How to Use Drawing Guides

When you need to draw backgrounds or objects with a lot of straight lines, square angles and perspective, you can use Drawing Guides to assist you. Guides add a horizon line as well as vanishing points to your drawing space, which can be moved to fit your scene's needs, and they lock your drawing tools so that they always draw straight lines, either going from one of your vanishing points, or parallel to your guide's horizontal or vertical axis.

Harmony supports the following types of drawing guides:

  • The Square Grid guide simply helps you draw on the horizontal and vertical axes, which are relative to the horizon line.

  • The 1-Point Perspective guide helps you draw lines coming from a single vanishing point, which is in the middle of the horizon by default. It also helps you draw along the horizontal and vertical axes. This can help create realistic-looking backgrounds with buildings, walls and objects that are facing your camera.

  • The 2-Point Perspective guide helps you draw lines going from one of two vanishing points, which are positioned left and right of your drawing space. This can help create realistic-looking backgrounds with buildings, walls and objects that are at an angle from your camera.

  • The 3-Point Perspective guide helps you draw lines going from one of 3 vanishing points: Two horizontal vanishing points positioned left and right of your drawing space, and one vertical vanishing point positioned below or above your drawing space. This can help you draw realistic looking backgrounds from a low or high angle. The 3-Point Perspective guide has two presets: Bird's Eye View preset and the Worm's-Eye View, which can be used for high angle and low angle perspectives, respectively.

In order to use a drawing guide, you must first add it to your scene's Guides list.