Toon Boom Harmony 17.0.0 Release Notes

A new Master Controller wizard, the Stack Wizard, allows you to create a Master Controller that combines a 2D point widget and a slider widget. It works similarly to the Grid Wizard, except that it allows you to combine several grids of poses. The 2D point allows you to pose your character based on the current grid of poses, and the slider allows you to switch between grids.

A good example of how this can be used is by creating a 2D point widget that sets the angle your character's head is facing, and a slider that sets its mouth pose. By creating a grid of the character's head looking in every direction, then creating alternate versions of this grid for each mouth pose, you can use the Stack Wizard to generate a Master Controller that controls both aspects of your character.

To use this wizard, create a grid of poses in a scene like you would for the Grid Wizard, then all the variations needed for that grid of poses. Then, in the Master Controller toolbar, click on the Stack Wizard button.

The following new Master Controller widgets can be created in Harmony:

• Button: This widget can be scripted to fire an action when clicked on.

  

• Checkbox: This widget is like a button, except that it toggles on and off. It can be scripted to fire different actions depending on whether it's switched on or off.

  

• Label: This widget creates a simple text label inside a rectangle. It cannot be interacted with, but it can help make other widgets easier to identify.

  

For more information, see Harmony Scripting Interface Reference.

The new Unroll Wizard allows you to "unroll" the original character poses of a Master Controller into the current scene, and makes changes to them.

For example, if you have a character with a Master Controller that controls the direction in which it is looking, you can use the Unroll Wizard to recreate the poses of your character looking in every direction that were used to generate this Master Controller, into the current scene.

Unrolling a Master Controller can be useful if you wish to make changes to an existing Master Controller. By unrolling its poses into a scene, you get to make changes to the poses, then create a new Master Controller that uses the modified poses.

To use the Unroll Wizard, select a Master Controller in your scene. Then, in the Master Controller toolbar, click on the Unroll Wizard button.

When creating a Slider-type Master Controller with the Slider Wizard, you now have the option to make the slider "stepped". This means that, when you manipulate the slider, instead of interpolating between the different poses that were used to create the Master Controller, it will set the character to one of these poses, with no interpolation.

This can be useful if you wish to create a slider to select between a set of poses that are not meant to interpolate between one another, such as mouth poses..

To use this option, simply uncheck the Interpolate Between Poses option when using the Slider Wizard.

When creating a Master Controller in Harmony Server using the Stack Wizard, the Grid Wizard or the Slider Wizard, you will be prompted to select at which level (scene, job, environment or global) you want the Master Controller's poses database to be stored.

It is now possible to select a Master Controller widget and nudge it in any direction by pressing the arrow keys.

In addition to the Label widget, the following Master Controller widgets can be configured to have labels by setting some of their properties:

• 2D Point
• Slider
• Button
• Checkbox

This can be done by setting the widget's label property, as well as other related properties, when creating the widget. For more information, see Harmony Scripting Interface Reference.

The new pen stabilizer can help you draw smooth, stable lines by stabilizing your drawing strokes as you draw, without having to smooth them afterwards. It works by letting you draw a stroke without generating a line immediately, instead it starts generating a line that trails behind your mouse cursor or tablet pen once it reaches a certain length. By trailing behind your stroke, it can smooth out the flaws in your drawing gesture and generate a smooth stroke.

There are two different stabilizing method methods:

• Average: Harmony calculates the average direction of all of your mouse or pen gestures between the end of the actual drawing stroke and the current position of your mouse cursor or pen tip, and extends the stroke in this average direction, effectively evening out jitter and rounding sharp turns.

  

• Pulled String: When you start drawing a stroke, Harmony positions the drawing tool where your stroke starts. As you move the mouse or tablet pen, the drawing tool remains in that position, but a "string" appears, linking your drawing tool to your mouse cursor or pen tip.

  

  Once a certain maximum length is reached, the string pulls the drawing tool in the direction of your mouse cursor or tablet pen.

  

The distance between your mouse cursor or tablet pen and the stroke can be customized.

This feature can be enabled by adding the Pen Settings toolbar to your workspace, and selecting either Average or Pulled String in the toolbar's drop-down menu—see About Pen Stabilization.

If you have a tablet and pen that support reading the tilt angle of your pen, you can configure the Brush tool to use this information and draw with a tilted tip. A tilted tip will be stretched or projected at the angle in which you tip your tablet pen, simulating the effect of drawing with a tilted pencil or felt pen.

This feature can be used by adjusting the Pen Tilt Sensitivity parameter in the Brush Properties dialog—see Brush Tool Properties.

If you have a tablet and pen that supports reading the rotation angle of your pen, you can configure the Brush tool to use this information so that the rotation of your brush tip is based on how you rotate your tablet pen.

This feature can be used by enabling the Use Pen Rotation property in the Brush Properties dialog—see Brush Tool Properties.

Harmony now allows you to configure the curve by which it processes the amount of pressure you put on your pen tablet to calculate the thickness, flow or opacity of your brush or pencil lines.

