The Beginner's Guide to Toonboom Harmony for 2D Animators!

1. Intro: Hi guys. My name is Elvis Wairia. I'm a 2D Generalist. I have three years experience in the 2D animation industry, having worked on various projects such as the upcoming Moongirl and Devil dinosaur for Marvel, Star Wars: Galaxy of pets for Star Wars kids on YouTube, Rainbow butterfly and unicorn Kitty for Nickelodeon and many more. In this course, you'll be able to navigate through Toon Boom Harmony and be familiar with the menus and tools required for 2D animation and rigging, I decided to make this course because when I first started using Toon Boom Harmony, a lot of the videos I watched were scattered all over the place and I could not get all the information I needed from one source. This course is part of a larger plan to release three classes back-to-back that will lead you guys to, having the required knowledge to create, rig and animate a 2D character in Toon Boom Harmony, all you need is a laptop, a tablet, nothing fancy, and a copy of Toon Boom Harmony. Don't have a Toonboom Harmony license? No problem. Just head over to their website and get a one month free trial. They also offer discounts if you are a student. This course is suitable for people who want to move or to learn a different animation software. In this case, Toonboom Harmony or if you're a beginner and Toonboom Harmony is your software of choice. Just make sure to have the latest version of Toon Boom Harmony, which is version 21. In order to follow along properly, I can't wait to share my knowledge with you guys. So let's get started! 2. Setting things up: Hi guys, in this class we're going to set everything up As you can see, my Toonboom Harmony has been reset to default and now we're going to customize the user interface to fit our preference. And we're also going to go to the preferences menu and change some settings in order for us to be able to do 2D animation and rigging comfortably. Let's start with customizing our user interface. So when it comes to customizing the user interface, it's up to a person's preference. So on the right you'll see two menus. At the top here, you'll see tool properties and a library, and then here you'll see color and node view. These are basically the same thing. So I like deleting one of these menus and just having one. Here you'll see we have the color palette menu and then you have the node view. I also add the coordinates and control points, I add the library and all this will be explained in future classes. So don't be too confused. I'll explain everything in the future classes. I also like having Substitutions, Master Controller menu and the Xsheet. That's it for this side. Here on the timeline, at the bottom of my screen on the right, you'll see the timeline and the Node library. I like Clicking on this plus button and adding the layer properties. So what the Layer Properties option will help me do is to view and adjust the properties of the layers we're in in the timeline. So this will be explained also in the future videos ,so don't worry about that, but just make sure it's open. And then here at the top we have different tools here. So like going into the Windows tab at the top here and going to Toolbars, then I go down and add the Master control menu and I also add the shift and trace and I also add the display tool as well. And I like keeping these on the side here. And that's it. This is how I like my user interface to look like. but it's all depends on preference. So once you get used to the software, you will be able to customize it however you want. If you go here at the top, you'll see that we have this menu called Default. If You click down here, you'll see the different user interface options. You have a one that's suitable for handling animation, compositing, animating and scripting. So you can also select these and see whatever works for you. If you prefer having something like this, you can go ahead and use that. Compositing is different as well. And you also have animating. So this is how the animating user interface looks like and scripting. but I like using the default and customizing that. So it's up to you. So now let's go to the preferences tab. So in order to edit the preferences, we need to click on edit, go down to preferences. The Shortcut is Control+U You click on preferences and this menu will pop up. So we will have to change a couple of things here. Mine is already set to how it should be. I tried refreshing my Toonboom Harmony but these settings have stayed the same but let me just touch on the things that you should change, in order to be able to animate, 2D cut-out animation, hand drawn animation and in order to rig characters in Toonboom harmony. So first on the left, we need to activate AutoSave. This will be off by default. I've had this off in the past and it's caused some problems because Toonboom may crash especially, If are working with heavy files Toonboom will crash on you. So I've had to redo a couple of projects and it's been painful. But here's a solution. Just make sure you activate the save scene automatically and then you can set the intervals in minutes of how often you want to get a popup menu asking you to save your file and then here you can set the number of intervals in seconds that you want to get the popup menu to ask you to save. Also Click Ask before saving. Now on the right screen here, you'll see these menus. A lot of this will remain as is. But here we go down to the settings. Stop motion animation is usually on, so make sure you switch that off. Again, this will be explained in future videos. Also deactivate undoable selections. Make sure that OFF. This is because if Undoable selection stays on, it's going to count you selecting different parts of your rig as a change. So if I maybe make a mistake