Toon Boom Harmony 21 Release Notes

To give you more control over the look and feel of the brush tool, new options are available to dynamically control the size, flow, opacity and brush tip angle when using a drawing tablet.

Size, Flow and Opacity

• Pen tilt and drawing speed can now be used as inputs to change the Size, Flow and Opacity properties of brushes, making it possible to control the size and the opacity of brushes independently while drawing. You are not limited to using the pressure for both.
• Fading and tapering parameters can also be used to increase or decrease the value of these properties based on the length of strokes. The additional properties are in a new window found by clicking the arrow next to those properties. A combination of multiple inputs can be used to control a single property.

Brush Tip Orientation

• The orientation of the brush tip can now be dynamically controlled using more than just the Wacom Art pen twist. A new drop-down list, in which you can select between Constant, Heading, Azimuth and Twist, is now available next to the Angle Function property.

For more information, see Creating a Brush.

A new Stencil Brush tool is now available in Harmony. Located in a drop-down menu under the Brush tool in the Tools toolbar.

The Stencil Brush Tool has a Repaint Brush Mode and an Overlay Brush Mode. The two modes are available from the Stencil Brush Tool Properties, in a drop-down menu under the brush presets.

In Repaint Brush Mode, the existing artwork is replaced and repainted, ignoring empty zones.

In Overlay Brush Mode, the existing artwork is used as a mask to generate new brush strokes which are added on top, leaving the existing artwork untouched.

A selection of multiple layers can be used when Overlay Brush Mode is active. With multiple layers selected, the union of the artwork in all of the selected layers is used as the mask while the topmost layer, the active layer, will be where the new strokes are created.

For more information, see Tools Toolbar.

The Cutter tool now has two gesture cutting modes available in the Tool Properties view.

• Single Line Cutting Gesture: This mode trims the first line segment cut by a single straight gesture.
• Multiple Lines Cutting Gesture: This new mode trims multiple line segments cut by the same gesture.

For more information, see Cutting Artwork

The Select by Colour tool, which was only available as a mode in the Select tool’s properties in previous versions, is now directly accessible from the Tools toolbar and the Drawing Tools menu for faster workflow.

The ability to create a keyboard shortcut for this tool has also been added under the Drawing Mode category.

The new Mixed Manipulation Mode button available in the Transform tool properties, allows the manipulation of multiple selections and combinations of Curve Deformers, Free Form Deformers, Drawings and Pegs together using the Transform Tool.

When the Mixed Manipulation Mode button is enabled in the Transform Tool Properties, the bounding box manipulator allows to perform scale, move, rotate and skew operations on all the selected elements together.

The new Rigid Point Deform node is a type of weighted deformer that uses the position of pegs to apply transformations. It prioritizes rigid transformations over deformations to preserve drawing integrity.

Used in conjunction with the Weighted Deform node, it is particularly useful for tracking and deforming textures on characters and animated surfaces.

For more information, see Creating a Rigid Point Deform.

A new tool called the Capture Motion tool can be used to record the position and motion of the mouse and apply it as an animated path to Drawing and Peg layers. This provides an easy way of creating animated paths for drawing and peg layers. The tool is available in the Advanced Animation toolbar as well as in the Animation Tools menu.

The deformer manipulator that can be enabled using the Show Manipulator button in the Deformation toolbar has the following improvements:

• It is now possible to skew a selection of deformer points by clicking and dragging on the edges of the manipulator box. Selecting all the points and skewing them produces the same result as when skewing a parent peg.
• New handles are available on the sides of the manipulator box to scale a selection of deformer points on a single axis.
• Holding the Shift key while scaling using a corner handle will scale the deformer proportionally.
• The deformer manipulator’s position no longer resets after each rotation.
• The deformer manipulator’s pivot will now follow when moving points.

It is now possible to display the deformation mesh of a deformer using the new Show Deformer Mesh option.

The Show Deformation Mesh button can be added to the Deformation toolbar using the Toolbar Manager by right-clicking on the Deformation toolbar and selecting Customize from the menu.

The new Shine effect node in Harmony 21 can be used to create effects such as shining light from behind an object or rays shining through the clouds.

Without having to build a complex node network, the Shine node replicates the placement of a light source behind an object and projects light rays around the given object. This new node is available in the Blur category of the Node Library.

New effects nodes that allow retiming and changing the order of frames are now available in Harmony. The following nodes are available in the Timing category of the Node Library.

The Hold Timing and Hold Transformation Timing nodes are used to define held frames and are useful for putting content on twos.

The Loop and Loop Transformation nodes can be used to define a range of frames to repeat in loop or ping pong mode.