The Pen Pressure Feel dialog can be accessed by adding the Pen Settings toolbar to your workspace, then clicking on the Pen Pressure Feel button. For more information, see About Pen Pressure Curve Customization and Pen Pressure Feel Dialog Box.

When drawing straight lines with the Brush or Pencil tool using a pressure sensitive pen tablet, you can drag your pen back over your stroke to adjust or increase its thickness, as if you were drawing with a pressure-sensitive pen against a ruler. There are two different approaches to this:

• If you draw while pressing and holding the Shift key, you will draw a horizontal or a vertical line.
• If you draw while pressing and holding both the Alt and Shift keys, you will draw a straight line in any direction. If you drag your pen in the opposite direction of your line, the angle of your line will lock and you will be able to draw over it.

The brush presets for the Brush tool have been updated.

• Solid vector brushes are now sorted by size, starting from 5 and going to 25.

  

• Fine Pencil, Tilting Pencil and Chisel Tip brushes have been added.

  

• Charcoal has been updated, and its alternative, Charcoal Pencil, has been replaced with Dark Charcoal.

  

The Stroke tool now creates smoother lines with less unnecessary control points.

The Contour Editor tool now has a Tip Style option in the Tool Properties view. This option allows you to select which style of tips should the extremities of pencil lines be left with when you select and delete a pencil line segment with the Contour Editor tool.

Several new drawing guides have been added:

• The Ruler allows you to position and rotate a simple straight axis, and then draw a line along that axis, like a regular ruler.

  

• The Isometric Perspective guide helps you draw lines that are parallel to one of three axes: The x-axis, the y-axis and the z-axis. The angle of each axis can be customized as needed.

  This type of pseudo-perspective, also referred to as parallel projection, is often used in 2D games, computer graphics and schematics to depict 3D objects and environments without using any actual perspective, foreshortening or 3D rendering. In 2D animation, it is often used to draw long panning backgrounds from a low or high angle.

  

• The 3-Point Perspective (Horizontal Pan) guide helps you draw horizontally panoramic backgrounds, with curvilinear horizontal lines. A vanishing point is placed in the middle of the horizon line, to help draw lines on the z-axis, and two vanishing points are placed on the horizon line outside of the camera field, to define the curve of horizontal lines. Vertical lines are made perpendicular to the horizon line.

  This is useful for drawing backgrounds meant to be panned over horizontally. Panning the camera horizontally over a background drawn with a 3-Point Perspective (Horizontal Pan) guide will simulate a rotation of the camera on the y-axis.

  

• The 3-Point Perspective (Vertical Pan) guide helps you draw vertically panoramic backgrounds, with curvilinear vertical lines. A vanishing point is placed in the middle of the horizon line, to help draw lines on the z-axis, and two vanishing points are placed above and below the horizon line, outside of the camera field, to define the curve of vertical lines. Horizontal lines are made parallel to the horizon line.

  This is useful for drawing backgrounds meant to be panned over vertically. Panning the camera vertically over a background drawn with a 3-Point Perspective (Vertical Pan) guide will simulate a vertical rotation of the camera on the x-axis.

  

• The 4-Point Continuous Perspective guide is very similar to the 3 Point Perspective (Horizontal Pan) guide, except that it is designed to help draw full 360° panoramic backgrounds.

  This guide uses 5 vanishing points. When drawing a horizontal line, it is curved by arching over one of the vanishing points and reaching down to the two surrounding vanishing points. This creates a perspective effect where each vanishing point represents one of the cardinal points, except that the leftmost and the rightmost points represent the same cardinal point, effectively creating a looping background. Backgrounds made with the 4-Point Continuous Perspective guide can be looped horizontally to simulate a full rotation of the camera on the y-axis.

  

• The 4-Point Perspective (Vertical Pan) is a lot like the 2-Point Perspective guide, except that its vertical lines are curvilinear, so it can be used to make vertically panning backgrounds. Two vanishing points are on the horizon line, outside of the camera field, to help draw lines on the x-axis and the z-axis, and two vanishing points are placed above and below the camera field to define the curve of the vertical lines.

  This is useful for drawing backgrounds meant to be panned over vertically, in which cuboid objects are seen from an angle.

  

• The 5-Point Perspective (Fish Eye) guide helps you draw backgrounds that are curvilinear on both the x-axis and the y-axis. It has one central vanishing point on the horizon line, from which lines on the z-axis are drawn, two vanishing points at the extremities of its horizon line, to define the curve of horizontal lines, and two vanishing points above and below the horizon line, to define the curve of the vertical lines.

  This guide can be used to draw backgrounds with a fisheye-style wide angle lens effect. It can also be used to draw backgrounds that are meant to be panned in various directions.

  

Each guide is available in the Add Guide pop-up menu of the Guides view. For more information, see About Drawing Guides.

If you press and hold the Alt key while using drawing guides, the angle of the guide lines will stop following your mouse cursor and lock in position until you release the Alt key, allowing you to keep the guide lines at the right angle.

By using this feature, you can rework the thickness or length of lines that you are drawing with a guide. It's also useful if you want to draw a dotted line along an axis.