and click on Control Z to go back, it's also going to count the selections that I've made of the different parts of my rig or my character as changes. And you do not want that because it's also taxing to your computer. also you have the levels of undo. How many times you want to undo you work I like keeping it at 300. If you go above 300, it may be taxing to your computer or your PC as well. So keep it at around 300 or below, but you can still go above this. I've had these at 500 before. So if your computer can handle it, you can set it as high as 500. And then here in the settings here, you have default separate position for pegs, default separate scale for pegs, default separate positions for elements and default separate scale for elements. So make sure all of these are ON. This is because this helps to separate the X, Y and z axes of the pegs. So you want those to be separate elements. You don't want them to be animated as one. So make sure those are on. Now the second thing we'll go to is the OpenGL menu. So go to the OpenGL at the top here of the effects section here and make sure that all these are enabled, especially the enable composite passthrough for all effects. This is by default OFF . If this stays off, you're going to have some certain rendering problems, especially when using a cut-out rig. You're going to have some issues with the Z-axis it's really strange. It prevents your composite from reading all the effects that you have connected to it. So make sure this is ON. And then finally we go to the advanced tab. So here in the advanced options, make sure that there's support Overlay and Underlay Arts option is ON. This is going to help you have these sub layers on and this will be useful as you will see in the video to come. Also make sure Advanced element mode and Auto-rename elements is ON. So these two options will help you to have more options in the column dialog box and the column properties dialog box. So this should be on at all times. Finally, we have the element node 'Animate Using the Animation Tools' default value. They should be set to OFF. This is because when you are using a cut-out rig especially, you have the drawing node and you have the peg, and the peg is used to animate the drawing node, this will be explained and shown in future videos as well, so do not worry too much about this. You use the pegged to animate the drawing. You don't animate the drawing on its own. You use a peg to animate the drawing. And so when you animate the drawing with a peg, you not want any animation inside the drawing layer you want. all that animation information in the peg and so that's why you switch this OFF. and that's all. Once that's done, click okay and you're ready to start using Toonboom Harmony! See you in the next classes. Take care. 3. Timeline. Node Library and Layer properties: Hello, guys. Welcome to the first class in this course. So let's start by opening our scene in Toonboom Harmony. Here's my Toonboom harmony software icon. So let me double click on that and then let's open our file. As you can see, when you click on the Toonbom Harmony Software. You'll see this menu. On the right side of the menu, you'll see, 'Open a scene'. Here you'll see a list of scenes that have been opened These are the previous scenes that I opened. If you want to open a shot that maybe you were working on yesterday, you'll be able to find that here. So let's say maybe there's an older scene that's not listed here that you want to open. You can click on this 'Open' here below and then you can look for it, wherever you saved it. And then here on the left side, you'll see 'Create a scene'. Here you'll see different menus. You'll see the name, location, camera size, width, height, frame rate and field of view. Other than the name and the location, most of the time, the rest of the options will remain as they are, unless maybe you want to change the camera size or the resolution to something else. Maybe you want it to be 4K or 8K. You can change it from here, but we can also change it in the scene settings. Once we open our file. You can also change the width and the height of your shot and the frame rate as well. Again, a lot of these will stay as is. The only thing that we'll change is the name of the scene and the location that we Want to save our scene in. You can name your scene whatever you want. You can browse and create a folder wherever you want to see your file. Then once you're comfortable with that, you can either create or open. So for this i'll open a file Now that I've located my file, let's click on it and then click on open. And now we have our scene So like I said, if you go up here on the top left side of my screen, you'll see the scene options here. If you click on that, you can go down to scene settings and then you can change all those options you saw in the beginning. When we opened our Toonboom software. So you can change the resolution and change the frame rate as well. But again, I'll leave it as is. Most of this is standard. So let's get started. In this class we're going to discuss the timeline in Toonboom Harmony This is where the timeline is at the bottom of the screen.. Here we have three menus that I use most of the times. Which we have the timeline, we have the node library The Node library has different 'Nodes' that we add into the node view here. It comprises of various tools, especially effects. So a lot of compositing can be done using the tools that are in here. Then you have the 'Layer properties' which is used to edit. The layer that your on. So there are some layer settings here that you can control with the layer properties. Here we have the timeline, which is where you animate your character. So, here we have the layers for this rig It's a grouped because it has a bunch of different