Alternatives to Cavalry
A procedural, real-time 2D animation and motion design application for macOS and Windows. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Cavalry
A procedural, real-time 2D animation and motion design application for macOS and Windows.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Cavalry.
Adobe After Effects
Adobe's desktop application for motion graphics, visual effects compositing and animation for film, TV and web.
Adobe After Effects covers motion graphics, VFX compositing and animation within Creative Cloud, but is subscription only and lacks procedural, data-driven animation.
Glaxnimate
Vector animation and motion design application.
Glaxnimate is a free, GPL-3.0 vector animation tool for Windows, macOS and Linux with Lottie export, but it has a much smaller feature set.
Fusion
A node-based compositing program for visual effects, motion graphics and 3D work.
Fusion offers node-based compositing and motion graphics with 3D support on Windows, macOS and Linux, and a node workflow that takes time to learn.
Natron
An open-source, node-based video compositing application similar in scope to After Effects and Nuke.
Natron is a free open-source node-based compositor on all desktop platforms, focused on compositing rather than procedural 2D animation.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
HyperFrames
Open source framework that renders HTML and CSS into deterministic MP4 video.
Tahoma2D
2D drawing and stop-motion animation software based on OpenToonz.
Procreate Dreams
iPad app for 2D animation, combining frame-by-frame flipbook drawing with keyframes and video editing.
iClone
Real-time 3D character animation software for body, facial and motion capture animation.
