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In this video I break down a really nice Cavalry technique for building bloom / wave style motion systems using duplicators.

The scene itself is inspired by a piece shared by Thomas Azzarello on Scenery, and what I wanted to do here was slow it down and rebuild the core idea from scratch so you can actually understand what's happening under the hood.

Rather than just showing the finished scene, I walk through the structure step-by-step:

starting with a simple ellipse inside a duplicator
introducing the behaviours that create the ripple / bloom effect
mixing them with a behavior mixer
using shape time offset and stagger
and reconstructing the whole system so you can recreate it yourself

This kind of setup is a great example of how procedural motion design works in Cavalry. Once you understand the underlying structure, you can adapt the same technique for all sorts of generative patterns, UI animations, and abstract motion systems.

If you're learning Cavalry, scenes like this are really useful because they demonstrate a few of the core mental models:

duplicators as structural systems
behaviour-driven animation
controlling motion through influence rather than keyframes
building reusable animation rigs

Big credit again to Thomas Azzarello for the original idea that inspired this breakdown. And Scenery.io for hosting/sharing/celebrating the community's work.

If you're exploring procedural motion design, generative animation, or trying to get more comfortable with Cavalry's duplicator workflow, hopefully this helps clarify how these systems actually work.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro + credit to Thomas Azzarello
00:45 Overview of the scene structure
01:19 Ellipse shading: inner shadow + multipoint gradient
02:02 Path setup and the null driving the system
03:24 Behavior Mixer explained
05:05 Scale stagger and Shape Time Offset overview
06:09 Full rebuild starts
06:32 Building the background gradient
07:55 Creating and shading the ellipse
10:58 Setting up the duplicator
13:26 Adding scale stagger for the bloom effect
15:21 Adding colour variation with a Colour Array
17:37 Bringing in Behavior Mixer for the motion
20:21 Adding oscillator movement
22:36 Adding noise and combining behaviours
25:04 Building the path-driven master movement
29:22 Converting path motion into a behaviour value
30:59 Connecting master position into the Behavior Mixer
31:32 Staggering Shape Time Offset
33:08 Timing tweaks and final polish
34:17 Editing the path to change the whole animation
35:45 Wrap up + thanks to Thomas