multiple layers. By the way this rig/character is designed by Juan Pedro. He's a character animator and a character designer. I really liked this design when I came across on Behance and I decided to download and use it for rigging like..do some rigging tests So I used his designs to make this complex head. Here you have the layers to add a new layer. You click on this plus button here and you can name your layer and then you can add.. like that. If you want to add a 'Peg' and I'll explain pegs in a future video in this course. So don't worry about it. It's used to animate a drawing. So, if you want to add a peg, you can add it that way and you can move around the drawing that you want to animate. For now we'll delete this layer because we don't need it. It's just more showing...Again in the overview video. The previous video that I had recorded. I showed you guys that this is for playing your animation so you can leave that to play your animation. This is for rendering out a scene or a shot, and this is for looping your animation. and these two are for audio. These two should be on at all times. So one is for scrubbing and the other is just for playing your audio throughout The scrubbing one doesn't necessarily play audio when you when you click on 'play', but when you scrub through the timeline, maybe you animating or lip sync. You can like play the audio so you can see if each lip sync matches the audio. Here we have the current frame that we one. Here we're in frame 18. This start and stop are the start and stop frames. So this *scene/shot starts from frame one and here we stop at frame 460 and then here we have total FPS, but you can update it to whatever you want. Here are some options you have. We 12, 15, whatever you want/need.. Here we have the (Ease in-Ease out) tool All of these are for easing in and easing out So this is the easing in symbol and it's different variations.. This is more of a linear movement. If your object is moving at a steady pace and it's not moving slow then fast or fast than slow. you can use this one. But the easy In option here is used when your object moves fast and then it slows down. And then here you have Ease in-Ease out. Which is when you object starts slow, goes fast and then ends slow And then you have the Ease out And it's different variations here. So this is where my your object starts slow, then goes fast. So you can mess around with this. You can also do it manually here. If you wanna play around with the graph, but I prefer I just using this option instead. This is used to create an empty drawing. In case you want to add different drawings. Like for example, for my character here, we have different noses. If I wanted to create a new nose, I just click on that and it's going to create an empty drawing and then I'm going to draw a new nose if I want to use this nose to create a new one. But maybe I just want to modify this. I click on this one here. The second option. This will not create an empty layer, but rather it's going to assign this drawing here, a new number. As you can see here it's assigned 'F1' If I click on this, it's going to give it No. '1' Right. And the reason it's breaking is because it doesn't have deformers So that's why that's happening. But also deformers will be explained in future videos... Here we have the 'Add keyframe' and 'Delete keyframes' options So if I want to animate something I click on that and I click on this. And then let's say... So I've set two Keyframes by using this 'Set keyframe' button, and then let's move the character to the side. So now the frames are in 'Stop motion'. Here are the options for animating. This is for interpolating your animation/adding inbetweens to youe keyframes.. And this is the stop motion animation, which is what we have now. So if you want to add inbetweens, this is especially if you're using a rig.. In this case, you click on this one. It will add inbetweens automatically like that, and you're going to have a smooth movement. So if I want to go back to stop motion, you can just click. that and it's going to be a stop motion animation. And then here we have the light table symbol here, which is used to focus.... Let's say you select the nose again. I seem to love the nose alot It's going to fade the other objects. And you can just focus on this one piece. Switch it off again. It's all evenly lit. But if you do that, you can just focus on this one drawing. Here we are, this one..Which is used to frame your shot like that. If you don't want to see all this extra space, you can just click on this one's going to frame your shot. Then you have this option here, which is used to show the 'Safe-area' of your short. Anything outside of this may be cut in editing, depending on what you're doing. So this is used as a guide. If you keep your animation within this border here It's what's considered safe for TV, so it's good to keep your animation within that frame. And then you have these two flowers icons... You have the grey one and the blue one. The grey one is called OpenGL view, which is what we are on now. This is when you see your file without any compositing and anything else. So let's say I did a glow to the character.. Let's do that reall quick.... Again, like I said, the effects are in the node library. So let's pick this glow here... Let's say we.. Connect to that. So as you can see, this is how effects. look in the OpenGl view But if you click on the blue flower, you'll see the final image. So it's called the 'Render View'. So if you click that so yeah.. It's supposed to glow, but the glowing tool...You can basically mess around with it and add more intensity, radius. You can use the source colour... It looks like he's glowing... So in the OpenGL view, it just looks like a white patch. Very ugly looking. And then in the render