The Retime and Retime Transformation nodes are used to offset image or transformations by a given amount of frames and can be used to shuffle frames in any order.

For more information, see Hold Timing, Loop Node, Timing Node.

A Proportion Grid can now be displayed in Harmony’s Camera view, to help with balance and proportions of scenes.

The Proportion Grid can be enabled from the Camera view’s status bar and follows the camera frame as it moves. The grid is divided by three on each axis by default to create a rule of thirds grid. The number of divisions can be changed from the Camera tab of the Preferences.

The Take Snapshot button in the Camera View status bar now has a drop-down menu with five available slots to store snapshots.

Custom keyboard shortcuts can be set for each slot from the Camera category of the shortcuts.

The preview resolution can now be changed from a drop-down menu in the Camera view’s status bar, providing a quick way of changing the resolution used for software render previews.

Apple ProRes 4444 and 422 codecs are now available on Windows, Linux and macOS as export formats. The new QuickTime ProRes formats are available in the Write node, as well as in the Export to Video and Export OpenGL Frames dialog.

On macOS, the Apple ProRes options from previous versions are still available for compatibility with scenes created in those versions. These export formats are labelled with “Legacy” in parentheses.

Harmony now allows writing TIFF files in 16-bit per channel and also provides the option to use LZW compression for this format.

The list of available image formats when rendering is now easier to use. Format, colours and bit depth are now listed as separate options rather than in a single list.

In order to provide consistent colours between OpenGL previews and software renders, a new option named Read Toon Boom Drawings using sRGB Colour Space has been added to the Colour Space tab of the Scene Settings dialog. When this option is selected, colours from Toon Boom drawings are converted from sRGB to the project working colour space before being composited.

This allows Harmony’s Camera view to use the same colour space, which can be selected from the list at the bottom of the Camera view, when displaying drawings in OpenGL and Render modes. The Display Colour Space option that was available on the Camera tab of the preference is not required anymore and has been removed.

This also allows using a different colour space for each camera view in the workspace, which is useful when using monitors with different colour spaces.

The Read Toon Boom Drawings using sRGB Colour Space option is selected by default for any new scene created in Harmony 21. When a scene created in a previous version is opened, this option remains unchecked, to ensure colours in the scene render as they did in previous versions of Harmony.

An option has been added to the Import Images dialog to assign a colour space when importing an image using the Keep as Original Bitmap option. The colour space selected in the New Layer Colour Space list will define the colour space set for new layers.

The performance of the Camera view has been improved by making OpenGL rendering in this view multithreaded. This allows Harmony to use multiple CPU cores to simultaneously perform render operations of multiple drawings and effects. Scenes with high numbers of drawing layers benefit the most from the multithreaded OpenGL rendering. Performance improvements are noticeable when manipulating artwork using the Transform tool or when panning and zooming the camera view in those types of scenes.

For more information, see Export OpenGL Frames Dialog Box.

Transform Tool overall responsiveness and performance when selecting, editing and interacting in the scene has been improved, specifically with heavier scenes that have many nodes (common to rig-based projects).

The new Interactive Camera View Cache preference, available in the OpenGL tab of the Preferences, is now enabled by default.

This improves the performance of tools in the Camera view by reducing the number of refresh required when using those tools.

The new Skinning View in Harmony allows you to manage and edit the skins you create for your assets used in your game. It is especially useful when you want to switch to different costumes or props on a character while continuing to use the same animation.

This Skinning view replaces the Game Skinning toolbar and shortcuts in the Gaming category that were available in previous versions of Harmony.

Scene markers are an essential part of the gaming pipeline. The new Scene Markers view allows you to create, manage and edit all your scene markers from a single place.

The Library view Thumbnail display mode has been improved with the addition of a slider, placed on the bottom right of the view, that can be used to change the thumbnail sizes.

Filenames are now written below the thumbnails to allow them to align in a grid fashion.

The following scripts are now packaged and available in Harmony:

• TB_FindAndReplaceNodeName.js: Used to find and replace node names in a Harmony scene. The script traverses the node network, finds snippets or full names and replaces those sections with the desired replacement text. Useful for renaming character rigs, prefixing characters, or correcting common naming convention issues.
• TB_FindAndReplacePaletteColourName.js: Used to find and replace colour names in a Harmony scene. The script traverses the palettes, finds snippets or full names and replaces those sections with the desired replacement text.
• TB_CopyPastePivot.js: Allows for pivot information of a selection to be copied to the clipboard and applied to a different selection by pasting it.
• TB_CopyPivot function to store the position of the selected node's pivot. Select another peg and use the TB_PastePivot function to paste the pivot information.