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, the node system, 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.

Open in Read Only mode if plugin syntax errors are detected: Opens scenes that contain plugin node errors in read-only mode to prevent you from losing plugin information on subsequent saves.

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.

Colour Management

Default to Element Palette Lists: When this option is enabled the new, cloned, duplicated, imported and linked palettes will be stored in the Element Palette list instead of the Scene Palette List.

Interactive Colour Recovery: If a colour palette required to display a drawing is not found because it was moved or deleted from its location, you will be asked if you wish to recover the missing colours into a new temporary palette. If this option is disabled, the colour recovery will happen automatically without your confirmation.

Colour Recovery: By default, if a colour palette required to display a drawing is missing because it has been moved or deleted, Harmony recovers the missing colours into a new temporary palette. If this option is disabled, Harmony will skip this step and display the zones painted with missing colours with the Replacement Colour, which is solid red by default.

Replacement Colour: If certain colours are no longer available, Harmony will display the replacement colour in the zones painted with missing colours.

Colours

You can select the colours for a lot of coloured elements in the user interface of Harmony.

NOTESome changes to colour preferences may not appear until Harmony is restarted or until the affected view is closed and reopened.

Current View Border: Sets the colour of the frame around the workspace view you are currently using, also known as focus. By default, the colour is red. Click on the red colour swatch to select a new colour in the Colour Picker window.

Current View Border in Template Edit: Sets the colour of the frame around the workspace view you are currently using when editing a template from your library view. By default, the colour is green. Click on the green colour swatch to select a new colour in the Colour Picker window.

Edit Colours: The Edit Colours button opens the Colours dialog, which allows you to set the colour for dozens of visual elements in the user interface.

Options

Auto Apply: When enabled, values entered or options selected in node editors are automatically applied to elements in your scene. The Apply and OK buttons are hidden in the Layer Properties when this feature is enabled.

Snap Keyframe: If two keyframes have the same value, they will both update to the same new position when the first of the two keyframes is modified. The previous keyframe has to be a Stop-Motion keyframe.

Auto-Get Rights to Modify Drawings: When using Harmony Server, this option will automatically grant you the right to modify a drawing as soon as you attempt to make a change to it. If disabled, you must manually obtain the rights to each drawing you want to make changes to.

Auto-Get Rights to Modify Palettes: When using Harmony Server, this options automatically grants you the right to modify the colour and texture swatches in a palette as soon as you attempt to make such changes. If disabled, you must manually obtain the rights to modify a palette before attempting to make changes to it.

Auto-Get Rights to Modify Palette List: When using Harmony Server, this option automatically allows you to make changes to the palette list. If disabled, you must manually obtain the right to the palette list before adding, removing or reordering palettes.

Editors Always on Top: Displays Function Editor and Layer Properties dialogs over other dialogs.

Close Previous Editors: When opening a new Layer Properties or Function Editor dialog, automatically close other such dialogs.

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, Camera or Node 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.

Shortcut Zooms on Mouse: When enabled, shortcut zooming will centre on the cursor location.

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.

Cycle Exposure: Make navigation in the Xsheet View wrap-around from the last frame or the last column to the first.

Display Cardinal Coordinates: When enabled, coordinates displayed in the application are expressed using cardinal points. For example, 1N2E means 1 field to the north and 2 fields to the east. When disabled, coordinates are expressed in scalar notation. For example, 1N2E would be expressed as +1,-2.

Flat Tool Toolbar (Requires Relaunch): When enabled, the Tools toolbar will display each tool in its own button, instead of grouping certain tools together in pop-up menus. Harmony must be relaunched to apply a change to this preference.

IMPORTANTBecause not all tools can be displayed simultaneously in a single column, some tools will be hidden from the Tools toolbar by default. You can customize which tools appear in the Tools toolbar by right-clicking on it and selecting Customize.

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

Settings

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.

Default Separate Position for Elements: New elements are created with separate position functions.

Default Separate Scale for Elements: New elements are created with separate scale functions.

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

Default Bezier: New functions curves are created as Bezier Curves.

Default Bezier Velocity: New velocity curves are created as Bezier Curves.

Field Chart:

  • X: Default value for the number of units in the X axis (east-west) of the field chart used for new scenes. This value should be half the total number of units in the X axis of the field chart. This value will appear by default in the Alignment dialog box.
  • Y: Default value for the number of units in the Y axis (north-south) of the field chart used for new scenes. This value should be half the total number of units in the Y axis of the field chart. This value will appear by default in the Alignment dialog box.
  • Z: Default value for the number of units in the Z axis (front-back) of the field chart used for new scenes. This value will appear by default in the Alignment dialog box.

Levels of Undo: Determines the number of actions retained by the Undo list. By default, 50 actions are stored in the list. You can alter the number if you want to.

Touch Interface

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.

Web Control Center

This setting is only available in Harmony Stand Alone. It is made to allow Harmony to connect to a WebCC server. When working on a scene exported from WebCC, you can download changes made to the scene from the database and upload changes you made to the database from Harmony.

URL: The full URL to the WebCC server, including the protocol and port number, as you would type it in a web browser:

protocol://hostname:portnumber

For example, to access a server named webcc.mystudio through https via port 8843, you would enter:

https://webccserver.mystudio:8843

NOTEIf the URL starts with the name of the server rather than the protocol, http is presumed.