view, you can actually see the composited, the final version of how your animation is going to look like. So yeah, that's all for the timeline menu... Hope you understand everything. If it's too much, you can always slow down the video replay as many times as you want. I hope this helps this. Let's go on to the next video..See you. 4. Pen and Brush tools: Hello guys, So in this class, we'll be talking about the differences between the pencil and the brush tools. On my left side of the screen, this is the pencil and this is the brush tool. So, yeah, I went ahead and drew two strokes.This is the pencil and this is the brush as labelled. So you can use either one of the two to draw or rig your character. I prefer using the pencil and it seems to be the most widely used. But if you prefer using the brush, it's still ok. It's still something you can do. It depends on someone's preference *and need So the reason why I like the pencil tool is because I can manipulate it like this. If you hold CTRL and then you click on the line, it will create a new point, and then you can, manipulate it like that. If you hold (SHIFT+ DRAG YOUR MOUSE/STYLUS), so shift and drag, it's going to create a curve. And if you select these points, it's going to create this, 'Bezier' tool so you can control the curve *to your liking however you want Whereas with the brush stroke , it has those points as well. You can manipulate it how you want, but it's more of like a thickness thing. You can manipulate the thickness. Also with the pencil tool, you can click on this contour editor and here in the options you'll find the pencil editor and in the pencil editor you will have this... again, same thing, hold shift and drag (Your mouse/stylus). You can control the tapering of your line. So if you want to have a thick line and then at the end have a little taper like that, you can do so. But there are also different pencils here. You can select with the natural taper here. For example of a 'Tapered Thickness stencil' has a natural taper but in case you just want to use the regular pencil and just taper manually, that's an option. Plus, we did our brush. You can't do that. Another difference is if I select both the Strokes and then stretch them out, you can see the pencil becomes thinner and the brush is just around the same size. So that's something you need to be aware of, depending on whichever you choose. Both can be textured like I said, here we have multiple options. These all come with Toonboom, but you can create your own brush. So if we select that you can see this one is textured and the brush is the same way but you also have this. You the 'Wet Splotches' *brush. This can be really useful when let's say you have a character with a muddy texture, you can use the brush tool to create this type of effect. This is a bitmap image. It depends on what you want to use each for I prefer using the pencil for the general outline of the character and the brush for If my character has textures on top of them. I use a brush tool to add those textures. As you can see here, we have different kind of textures. Let me show you an example of a character that I used both the brush and the pencil on. The pencil was for the general outline of the character. And the brush was used to add rust and a muddy vibe to it So this character is from Star Wars Galaxy of Pets. You can watch that on YouTube. I was part of the rigging team. Alright! So this is the character I was talking about. All rights for this character belong to Lucasfilms and Disney So this is an example of what I was talking about. The character does have an outline, but we made the lines invisible because we wanted to have this flat style and then these textures here were done using the brush tool So we imported brushes, we had custom brushes I don't have access to them now, but let me just use this to spray on this charcter like that and make all types of rust and 'oily', muddy textures. This is an example of what you can do with the brush and pencil tools. Now I'll show you how to import a texture, assuming we drew this stroke, and then you select. If on the right side of the screen here in the tool properties, you can come here and then you click on new texture. You click on that and then you can look for a texture. This is from an old project. I have some textures saved here. You can make these customs textures by yourself in whatever drawing software you use. I made these in Photoshop. So I'll select one. And then here it is. It's added into this texture library. If you select this stroke and then you click on that, it's going to apply that texture to your stroke and it's going to create this interesting line. Now, if you want to, let's say, add a new brush, you can select the pencil/brush tool. They both have this menu here on the right side of my screen, in the tool properties. In the presets, you'll see this white icon here on your right. You click on that and then you can either import a brush or you can create a new brush. So I think for me i'll import a brush. This is a brush I made. So I imported it and here it is. With the texture and all of that. If you want to... create a brush, you can click on that and then select 'New Brush Preset'. You can make a new brush, let's call it Pencil4' and you can click on this icon here. On the top right of the screen where the pencil properties are You can click on this icon here and then here you can edit the texture. So let's say, we want to add the 'Stringy' texture. You can select that and you can manipulate the size, the maximum size, the minimum size. This is stuff you can mess around with.. You click on this pencil icon with the plus and then you can create a new pencil now with the 'Stringy' effect. and that's how you go about creating new pencil textures, adding textures