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.

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Arrange

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Convert Brush Strokes to Pencil Lines

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Pencil Lines to Brush Strokes

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Strokes to Pencil Lines

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Optimize

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Flatten and Remove Extra Strokes

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Create Contour Stroke

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Remove Contour Stroke

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Grid

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Group/Ungroup

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Hand

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Rotate View

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Smooth Fast

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. The brush stroke thickness will be lost.

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.

Flatten and Remove Extra Strokes

The Flatten and Remove Extra Strokes option lets you flatten your drawing and 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.	View > Grid > Show Grid Press Ctrl + ' (Windows/Linux) or ⌘ + ' (Mac OS X).
Grid Outline Only		Displays the outline of the grid only.	View > Grid > Grid Outline Only
Square		Displays a standard square grid.	View > Grid > Square
12 Field Grid		Displays a 12-field size grid.	View > Grid > 12 Field Grid
16 Field Grid		Displays a 16-field size grid.	View > Grid > 16 Field Grid
Underlay		Displays the grid under the drawing elements.	View > Grid > Underlay
Overlay		Displays the grid over the drawing elements.	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.

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From the top menu, select Selected> Group > Group or Selected > Group > Ungroup.

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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.

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In the Tools toolbar, select the Hand tool, click in the Drawing view and drag.

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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.