OpenGL Preferences

Conservative Texture Management: Turns on and off conservative memory management for bitmap texture files. Performance will improve when this is enabled. If disabled, you will have a better on-screen rendering of bitmap files at the expense of slower performance.

Smooth Textures: Smooths out the pixels of bitmap images when zooming in; this improves bitmap image quality.

Alternate Gradient and Cutter: This is an alternative way to disable write in the OpenGL Backbuffer, required for some video cards (i.e. GeForce FX5200). Do not enable this option unless you are experiencing problems with gradients and cutters in OpenGL.

Support Desktop Effects: Enable this option for better compatibility with Windows 7, Windows Vista and Mac OS X desktop effects. This will prevent graphic compositing problems from happening when the full-scene anti-aliasing option is enabled.

Enable Mipmapping on Bitmap Layers: Generate anti-aliased mipmap textures. Disable this option for increased performance when working on Bitmap layers with non-standard graphic cards.

Maximum Texture Size: The size that the bitmap file will be reduced to when using the Conservative Texture Management.

Texture Memory: The amount of temporary memory used to store bitmap texture files.

Vector Drawing Maximum Texture Size: This is the size that the .tvg file will be reduced to for better performance when in OpenGL render mode.

The Preview Settings will enable or disable certain anti-aliasing, Caching and Effect presets in order to achieve the desired output in the Camera view in OpenGL.

• Quality: The Quality preset will prioritize the quality of the OpenGL preview render over its performance. All in-camera effects will be enabled and the render will be optimized for quality.

  The result of the preview render should be closer to the final render.

  All the presets in the preview settings will be enabled and the scene will operate slower as it is processing your image at a higher standard.

• Performance: The Performance preset will prioritize the speed at which the preview is rendered.

  Certain effects, such as blurs and blend modes, will be disabled in order to provide a faster render and a more responsive Camera View.

• Default: The Default preset will display the settings as when you first load Harmony.

  For further optimization, you can create custom Preview Settings of your own. You can enable and disable the checkboxes in the Preview Settings dialog and click Create. A dialog will open prompting you to name your new preview setting which can be loaded in the future.

• Create: Save a custom Preview Setting to the Preset Settings dropdown box.

• Remove: Delete a custom Preview Setting from the Preview Settings dropdown box.

The following options allow you to configure the way drawings are previewed in Harmony.

Enable (Requires Relaunch) : By default, drawings displayed in Harmony, such as in the Camera or Drawing view, have no antialiasing and display hard pixels at the edge of strokes and lines. If this preference is enabled, antialiasing will be done through the graphic card to enhance the quality of drawings and make a preview that resemble the final render more closely. This may impact application performance negatively.

Number of samples: The amount of times the OpenGL preview is scaled up before processing it for antialiasing. The higher this value is, the better the antialiasing quality will be but the heavier it will be on the machine's resources.

Enable AA on 2D/3D Interactions: Defines whether 3D content is specifically anti-aliased when interacting with 2D content.

When enabled, 3D content will have extra anti-aliasing applied. The result will be smoother edges in the 2D and 3D content rendered in that pass.

A dropdown menu that allows you to select the edge quality and smoothness of your line in the Camera view in OpenGL.

• Quality: The Quality anit-aliasing option will provide a higher quality anti-aliased result at the cost of the preview performance.

  This option will be heavier and may slow the performance of the scene.

  Quality anti-aliasing uses multi-sampled anti-aliasing, which will render the edges of a drawing multiple times based on the defined sample count. The result will be a smoother anti-aliased line especially with smaller lines.

• Performance: The Performance anti-aliasing option will provide a lower quality anti-aliased result with little impact on the rendering performance.

  This option is best for removing aliased edges while retaining the rendering speed and interactive performance in the Camera view.

• Off: No antialiasing will be applied to the rendered output in the Open GL camera.

Enable Playback Caching: Enable the caching of OpenGL previews for quick playback.

Playback Cache Size (in Mb): The maximum size of the cache used to store cached playback images.

Enable Textures in Pencil Lines: Controls whether textures applied on pencil lines are rendered for the OpenGL preview.

Enable Variable Line Thickness: Controls whether lines with a variable width are rendered with their variable width or with a constant width in the OpenGL preview.

Render Tone and Highlight: Controls whether Tone and Highlight effects are rendered in the OpenGL preview.

Render Cutter: Controls whether Cutter effects are processed for the OpenGL preview.

Render Realistic Cutter: When enabled, the Camera view in OpenGL will preview cutting operations with the proper masking based on the transparency applied in real time similar to how it will appear in the final rendered. image at soft-render.

Render Blending Modes: When enabled, the Camera view in OpenGL will show a preview of the blending mode applied to your image from the Blending node in real time similar to how it will appear in the final rendered.

Render Composite Passthrough for All Effects: When this option is enabled, effects that display in the OpenGL preview are ordered based on the logic that will be used for the final rendered image, which may fix some issues with the OpenGL preview when using complex node systems comprised of effects and mattes. However, enabling this option may impact performance if the scene has effects that use a matte, such as the Cutter or Tone effect.

Render Colour Override: Controls whether Colour-Override effects are rendered in the OpenGL preview.

Render Glue Node: Controls whether Glue effects are rendered in the OpenGL preview.

Render Effects: When enabled, the Camera view in OpenGL will show a preview of the applied effects in real time similar to how it will appear in the final rendered image at soft-render.

Render Blurs: When enabled, the Camera view in OpenGL will show a preview of the applied blurs in real time similar to how it will appear in the final rendered image at soft-render.

• You can select one of the following Blur Qualities from the Blur Quality dropdown menu:

  • Best Quality: Will prioritize the quality of the OpenGL blur effect by using the highest sample size in the blur operation. The effect will take longer to render and could affect performance of the render.

  • Better Quality: Will produce a high quality blur in OpenGL by using a moderately high sample size.

  • Regular Quality: Will produce a medium quality blur in OpenGL by using a intermediate sample size. This option can be used for a balance of quality and performance in the Camera View.

  • Better Performance: Will produce a low quality blur in OpenGL by using a lower sample size.

  • Best Performance: Will prioritize the performance of the OpenGL blur effect by using the lowest sample size in the blur operation. The effect will take less time to render and could affect the quality of the render.