and the difference between the pencil tool and the brush tool. Again, you can use either one of them depending on your needs. Just mess around and see what works for you. Thank you for watching this video and I'll see you in the next class. Take care. Bye. 5. Overlay, Lineart, Color art and Underlay layers: Hello, guys. Welcome to another video. So in this video, we will be further discussing the sub layers, the overlay, lineart, colorart and underlay layers that I had briefly discussed in the overview video. So the main layer is one, but let's say we wanted to have a drawing with different pieces, but we did not want to make multiple layers here on the timeline, you can just separate them here using the sub layers. So if I click on drawing, this is going to take me to the drawing Layers. This is going to show me what is on the overlay layer, which is this little white 'speck' here and on the lineart we have this circular shape. On the colorart, we have the color of this line here and on the underlay layer We have this white rectangle shape and so they've all been separated. Now, if you decide to do this, you can't animate each of these pieces by themselves. For that, you have to separate them here. So we'd have this white 'speck' on its own layer here on the timeline. and the same with this yellow circle and the highlight and all that. So you can add pegs to those separate pieces and that way, you would be able to individually move these pieces if you want to animate but this is just mostly used to keep things organized. Instead of having everything in one layer, the colors and the lines, you can break it down here and just separate all those elements. So you can have let's say, we can have a hand drawing Yes. So this is the hand I was talking about. It's really ugly looking. But It should pass the point across. Let's say you wanted to color that, but you do not want the color and the line to be on the same layer so you can just (click) Ctrl X, cut the color and then *paste it to the colorart layer. So the line and the color are two separate entities. It's just used to keep everything organized. If you want to separate different elements, this is a nice way to do that. I hope you learned something in this video. See in the next one. Bye! 6. Color Palette and Paint bucket tool: Hey, guys, welcome to another video. So in this video, we'll be looking into the color palette and paint bucket tool. So on the left side of my screen, you will see the paint bucket tool here. It's the bucket with the paint around it. So if you click on that, you'll see other options inside the paint bucket tool option. So you'll see paint, ink, paint unpainted, repaint, unpaint, stroke and close gap. I mostly use the paint, paint unpainted, unpaint, stroke and close gap tools. So those are the only ones I usually use and those are the ones you're going to most likely only use. So let's get started on that. On the right side of my screen, you will see the color option menu. Here you'll see the palette, the scene palettes and then at the bottom you'll see my actual color palette with the different colors. So if you want to add a new color, you click on this plus sign here at the top. If you click on that, it's going to add a new color. If you want to remove that color, you click on the minus sign and it's going to remove that color. If you go here, you'll see this is the color palette for our scene. In this case, we have two characters, so we will need two different color palettes for our two different characters. So in order to make a new palette for a new character, you click on this plus sign, next to the palette. Here you'll see the plus sign here you click on that. You'll get this color palette option menu You'll click on the new palette name. You can name it whatever you want. Here we'll name it 'character2' and then you click on okay, and you'll make a new color palette. So here you can add whatever colors you want. Let's say this character we'll make him have a 'pinkish' hue You can add all types of colors. Whatever you need, you can add it here. And so now we have two different color palettes, for our two different characters. Now let's get to coloring the characters. So, what you do is you click on the paint bucket tool option again, on the left side of my screen. You select the paint unpainted option, and then you can draw a lasso around our character here with the glasses and it's going to color the whole character. I don't want him to be black, the skin color I chose will be this 'orange/yellow' color here. So let's do that again. Let's draw the lasso around that character. and then, Voilà ! You've colored your character and now let's move on to the second head. Let's select his color palette, which is the character two palette, and then let's select the pinkish color Let's again select the paint unpainted option. And then if we do that again, during the last one on the head, you'll see that it's not coloring the head in its entirety as the first character. Why is that? If we zoom into this character, you can see that there's a gap here. So what can you do to close that gap? You can either just manually do that in the black color, but that looks ugly. So let's say this was a stylistic choice and you wanted to have that gap. You can go back to the paint bucket tool option here on the left side of my screen, click on it, and then go down here at the bottom, you'll see the stroke and the close gap. We can select either one of these to close this gap. What these will do is, they will draw an invisible line and it's going to close that gap. So let's click on the stroke and then draw the line, the invisible line. You'll get this message, this pop up message saying, 'You have added a stroke to the drawing, but it will not be visible unless you activate Show