Chapter 3: About Toon Boom Harmony
Toon Boom Harmony is the most advanced professional animation software on the market. Bringing together an impressive 2D drawing toolset with the ability to work in a real 3D space, and import 3D models,
Top Features
• | Advanced Drawing Tools: Texture brushes, and thick and thin pencil lines |
• | Smart Colour Palettes: Colour you can adjust on the fly |
• | Character Rigging: Hierarchy, deform, and effects for creating sophisticated rigs |
• | Special Effects: An array of effects including highlights and shadows, glows, blurs, and a full particle effects engine |
• | Real 3D Camera: A camera you can reposition in a full 3D space |
• | 3D Integration: Allowing you to import 3D models, position and animate them in 3D space |
• | Production Pipeline Integration: Seamlessly integrate content from pre-production via Toon Boom Storyboard Pro |
Toon Boom Pipeline
Toon Boom Harmony has been recognized for its excellence by winning many awards, including a Primetime Emmy® Engineering Award and the prestigious Ub Iwerks Annie Award for the integrated pipeline with Toon Boom Storyboard Pro.
Harmony works perfectly with Toon Boom Storyboard Pro for all pre-production phases. Therefore, animatics created in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro can be imported seamlessly in Harmony for animation and scene setup guidance.
Modules
Harmony Stand Alone is composed of the following modules:
• | Stage |
• | Draw |
• | Sketch |
• | Play |
• | Cloud |
These modules are all accessible from:
• | Windows: Start > Programs > Toon Boom Harmony 11.2 |
• | Mac OS X: Applications > Toon Boom Harmony 11.2 |
The Stage module is the core of Harmony. It comprises all the major drawing, animation and compositing features. It is used to work in the scene: design, character breakdown, cut-out animation, traditional animation, ink and paint, exposure sheet, timeline, effects, compositing, camera moves, colour styling, and so on.
The Draw module is a component of the Stage module. It contains all the tools necessary to create a paperless frame-by-frame animation project. There is no node system in this module, only the basic essential effects. Contrary to the Stage module, instead of creating effects in the Network view, you simply create them in the Timeline view. The Draw module also includes all the scene setup and camera features for you to do the compositing for your project.
The Sketch module is a component of the Stage module. It contains the essential tools to animate frame-by-frame drawings and paint them. It allows you to add layers and animation, and paint and adjust the timing. There are no effects, camera or other compositing tools included in this module. The Sketch module allows you to focus on the paperless animation tasks at hand without being distracted by other features that are not necessary to your work.
The Play module is used to play back the rendered image sequences enabling the user to view the final scenes and compositing results.
Access your Database via the Cloud. When you're running a studio, you will most likely have a database set up. This enables all the artists working on your production to share the same scenes and assets.
What the Toon Boom Cloud enables you to do is to host this database on the Internet. When you do so, you can have freelancers log in from anywhere with an internet connection. Then they can download a scene from the database, work on it, and upload it again.
No more need to spend time copying files to an FTP. No need to have an admin exporting and importing files from the database. Do it all directly through the Cloud.