Chapter 1: Introduction

Toon Boom Harmony is a complete animation software with advanced features for all your animation projects.

No matter your preferred animation work-style, Harmony manages your entire project, from importing assets and content creation, all the way to animation, compositing and multi-platform rendering. Harmony boasts a 64-bit engine, allowing you to export content faster, including elaborate scenes, large bitmaps, gradients and complex backgrounds. Output sophisticated scenes with particles, complex effects, as well as 2D/3D integration.

Harmony's re-engineered vector technology is the basis of the software's redesigned pencil line capabilities, options that include lines that capture the pressure information from the digital tablet, as well as configurable pencil line tips from which you can select round, square, or free control options. You also have the option to create unlimited line styles, thanks to new pencil line support texture information; choose from a selection of built-in textures, or create your own by using a pixmap program. Lastly, you can design and store unlimited line styles and apply them to any pencil line in a drawing.

Harmony also includes a powerful deformation technology tool that permits the deformation of pixmap images and vector drawings over a period of time. Specifically, this applies to the creation of a basic skeleton structure in which the parent deformers will move the child deformers. This hierarchical principal also applies to the deformation of curves within Harmony's software, in which a straight line can be altered to an arc, or a zigzag, with only a few clicks.

Harmony includes a redesigned SDK infrastructure, facilitating the creation of plug-ins, allowing for easy access to predesigned special effects. Lastly, the software allows for the importation of both 3D models and scenes. From there, you need only manipulate all of the 2D and 3D elements into a unified environment and render them as one.

Harmony works in conjunction with Toon Boom Storyboard Pro, which allows you to plan your project, and time the scenes to audio before animating in Animate or Animate Pro.

To learn all about the features available in Toon Boom Harmony and how to use them in a production context, refer to the following chapters:

Getting Started
Interface
Drawing
Traditional Animation
Colour
Timing
Morphing
Import
Library
Character Building
Scene Setup
3D Space
Sound
Animation Paths
Cut-out Animation
Deformation
Effects
Export
In all Harmony documentation, the default keyboard shortcuts used are the Toon Boom Harmony set.

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