Strokes (Shortcut:K) from the view menu We can click Okay, it's not a big deal what that's actually telling you, is that the line is invisible and if you want to see it, all you need to do is activate the line. What you need to do to see an invisible line is you press K on your keyboard. So it's not different in the Mac or Windows. You just press K and you'll see the invisible line here. If we select the contour editor and select that line, you'll see that you can move it around and manipulate it however you want. So that's the invisible line. So if we now click 'K' again to close that view and then select the paint bucket tool. Select our skin color, which is pink, and then if you drop your color, you'll see that it fills the *character. So if we delete that line or remove that line and go back to the paint bucket tool option. At the bottom and see close gap, again It's the same thing. Just draw that line, you'll see the same message and then click on Paint bucket tool, select your color, drop that color and it's going to close the gap. Another way to close that gap would be to go to the tool properties. After selecting the Paint bucket tool. On the right side of my screen, you'll see all these different menus . You'll see 'Tool properties'. If you don't see this 'Tool properties' option. Click on this plus icon on the far right of my screen next to these options, you'll see this plus sign, click on that and look for the 'Tool Preperties'. You select that it's going to appear. If you want to remove any menu here, you can click on the 'X' sign and it's going to remove it. So let's go back to closing our gap. So you'll see these circular option here if you click on it, you'll see No Close Gap, Close Small Gap, Close Medium Gap and Close Large gap So this gap is considered large. This is very, very large. And this may not work most of the times. This is usually used to close smaller gaps that you may encounter, maybe if you're doing really fast. Let me show you an example...of a gap that this may close. Something like this, something that you can really not see. If you zoom out, it's something you can't easily see. So that's what this option is used to close. Let's select maybe the medium gap and if we drop our color, it fills it in, but you can mess around maybe the small gap may work as well. It works! Let's go to our initial gap. Let's try and see if maybe the large gap is going to close. It doesn't work. So you'll have to reduce that gap or use the stroke or close gap options in the Paint bucket menu. Let's say you want to color individual pieces. All you need to do is go back to the color palette menu. Go to your characters color palette and then let's say we want to make our character's glasses blue You can do that. Just drop your color. Let's say we want to make the nose red, you can drag and drop like that. So, let's say we want to change the skin color of our character or the color of whatever different piece they have. But you don't want to go through each individual frames to change that color. All you need to do is select the color you want to change in the color palette menu. On the right side of my screen, select the color you want to change it, double click on it. And this color picker option is going to appear and then all you need to do is change the color. So you just change it and is going to change it on all the frames, assuming you drew this by hand. it's going to update on all the frames. So now let's look into importing a color palette. Let's say you wanted to import a color palette from a different scene, maybe let's say you're animating a different shot, maybe it's a short film (*any project really) and you have 'shot 1' and 'shot 2' (for example) but you don't have that color palette in this Toonboom scene/Toonboom file, all you need to do is click on the right side of my screen next to the color option here at the top, you'll see these three bars here you click on that, click on the palette and you'll see all these options and you can import a color palette by clicking import. It'll open this Toonboom file. So you go and look for the file that you want to import. Inside that Toonboom file, you'll see all these folders. At the bottom, you'll see 'Palette library'. You double click on that, and then this file that ends with '.plt' is your palette. The other ones are textures, but we only want the color palette. You can also import textures as you can see. So you select the color palette and then open. Right now i'm just importing the same color palette that we have here. So it's going to be the same name. You can click okay and you're going to see that palette. So let's say you want to remove this palette. You right click on that and you will see remove palette. Another option also would be to go on the far left side of my screen you'll see the file option. If you go down, you'll see remove unused files. And if we were not using this color palette, which are not. You click on select and it's going to completely remove it from this and the Toonboom file folder. You click on okay and it's going to remove that and that's how you import and delete a new color palette. And finally, let's say you want to not have an outline around your character. Maybe it's a stylistic choice, maybe you want a flat style for your character, all you need to do is go to the color palette. Our outline here is black. So you can double click on the color palette. This color picker menu is going to appear. Go down to the 'Alpha'. This is where you control the opacity or the transparency of your line or your color. In this case it's the line. So I will slide this all the way to zero and now you have a flat design. This is a stylistic choice, so I just thought I'd share with you guys. I've worked on projects where we didn't have an outline, so