – 2D Animation Software for Mac and Windows

74 points by davidbarker 5y ago

virtualritz 5y ago
Cavalry is amazing. The future (or current already?) king of motion graphics apps. Imagine a simple, 2D version of Houdini and regular After Effects having a baby. Except so far Cavalry inherited After Effect's read-only Flow Graph. But a real node editor is planned for the future. By all means download and play with it. They have great mini tutorials on YouTube. Also Cavalry is good inspiration on how to do a UI for artists. They really listen to their users.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  Can I pick up my stylus and use the drawing skills I've spent ~20y on honing to draw stuff with anything like Illustrator's pencil tool, or does this only let me draw basic shapes/import stuff from elsewhere? I would have downloaded it and answered this question for myself but the "make an account before downloading" step made me roll my eyes and get back to work.
  - commieneko 5y ago
    There is a drawing tool that will work with pen tablets. It's not perfect, but it, like a lot of the features, is a start. The end result of the tool is a simplified bezier curve. There is a tolerance slider that lets you control how much smoothing is used in generating the end result of the drawing. I couldn't get it tight enough for finished character drawings done only with the pen, but you can go in and edit the Beziers with the regular Bezier tools. It does work well enough that you can knock out a rough and then clean it up. The real strength of this will to allow you to come in and rig the drawing. There is also a "cell animation" feature that lets you draw individual frames with onion skinning. Again, very basic, but a start. I haven't used these features in production, so I can't really say how well they work under stress. But they've been very evocative of what might be possible as the tool develops.
    - egypturnash 5y ago
      Thanks! I might take a look at it then. Maybe it'll be the right tool to let me idly fiddle around for the fun of it without things like "having flashbacks to working under one of the worst people in animation back in the 00s" around the tool. :)
- PostThisTooFast 5y ago
  What about Motion? After Effects isn't really a motion-graphics application; Motion is.
- TheRealNGenius 5y ago
  How do you know that a real node editor is planned, I couldn't find that anywhere on the website.
  - sgian 5y ago
    We have a (limited) public roadmap which shows what we're planning to look at next: https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/roadmap/ https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/roadmap/
  - virtualritz 5y ago
    I read it in the docs of the Flow Graph widget [1]. [1] https://docs.cavalry.scenegroup.co/user-interface/menus/window-menu/flow-graph https://docs.cavalry.scenegroup.co/user-interface/menus/wind...
Igelau 5y ago
It looks cool, but I really hate subscription pricing. At least let me keep the last fully functioning version I had a license for like JetBrains does. I went digging in the Terms and Conditions to see if there was such a thing allowed and I saw this bizarre item on the thou-shalt-not list for users: > Disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site. [0] Is there some UK legal definition of "disparage" that I'm not aware of, or are they basically saying "don't you dare talk any smack about us or we'll ban you so hard"? Maybe that's in everything these days and I just never noticed. [0] https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/terms-and-conditions/ https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/terms-and-conditions/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- p1necone 5y ago
  I could never use subscription software with a clause like that in a professional context. That's far too much risk to take on. I can picture the response from them already too - "oh we would never use this clause to silence criticism of our product, that's not the intent" etc. If that's the case, then rewrite your contract so that it doesn't say you can do that - people write legal terms of use instead of ad hoc verbal agreements for a reason. It's a shame too, because it seems like a pretty good tool otherwise.
  - virtualritz 5y ago
    Are you a professional motion graphics artist? Just curious.
- aarpmcgee 5y ago
  Immediate “no” from me.
- howolduis 5y ago
  it means if you dare to give us a negative review, we will sue you.
- prox 5y ago
howolduis 5y ago
terrible subscription model. Tried to download but they force you to sign up. The free version has a watermark which means anything you do on it is unusuable.
akx 5y ago
Some of the concepts here seem similar to my experimental SVG tool Coil (https://akx.github.io/coil/ https://akx.github.io/coil/) from 2018. Guess I was on the right track there. :)
terpimost 5y ago
Cavalry is amazing and pretty disruptive. It’s much easier toLearn and it’s working fast. It’s a great example of magical software design.