The new Free Form Deformation is a type of deformer that can be used to deform textures. It works by creating points anywhere inside an element, then manipulating these points to deform the element in a way similar to pulling on different parts of a piece of cloth.

To create a Free Form Deformation, select the Rigging tool in the Deformation toolbar. Then, in the Tool Properties view, select Free Form Mode. Select the element you want to deform, and click where you want to create deformation points—see About Free Form Deformations.

It is now possible to add horizontal and vertical guides to the Camera view. Alignment guides are visible when the Transform tool is selected, and can be used to help you align elements to specific areas of the stage.

• You can add guides using the New Horizontal Alignment Guide and New Vertical Alignment Guide buttons in the toolbar above the Camera view.
• You can manipulate alignment guides using the Transform tool.
• You can hide or display guides by toggling the Show Alignment Guides button in the toolbar below the Camera view.
• You can lock or remove alignment guides using the menu commands available when selecting View > Alignment Guides in the top menu.
• You can make elements snap to alignment guides by enabling the Snap to Alignment Guides option of the Transform tool in the Tool Properties view.

For more information, see About Alignment Guides

It is now possible to add coloured markers to frames in the Timeline view. Frame markers differ from drawing markers in that they are not tied to a drawing, but to a frame. They can be added to any frame, whether or not it contains a drawing. They also differ from scene markers as they are added to specific layers rather than the entire scene, and only mark a single frame.

To add a frame marker, right-click on a frame in the Timeline view and select Mark Frame, then select the desired colour to mark the frame with.

It is possible to assign keyboard shortcuts to quickly navigate between frame markers, whether of any colour or of a specific colour. Those keyboard shortcuts can be set in the Timeline section of the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.

For more information, see About Frame Markers

There is now a preference to make new Composite nodes in Pass Through mode by default.

This preference, named Default Pass Through Composite, is available in the General section of the Preferences dialog—see General Preferences.

It is now possible to insert a composite in the middle of a connection cable by holding the Alt key and moving it over the cable.

It is also possible to rip a composite from a connection by holding the Alt key and moving it out of its cables.

Up until Harmony, this was possible with every node that has at least one input and one output port, except for the Composite node.

A new Motion-Blur effect was added to Harmony. This effect has four significant enhancements over the legacy Motion-Blur node:

• It can blur animations on the angle and scale of elements, whereas the legacy Motion-Blur effect only blurred translations.
• It can be connected to a peg that will dictate the direction of the blurring effect, if desired. Otherwise, it will use the direction of its input image, like with the legacy Motion-Blur node.
• It has a Preroll Motion option that allows you to simulate that the motion started before the first frame of the scene, making the motion blur already in effect in the first frame.
• The motion blur effect continues even after its input element has exited the camera field.

For more information, see Motion Blur Node

It is now possible to export a movie in MPEG-4 (.mp4) format.

To export an MP4 movie, select File > Export > Movie from the top menu. Then, in the Video Format drop-down, select H.264/MPEG-4 (*.mp4).

The Shortcuts tab of the Preferences dialog is now its own dialog, the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog.

To access this dialog box, in the top menu, select Edit (Windows/Linux) or Harmony Premium (macOS) > Keyboard Shortcuts.

It is now possible to create your own keyboard shortcut sets. You can also export your keyboard shortcut sets as XML files and use them as backups or share them with project collaborators.

You can create, export and import keyboard shortcut sets using the New, Load... and Save... buttons at the top of the Keyboard Shorcuts dialog.

For more information, see About Keyboard Shortcut Sets.

It is now possible to export your preferences as XML files, and use them as backups or share them with project collaborators.

You can export and import preferences using the new Load... and Save... buttons at the top of the Preferences dialog.

For more information, see Exporting Preferences and Importing Preferences.

Harmony now comes preloaded with five different sets of default preferences, which you can quickly switch between in the Preferences dialog.

Most of the preferences in these sets are the same, except for key workflow preferences such as

Focus on Mouse Enter, Default Separate Position for Pegs, Stop-Motion Keyframes, Support Overlay Arts and Underlay Arts, Advanced Palette List and others. For more information, —see Switching Between Preference Sets.

The Harmony package for macOS now only contains a single application.

You can launch any of the side applications bundled with Harmony, such as License Wizard, Control Center and Configuration Assistant, by first launching Harmony, then selecting Harmony Premium > Harmony Tools from the top menu.

It is possible to run scripts on Harmony scenes from the command line by running Harmony with the -batch parameter. However, since scripts are typically used to make changes to a scene, this saves the scene by default.

When running a script in command line on a Harmony Server scene, it is possible to make Harmony execute the script without saving the target scene. To do this, simply add the -readonly parameter to the command.

The viewPosition() method was added to the view class. It returns a QPoint object containing the position of the top-left corner of the specified view, in pixels. The individual coordinates can be obtained by using the x() and y() methods of the returned QPoint object.

For more information, see Harmony Scripting Interface Reference

The setValue(), setValueAt(), getValue() and getValueAt() methods of the Attribute class can now work with Quaternion functions:

• The "set" methods can can now take Quaternion objects as their parameter
• The "get" methods will return a Quaternion object when ran on a Quaternion function.