we had to switch the Alpha off to zero. But usually we draw it like this with the complete outline, but then afterwards, we switch it off to zero. Also, we have a gradient option here. So let's say you want to add a gradient to the color of the head. Let's click on that color and select on gradient and then we'll select a lighter color for one part of the gradient and the other one's going to be darker. So this will be maybe be lighter like that and I can just play around with this. So let's say I'm happy with this. And let's say you do not want the gradient to look like this. Maybe you want the light to be at the bottom of the character or the top or this side....If you want to edit the gradient. You go in the tools bar. Here at the top, you'll see the selection option. At the bottom of that you'll see this contour editor. Once you click on the contour editor, at the bottom you'll see 'Edit gradient or texture'. Click on that. And then you select on the color that has the gradient, which is the skin. Just click on it and then you'll see this tool here. You can rotate it like that. You can rotate and change the position of the gradient. You can also move it like that and reposition it wherever you want. So let's say, I to be on this side, you can do that. If you want to push it this way, you can make it larger, you can stretch it like, or shrink it.. And that's how you add a gradient to your character. Now, let's say you wanted to add a texture to this character. You click on this option here. Next to the plus and minus on the color palette Menu here, you'll see this plus with the 'T'. You click on that and then you can import a texture. I currently don't have any textures, but let's say we use this image as a texture, for example. So once you've imported that, go to the texture in the palette and select it. Then go to the Paint bucket tool, on the far left side of my screen. Click on the Paint bucket tool, and just drop it into the character. and now, the character has a texture. Or if you want to a add texture to the character's clothes, you can do this as well. Thank you for watching this video as an assignment, make sure you design and color a simple character of your own and share it down below. I'd like to see what you guys have come up with and thank you for watching this video and see you in the next class. Bye! 7. Onion skin and Advanced onion skin: Hello guys! So in this class in this we'll be going through the onion skin in Toonboom Harmony..The onion skin will enable you to see the previous and next drawings as a reference, when you're inbetweening your animation. So I'm currently on frame '32', but if I activate my onion skin...So if we go to the tools bar on the left side of my screen. In the Tools menu..At the bottom you'll see these three 'plates' icon with the 'Eye' icon at the top..If you click on that, you'll be able to see the frames that come before and after this current frame that I'm on. If you go at the top here, you'll see the red and the green 'plates' icon.. here you have the 'Add onion skin' and 'Remove onion skin' and here you also have the 'Add' and 'reduce' So if I click on the 'Red +' icon, I'll be able to see more frames that come before the current frame that I'm on. If I click on the 'Red -' icon, I'll be able to see less frames that come before the current frame that i'm on... same thing with the other side. On the green side, I would be able to increase the number of frames that I can see that come after the drawing that I'm on, and I can be able to also reduce that as well. So this is the general onion skin, this this simple onion skin, but we also have the advanced onion skin So back to the onion skin tool..On the tools menu. On the left side of my screen. At the bottom, if you click on that, you'll see the 'show Advanced Onion Skin'. So click on that. If you go to the right side of my screen and this menu here, you'll see the advanced onion skin. If you don't see it in this menu, all you need to do is click on the plus sign and then go down to the 'onion skin' and click on that. It's going to add it into this menu. So here you can see all these sliders. This represents all the different frames/drawings that you can see..The ones on the left are the ones that come before the current frame (that i'm on) and the ones on the right, are the ones that come after, in the current frame that you're on. At the bottom here, we have these two squares; the red one and the green one. So the red one symbolizes the drawings that come before the drawing that you're currently on. And the green one symbolizes the drawings that come after the one that you're currently on.. If you want to change those colors. You can double click and you'll see this color swatch and you can change those colors if you want. But they're usually red or green. Most people don't really change, but if you feel they need to change that, you can do that there. Here you have the 'By frames' and 'By drawings' This means if you want to only see the frames or if you want to only see the drawings, you can change this. I prefer if I can see only the drawings, but you can change it to frames if you want. And then here we have the 'keyframes', 'breakdowns' and 'inbetweens'. This helps if you only want to see the keyframes or if you only want to see the breakdowns or if you only want to see the inbetweens of your animated shot. You can select either one of these. These mean the same thing, but they symbolize 'Retakes'. So if you're working in the animation industry, you're going to have a supervisor above you. The supervisor will ask for corrections most of the time. So the 'kA' symbolizes a retake key. The 'BA' symbolizes the retake breakdown and the 'IA' symbolizes the retake inbetween. You'll label those as required, but in this video, we're only