Camera View

The View menu contains all the tools and options that you can use in the Camera view to draw, animate or set up the scene.

The Editing Stack menu displays the names of the symbols and their hierarchy when you are editing a symbol. You can click on the different names to go back up to the different parent symbols or the top/current project.

The Camera View toolbar contains all the tools and options you can use in the Camera view to draw, animate or set up the scene. The toolbar can be displayed or hidden by right-clicking on it and selecting or deselecting the Camera View toolbar.

When you have a drawing layer or drawing selected, the Light Table button button allows you to fade the colours of the other layers so you can see the current artwork better as you edit with a drawing tool. Note that the light table does not work when using a layer editing tool, such as the Transform tool.

The Camera Mask button shows or hides Displays a black mask around the scene’s frame to avoid seeing the unnecessary artwork. This option is handy when you're animating and setting up the scene. It allows you to see your scene’s composition better.

You can also access this from the top menu by selecting View > Show > Camera Mask.

The proportion grid is displayed in the camera view to help with proportions and balancing the composition of an image. The grid follows the camera frame, similar to camera mask and safe area.

The number of divisions in the proportion grid can be defined by the user in the Preferences > Camera > Proportion Grid > Horizontal Divisions > Vertical Divisions.

The default is 3 division on each axis to create a rule of third grid.

TIP You can access the Proportion Grid button in the Camera View toolbar.

The Safe Area button shows or hides Displays the TV safety zone and the centre of the camera frame. The safe area adapts to the scene resolution, as well as the safety zone and frame’s centre.

You can also access this feature from the top menu by selecting View > Show > Safe Area.

When enabled, alignment guides will be visible in the Camera and Drawing views.

This is enabled by default. Disabling this option will hide and disable alignment guides, meaning that animation and drawing tools will not snap to them, even if the Snap to Alignment Guides option is enabled in the Tool Properties view.

When you select an object in the Camera view with the Transform tool, a bounding box always appears around the object and the artwork is tinted in fuchsia, red or yellow. Enabling this option will only keep the bounding box and remove the colour tint.

Drawings that are locked in the Timeline view (cannot be selected in the Camera view) are displayed as wireframes.

Toggles OpenGL Node Caching. When enabled, the preview image of nodes that have the Cached layer property enabled will be cached so as to help with performance when refreshing the OpenGL preview image in the Camera view.

You can also double-click or long-click this button to open a pop-up menu in which you can select the size of cached preview images:

• 64x64
• 128x128
• 256x256
• 512x512
• 1024x1024

Smaller cached images will look less detailed, but will increase the performance of node caching as well as decrease the amount of memory the cache requires. Larger cached images will look closer to the actual OpenGL preview, but will impact performance and require more memory to store.

The Reset View button resets any panning, zooming or rotation done in the Camera view and returns the display to the initial settings. You can also press Shift + M.

Saves the preview image of the Camera view in memory as a snapshot.

Harmony stores five snapshots and have a drop down list with five available slots. So if any snapshot was in memory when taking a snapshot, it will be overwritten by the new snapshot.

Displays the snapshot currently in memory. To display the snapshot, you must click and hold the button. Releasing it will restore the Camera view preview.

The Zoom menu lets you enlarge or reduce the Camera or Drawing view display.

To make the camera frame size always match the size of your view, select the Fit to View option. Click the drop-down arrow and select a zoom level or press 1 and 2.

The OpenGL View Mode button switches the Camera view to fast display, letting you see your animation play in real time. The OpenGL display requires less memory. The final look of your effects is not shown in the OpenGL View Mode. You must switch to the Render View Mode to see your effects.

The Render View Mode button switches the Camera view to a fully rendered display showing the final image of the current frame. If a modification is done to your current frame or if you move to a different frame, click the Update Preview button to update the display if your preview does not update automatically.The Render View Mode display lets you see the final look of your frames including effects and antialiasing. You cannot play back your scene in Render View Mode. To see your scene fully rendered and to play it back, you must press the Render and Play button in the Playback toolbar.

The Matte View Mode button switches the Camera view to a matte display showing the alpha channel of the elements in your scene. The transparency level ranges from 0 to 100 percent. Zero percent is completely transparent and represented by black and 100 percent is completely opaque and represented by white. Everything in between these extremes has a transparency level somewhere between 1 and 99 percent and is represented in various shades of grey.

• To access the Matte View mode, click on the Render View button and select Matte View from the drop-down menu.

The Depth View mode displays images in a relative white to black gradient scale. The object(s) closest to the camera are displayed in white and the object(s) furthest from the camera are displayed in black. If the position of the last object changes along the z-axis, that object will still remain black, so long as it retains its position as the object the farthest back. It does not matter where that object is in 3D space, it just matters what its position is relative to the other object in the same space. The objects closest and farthest from the camera set the range of the white to black scale. All the other objects fall somewhere in between.

• To access the Depth View mode, click on the Render View button and select Depth View from the drop-down menu.

The colour space in which to display the preview image when in Render Preview mode.

You can set this to any colour space supported by Harmony. It is recommended to set this to the colour space intended for rendering your frames, unless that colour space is not supported by your monitor. In the latter case, it’s recommended to set this to the closest colour space available that your monitor can display.

The following colour spaces are available:

• Linear: The same primaries and white point as sRGB and Rec. 709, but with no gamma transfer curve applied to the colour values. This colour space is useful for compositing intermediary images that are meant to be rendered in sRGB or Rec. 709.
• Display P3: A colour space commonly used for digital projection. It has the same primaries as DCI-P3, the same white point as sRGB and the same gamma transfer curve as sRGB.
• Display P3 Linear: The same as Display P3, except with no gamma transfer curve. This colour space is useful for compositing intermediary images that are meant to be rendered in Display P3.
• Rec. 709: The colour space used for HDTV. It has the same primaries and white point as sRGB, but has a different gamma transfer curve.
• Rec. 709 2.4: The same colour space as Rec. 709 or sRGB, except with a gamma transfer curve of 2.4 (per ITU-R BT.1886). This colour space exists because some editing systems use a gamma transfer curve of 2.4 instead of the standard gamma curve for Rec. 709.
• Rec. 2020: A colour space used for Ultra High Definition TV (UHDTV). It has a complex gamma transfer curve and primaries that cover more of the human-perceivable colour space than other colour spaces, especially in the area of human-perceivable greens.
• Rec. 2020 2.4: The same colour space as Rec. 2020, except with a simple gamma transfer curve of 2.4 (per ITU-R BT.1886). This colour space exists because some editing systems use a gamma transfer curve of 2.4 instead of the standard gamma curve for Rec. 2020.
• Rec. 2020 Linear: The same colour space as Rec. 2020, except with no gamma transfer curve. This colour space is useful for compositing intermediary images that are meant to be rendered in Rec. 2020.
• sRGB: A colour space typically used for standard computer monitors. It has the same primaries and white point as Rec. 709, but has a different gamma transfer curve.

NOTE You can only select the display colour space in Render View mode. In OpenGL View mode, the preview image is generated in the colour space selected in the Display Colour Space drop-down in the Camera tab of the Preferences dialog.

The Drawing Name field displays the name of the selected drawing, as well as the layer containing it. If the cell does not contain any drawing, an Empty Cell text is shown in the field.

The Tool Name field displays the name of the selected tool. If you temporarily override a drawing tool using a keyboard shortcut, the tool’s name will be highlighted in red. You can temporarily override a tool by holding its keyboard shortcut without the Alt key. For example, the Select tool shortcut is Alt + S. If you hold down the S key, you will switch to the Select tool. When you release the key, you will return to the tool you were using.

The Frame Number field displays the number of the current frame.