Cavalry vs After Effects: Which Motion Design Tool Should You Use?

Two very different approaches to motion design. After Effects has shaped the craft for more than two decades; Cavalry, launched in 2020, rethinks it from the ground up. Here's how they differ, where each one shines, and how to pick the right one for your work — or why many motion designers end up using both.

The short answer

• Learn After Effects first if you want to work in a studio, take on brand animation, explainers, social content or character work, or need compositing and VFX. It's what clients, studios and job posts expect.
• Add Cavalry if you build data-driven graphics, generative patterns, or the same animation in dozens of sizes, languages or colours. It turns hours of repetitive keyframing into a system you tweak once.
• Use both once you're comfortable: Cavalry for systems and variations, After Effects for polish, compositing and delivery.

The core difference

After Effects is a layer-based compositor: you stack assets on a timeline and animate them with keyframes. It has been the industry standard for motion design and VFX for over 25 years, and nearly every motion workflow, tutorial and template is built around it.

Cavalry is a procedural 2D animation tool: instead of keyframing each object, you build systems with generators, behaviours and attributes. Change one input and every element updates. It's newer, lean, and purpose-built for design that has to scale.

Workflow at a glance

	Cavalry	After Effects
Paradigm	Procedural / node-like	Layer + keyframe
Best for	Data-driven, generative, scalable systems	Character animation, compositing, VFX, brand work
Ecosystem	Small but growing	Massive: plugins, scripts, templates, tutorials
Learning curve	Steep if you're new to procedural thinking	Approachable start, very deep ceiling
Rendering	Fast, built-in exporter, many formats	Render queue or Media Encoder
3D	2D only	Basic 3D layers, real 3D through plugins and Cinema 4D
Pricing	Free version; Pro by subscription	Creative Cloud subscription

How each one thinks

After Effects: layers, precomps and keyframes

Everything in After Effects is a layer on a timeline: shapes, text, footage, adjustment layers. You animate properties with keyframes, shape their timing in the graph editor, group work into precomps and add effects on top. When you need logic, expressions (small JavaScript snippets like wiggle() or loopOut()) link properties together. It's direct and visual: what you see on the timeline is what you get.

The flip side is repetition. Animating fifty bars of a chart, or delivering one animation in twelve formats, means duplicating layers, precomps or whole projects — and every change has to be made again everywhere.

Cavalry: systems that build the animation

In Cavalry you describe how things should behave rather than placing each of them by hand. A Duplicator spreads a shape into a grid, a circle or along a path. Behaviours add motion, noise, staggering or falloff to every copy at once. Attributes can be connected to one another, to data from a spreadsheet, or to JavaScript. Change the number of copies, the data or a single colour and the whole scene follows.

It feels closer to designing a template than animating a shot — which is exactly why it's so fast once the system exists, and why it takes a while to click.

Where Cavalry wins

• Data-driven animation — feed it a CSV or JSON and animate hundreds of elements in seconds: charts, election and sports graphics, dashboards, infographics.
• Generative work — patterns, procedural loops and endless variations from a single scene, ideal for brand systems and social loops.
• Scalability — need 200 versions in different colours, sizes and languages? Build it once and change the inputs.
• Speed — a modern, lightweight app that stays responsive on large scenes and renders quickly.
• Clean exports — video, image sequences, SVG and Lottie straight from the app, handy for web and product teams.

Where After Effects wins

• Character animation & rigging — Duik, Joysticks 'n Sliders, RubberHose. Nothing in Cavalry rivals this ecosystem yet.
• Compositing & VFX — masks, rotoscoping, tracking, keying and green-screen work.
• Integration — Illustrator, Photoshop and Premiere files open and round-trip in one suite, and Cinema 4D connects for 3D.
• Team collaboration — most studios and freelancers already run on AE, so files, plugins, templates and hiring are frictionless.
• Tutorials & jobs — the sheer volume of learning material and client demand still favours After Effects.

Learning curve: your first week

With After Effects, day one already produces something: animate a logo, a title or a few shapes with keyframes, and refine the timing in the graph editor. The difficulty comes later, with precomps, expressions, the render pipeline and the plugin stack every studio relies on. It's easy to start and takes years to master.

With Cavalry, the first days feel slower: you need to understand how duplicators, behaviours and connections work together before anything looks good. Once that clicks, though, you can build in an hour what would take a day of keyframing — and changing it takes seconds. Designers who know a bit of node-based tools (or code) usually get there faster.

Rendering and export

After Effects renders through its render queue or Adobe Media Encoder, and covers every broadcast and delivery format with the right settings or plugins. For web animation, Lottie export goes through the Bodymovin plugin and has limits on what it supports.

Cavalry has its own fast exporter for video, image sequences, SVG and Lottie, which makes delivering many variations — or handing animations to developers — noticeably simpler.

Ecosystem, plugins and scripting

After Effects' biggest strength is its ecosystem: thousands of plugins, scripts and templates, from easing and rigging tools to particles and 3D renderers. If a problem has been solved before, there's probably a tool for it — see our picks of the best After Effects plugins.

Cavalry's ecosystem is much smaller, but it's built to be extended: JavaScript runs inside the app, many features are scriptable, and a growing community shares scenes and tools. You'll write a little more yourself, and rely on fewer third-party plugins.

Pricing

Cavalry has a free version, with a paid Pro subscription unlocking the full toolset. After Effects comes with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, either alone or as part of the full suite. Both change their offers regularly, so check the official sites for current prices — and note that many studios already pay for Creative Cloud, which weighs in After Effects' favour for client work.

Using both together

You don't have to choose. A common workflow is to build the systematic part in Cavalry — the data chart, the generative pattern, the grid of variations — export it as an image sequence or video, and bring it into After Effects for compositing, typography, sound and final delivery. Each tool does what it's best at.

Which one should you learn?

• Beginners — start with After Effects. It's what you'll meet in studios and job posts, and the learning material is endless.
• Brand, explainer and character animators — stay with After Effects; add Cavalry when a project needs systems or many versions.
• Data visualisation and infographics — Cavalry will save you days on every chart and dashboard.
• Generative and design-led motion — Cavalry is built for it, and pairs well with design tools.
• Product and UI motion — Cavalry's Lottie and SVG exports are a real plus; After Effects remains the safe default with Bodymovin.

In practice, many motion designers now use both — Cavalry for systems and variants, After Effects for polish and compositing.

Frequently asked questions

Is Cavalry free?

Cavalry has a free version for learning and personal projects, and a paid Pro subscription with the full feature set. Check the official site for the current limits of each.

Can Cavalry replace After Effects?

For data-driven, generative and template-based work, it can. For compositing, VFX, character rigging and most studio pipelines, After Effects is still the tool of choice — which is why so many designers combine them.

Is Cavalry good for beginners?

It can be, but the procedural way of thinking takes time. Most people find it easier after learning the basics of animation in a timeline-based tool like After Effects.

Does Cavalry do 3D?

No, Cavalry is a 2D animation tool. For 3D, look at After Effects with plugins, or at Cinema 4D and Blender.

Can I open After Effects projects in Cavalry?

No, but you can import vector artwork (SVG, Illustrator files) and assets into Cavalry, and bring Cavalry's renders back into After Effects.

See them in action

Browse curated motion design work on Motionimo to see how studios use these tools in real client projects, explore the After Effects expressions library, or head to Resources for more tools and learning material.