General Preferences

To customize your interface, you will use some of the preferences located in the General tab as well as the Camera tab.

Parameter Description
Save

In Harmony Server, you can decide which kinds of assets are saved when you use the Save command. This can be useful if you need specific users to only be able to make changes to certain aspects of the scene they're working on, or if you want to prevent yourself from accidentally making undesired changes to important assets. Unchecking any of the following options will prevent you from saving their corresponding type of assets:

  • Save Scene: Save changes to the list of layers, elements, animation, timing, layout, effects, scene properties, etc.
  • Save Palette Lists: Save changes to the list of palettes associated to the scene or to individual elements.
  • Save Palettes: Save changes to the colours and textures contained in palettes.
  • Save Drawings: Save changes to existing drawings as well as newly created drawings.
TIPIf you want to save changes made to a type of asset that for which saving was disabled, you can do so by selecting File > Advanced Save from the top menu. In the Advanced Save dialog, assets for which saving is disabled will be unchecked, so you must manually check the assets you want to save.
IMPORTANTWhen you close a scene, Harmony will not ask for confirmation to discard changes made to assets for which saving is disabled.

Auto-Save:

  • Interval (minutes): This is the frequency at which the auto-save takes place.
  • Inactivity Interval (seconds): When Auto-save is about to take place, it verifies if you are drawing or doing anything in the application. If so, Auto-save waits this number of seconds before attempting another save.
  • Ask Before Saving: Before performing an auto-save, the system will prompt you with a message to confirm if you want to save or not. You can choose to turn off this option.
  • Enabled: This enables the Auto-save feature. If you do not want the system to automatically save your work, deselect this option. The auto-save is off by default.

Automatically Save Workspace: Changes to your workspace, such as how views and toolbars are laid out, are automatically saved, making sure your workspace remains the same after you close and re-launch Harmony or if you switch between different workspaces. If this option is disabled, you must manually save changes to your workspace by selecting Windows > Workspace > Save Workspace from the top menu.

Options

Support Gestures: Enables manipulating views such as the Camera and Drawing views using the following gestures:

  • To pan the view, drag your two fingers in any direction, keeping both fingers at the same distance from each other.

  • To zoom in, drag your two fingers away from each other.

  • To zoom out, drag your two fingers closer to each other.

  • To rotate, drag your two fingers in a curve so that they revolve in the same direction.

Invert Scroll Direction: When panning a view by dragging it with your fingers in one direction, this makes the view pan in the opposite direction.

Touch Sensitivity: Control touch sensitivity. On macOS, higher numbers give a slower response to pans. On Windows, higher numbers favour scale/rotates over pans.

Auto Render: Controls whether the Camera view's Auto Render option is enabled or disabled when launching Harmony. When Auto Render is disabled, if any change is made to the scene while the Camera view is in Render Preview mode, it will switch to OpenGL Preview mode. When enabled, it will merely refresh the render preview.

Focus on Mouse Enter: In Harmony, some keyboard shortcuts, menus or toolbar buttons are intended for specific views in your workspace. To use keyboard shortcuts or other functionalities on a specific view, this view must be focused on. For example, the Centre on Selection shortcut will find the selected element in the Timeline or Camera view, depending on which one is focused on. Harmony draws a red rectangle around the currently focused on view.

By default, to set the focus on a view, you must click on its tab or on anything inside the view itself. The Focus on Mouse Enter preference will make Harmony automatically focus on the view the mouse cursor is over, making it switch the focus on a view and use keyboard shortcuts on it.

NOTESome items in the top menu also have functionalities that are specific to the focused on view, but moving the mouse cursor to the top menu might leave the wrong view focused on. To circumvent this problem, it might be necessary to become familiar with keyboard shortcuts, contextual (right-click) menus and the view menus available via the menu button at the top-left corner of some views.

Use Dark StyleSheet (Requires Relaunch): Application loads a dark skin for the User Interface.

Settings

Stop-Motion Keyframes: New keyframes are created as stop-motion keyframes.

Default Separate Position for Pegs: New pegs are created with separate position functions.

Default Separate Scale for Pegs: New pegs are created with separate scale functions.

Timeline

Add Keyframe at Beginning and End: Add keyframes at beginning and end: Select this option to copy and paste a set of frames that includes an interpolated sequence between two keyframes, but only extracts a partial section. Under normal circumstances, cutting and pasting a function without either the start or end keyframe would render the function null. This option caps the partial function with a new keyframe when you perform the paste.

Extend Exposure of Previous Drawing: When drawing on a blank frame, a new drawing is created and the timing is extended from the previous exposed drawing.