Cavalry’s Oscillators is one of the basic or fundamental ways to animate, in a procedural way. I encourage you to read the Oscillator’s Docs page. It will cover every single setting in high detail.

If you like to learn in visual way, then my video tutorial will help you create 2 animations at the end of it. Additionally, I created about 10 practical examples with Oscillators. You can download them from Gumroad page below, for a small donation.

The main “effect” is use of a Stagger in most of the animations. OScillator’s default settings are a bit high – I would suggest you “zero them out” – set Stagger and Frequency to 0. Then start increasing both of them by small amounts.

Depends on how many copies you have in your Duplicator, you will get longer or shorter “tail”. If you have lots of copies, for example 1000, and your stagger is set to something like 2 or 5, then “tail” will be really long. And you may even get the effect of “overlap” or coiling.

Most “magic” comes from Oscillator driving multiple properties at once, in perfect sync. You can do this by using Number Range. Number Range allows you to convert one set of values, into another. For example, changing font size, as the Oscillator moves your shape on the screen. Or changing Opacity, Rotation, you name it.

What I found useful is to link Oscillator Minimum and Maximum values with Number Range Source Minimum and Source Maximum values. This way, when you tweak Oscillator’s values, your Number Range settings will automatically update. This is a solid way of making resizable and scalable rigs, quickly.