More Drawing Tools

Harmony offers a wide variety of useful tools to optimize your drawings and work more efficiently; tools such as Group, Arrange, and the animation disk to rotate your workspace.

Arrange
Convert Brush Strokes to Pencil Lines
Pencil Lines to Brush Strokes
Strokes to Pencil Lines
Optimize
Remove Extra Strokes
Create Contour Stroke
Remove Contour Stroke
Grid
Group/Ungroup
Hand
Rotate View

Arrange

The different Arrange options let you reorder drawing objects inside a single layer in the Drawing or Camera view.

Name Button Description Access Method
Bring to Front Moves the selected art to the front (on top)

From the top menu, select Selected > Arrange > Bring to Front.

Press Ctrl + Shift + PgUp (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + Shift + PgUp (Mac OS X).

Bring Forward Moves the selected art one level forward (closer to the front)

From the top menu, select Selected > Arrange > Bring Forward.

Press Ctrl + PgUp (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + PgUp (Mac OS X).

Send Backward Moves the selected art one level lower (behind)

From the top menu, select Selected > Arrange > Send Backward.

Press Ctrl + PgDown (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + PgDown (Mac OS X).

Send to Back

Moves the selected art behind everything (bottom / back)

 

From the top menu, select Selected > Arrange > Send to Back.

Press Ctrl + Shift + PgDown (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + Shift + PgDown (Mac OS X).

Convert Brush Strokes to Pencil Lines

The Brushes Strokes to Pencil Lines operation converts selected contour strokes into centreline pencil strokes. This command is only available from the top menu.

Pencil Lines to Brush Strokes

The Pencil Lines to Brush Strokes operation converts the selected centreline pencil strokes into contour strokes brush lines.

Strokes to Pencil Lines

The Strokes to Pencil Lines operation converts the selected invisible line to a pencil line.

Optimize

The Optimize command reduces the number of layers, such as overlapping brush strokes, in the selected drawing objects. Drawing objects will only be flattened and optimized if the selected objects do not change the appearance of the final image when they are merged.

For example, if you have selected a number of partially transparent objects, which you layered to create an additive colour effect, the selected transparent drawing objects will not be merged. This is because merging the transparent drawing objects will cause them to lose the effect of the layered transparent colours.

Remove Extra Strokes

The Remove Extra Strokes option let you remove the invisible lines in your selection.

Create Contour Stroke

The Create Contour Stroke option is used to add a permanent invisible line around a shape that was drawn directly in Harmony. This allows you to unpaint your lines with the Paint tool but maintain the shape of the lines, should you need to repaint later.

This command is useful when inking and painting and using the Apply to All Drawings in Layer option.

Remove Contour Stroke

The Remove Contour Stroke option is used to remove any permanently invisible lines that were created while scanning and vectorizing drawings or manually adding contour strokes. This is useful if you want to remove the intersection triangles created during vectorization.

Grid

Use the Show Grid option to display a grid in the Drawing view.

Name Button Description Keyboard Shortcut

Show Grid

 

Displays the grid

From the top menu, select View > Grid > Show Grid

Press Ctrl + ' (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + ' (Mac OS X).

Square Displays a standard square grid

From the top menu, select View > Grid > Square.

12 Field Grid Displays a 12-field size grid

From the top menu, select View > Grid > 12 Field Grid.

16 Field Grid Displays a 16-field size grid

From the top menu, select View > Grid > 16 Field Grid.

Underlay Displays the grid under the drawing elements From the top menu, select View > Grid > Underlay
Overlay Displays the grid over the drawing elements From the top menu, select View > Grid > Overlay

Group/Ungroup

Use the Group option to group selected drawing objects. This can help in the selection, repositioning, re-scaling and other transformations to be applied to multiple objects of a drawing.

From the top menu, select Selected> Group > Group or Selected > Group > Ungroup.
Press Ctrl + G and Ctrl + Shift + G (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + G and ⌘ + Shift + G (Mac OS X).

Hand

Use the Hand tool to pan through the Drawing view.

In the Tools toolbar, select the Hand tool, click in the Drawing view and drag.
You can also Hold down the Spacebar, click in the Drawing view and move your mouse in the direction you want to pan the view.

Rotate View

The Rotate View tool lets you rotate the Drawing view, the same way as you would do with a real animation disc. This tool can also be used in the Perspective view.