74 points by davidbarker 5y ago

Cavalry is amazing. The future (or current already?) king of motion graphics apps. Imagine a simple, 2D version of Houdini and regular After Effects having a baby. Except so far Cavalry inherited After Effect's read-only Flow Graph. But a real node editor is planned for the future. By all means download and play with it. They have great mini tutorials on YouTube. Also Cavalry is good inspiration on how to do a UI for artists. They really listen to their users.

egypturnash 5y ago
Can I pick up my stylus and use the drawing skills I've spent ~20y on honing to draw stuff with anything like Illustrator's pencil tool, or does this only let me draw basic shapes/import stuff from elsewhere? I would have downloaded it and answered this question for myself but the "make an account before downloading" step made me roll my eyes and get back to work.
- commieneko 5y ago
  There is a drawing tool that will work with pen tablets. It's not perfect, but it, like a lot of the features, is a start. The end result of the tool is a simplified bezier curve. There is a tolerance slider that lets you control how much smoothing is used in generating the end result of the drawing. I couldn't get it tight enough for finished character drawings done only with the pen, but you can go in and edit the Beziers with the regular Bezier tools. It does work well enough that you can knock out a rough and then clean it up. The real strength of this will to allow you to come in and rig the drawing. There is also a "cell animation" feature that lets you draw individual frames with onion skinning. Again, very basic, but a start. I haven't used these features in production, so I can't really say how well they work under stress. But they've been very evocative of what might be possible as the tool develops.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    Thanks! I might take a look at it then. Maybe it'll be the right tool to let me idly fiddle around for the fun of it without things like "having flashbacks to working under one of the worst people in animation back in the 00s" around the tool. :)
PostThisTooFast 5y ago
What about Motion? After Effects isn't really a motion-graphics application; Motion is.
TheRealNGenius 5y ago
How do you know that a real node editor is planned, I couldn't find that anywhere on the website.
- sgian 5y ago
  We have a (limited) public roadmap which shows what we're planning to look at next: https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/roadmap/ https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/roadmap/
- virtualritz 5y ago
  I read it in the docs of the Flow Graph widget [1]. [1] https://docs.cavalry.scenegroup.co/user-interface/menus/window-menu/flow-graph https://docs.cavalry.scenegroup.co/user-interface/menus/wind...

Igelau 5y ago

It looks cool, but I really hate subscription pricing. At least let me keep the last fully functioning version I had a license for like JetBrains does. I went digging in the Terms and Conditions to see if there was such a thing allowed and I saw this bizarre item on the thou-shalt-not list for users: > Disparage, tarnish, or otherwise harm, in our opinion, us and/or the Site. [0] Is there some UK legal definition of "disparage" that I'm not aware of, or are they basically saying "don't you dare talk any smack about us or we'll ban you so hard"? Maybe that's in everything these days and I just never noticed. [0] https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/terms-and-conditions/ https://cavalry.scenegroup.co/terms-and-conditions/

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
p1necone 5y ago
I could never use subscription software with a clause like that in a professional context. That's far too much risk to take on. I can picture the response from them already too - "oh we would never use this clause to silence criticism of our product, that's not the intent" etc. If that's the case, then rewrite your contract so that it doesn't say you can do that - people write legal terms of use instead of ad hoc verbal agreements for a reason. It's a shame too, because it seems like a pretty good tool otherwise.
- virtualritz 5y ago
  Are you a professional motion graphics artist? Just curious.
aarpmcgee 5y ago
Immediate “no” from me.
howolduis 5y ago
it means if you dare to give us a negative review, we will sue you.
prox 5y ago

howolduis 5y ago

terrible subscription model. Tried to download but they force you to sign up. The free version has a watermark which means anything you do on it is unusuable.

akx 5y ago

Some of the concepts here seem similar to my experimental SVG tool Coil (https://akx.github.io/coil/ https://akx.github.io/coil/) from 2018. Guess I was on the right track there. :)

terpimost 5y ago

Cavalry is amazing and pretty disruptive. It’s much easier toLearn and it’s working fast. It’s a great example of magical software design.