going to focus on the keys, the breakdowns and the in-betweens, because those are the only labels I have on my timeline here, as you can see. So in order to activate the drawings of the frames of the advance onion skin, all you need to do, select one frame and then drag.. Same thing on this side, select one frame and then drag. and then it's going to activate all the frames that you can see here. So these sliders are used to control the opacity. The middle one is used to control the overall capacity of all the frames here. And then these ones are used to control the individual opacities of each frame. But as you can see here, by default..you're able to control the overall opacity or the rest of the sliders using one. So if you want to change this and only want to edit the capacity of one frame..You select on this icon here at the top, and then down here you'll see 'Link sliders'. Deselect it and now you can be able to control the individual opacity of each frame Now, if I wanted to see only the keyframes of my animated shot. I can click on the 'K' icon (in the advanced onion skin menu) That way, I can be able to see only the key frames in my shot If I wanted to reduce the number of drawings or frames that I'm seeing, I can just click on that and deselect and it's going to reduce the number of frames that I can see..Before and after the current frame that I'm on. Let's say I only wanted to see four for each side. I'm going to be able to see four, as you can see here. If you want to reduce the opacity. Just slide that up and down. Now, if I wanted to see breakdowns as well. Only seeing my breakdowns here...If you want to label your drawing, if you go back to the timeline here, you're going to label a drawing as a keyframe, breakdown or between. All you need to do is either right click on your keyboard, go to drawings here, and then go down here to 'Mark drawing as' And you can label it as a keydrawing ,a breakdown, an in between, retake key, retake breakdown and retake inbetween. Also you can come up at the top here. This menu is not usually here by default, but if you right click here while hovering over this section here, you'll see the 'Mark drawing' option. Click on that and then it's going to open this menu here. Then all you need to do is just click on that. It's going to mark your frame on the timeline. That way you can be able to now use the advanced onion skin. So if I want to see only my inbetweens, same thing, just click on that and now I can be able to see my inbetweens. If you want to reduce again, you can do that. And that's all for The Onion's Skin. Again, thank you for watching this video..I'll see you in the next one. Take care. 8. Shift and Trace tool: Hi guys! Welcome to a new class. So in this class. We're going to go through the 'Shift and trace tool' in Toonboom Harmony.. When doing hand-drawn animation, it's very important for you to stay on model and it's very easy for you to lose proportions and the features of your character (While animating traditionally) So this is where the shift and trace tool comes in handy. It helps you temporarily move a drawing, so you can trace it on a new drawing layer/frame. So this is something that's been around for a while and it's been used since back in the day. They would use an entire character or cut out pieces of a character..Move a piece of paper of that underneath the new drawing piece of paper and then trace over that. As you can see in front of me here, I have a traditionally animated shot.. So I'm going to go to frame '70'. Between this frame here..and this one You can see that there is a really big gap. So this short isn't very complicated. It's a very simple shot, but this is the biggest gap in the dialogue. So the shift and trace tool will basiscally help me a lot with inbetweening this section here. You can see the big gap When I inbetween this shot, because it's already inbetweened, I did not use the shift and trace So the shift and trace can be used, especially in very extreme gaps. So this is not the most extreme gap that you can use it on, but it's a good example to pass the point across and to show you guys how the tool works.. What I would do is I would activate the shift. and trace tool.. So you click on the hand icon in the tools menu on your left. So click on that. You'll see these options and then select 'Shift and trace' So if we go here at the top, you'll see the shift and trace tool here where my mouse cursor is. By default you won't find it here, so you need to go to the windows and then down here you go to toolbars and then look for shift and trace here and add that menu. Here it is..click on that and then it's going to appear. And so now we're going to reposition. Our two drawings..Here our onion skin is showing us the drawing that comes before and after our current frame.. So we're going to reposition these two drawings so that we can reduce this gap and help us maintain the proportion of the head when inbetweening.. So all you need to do is select this icon here. On the far left of the shift and trace tool menu. Select that and then it's going to show this frame here. Then you can select either this frame or this green one. So in order to select a specific frame, you need to hold (Ctrl) Click on that frame and then you can move it around, can also rotate it, and you can also change the pivot point where the pivot point you want it to be and then can move your frame around and position it however you're comfortable. If you want to reset the shift and trace tool, you click on this and it's going to reset that. So if we want to reposition again, select this and then click on (Ctrl) Select the frame you want to move..I want to move the frame before. So click on the red one and then let's reduce that gap to somewhere there... This will work.. and then with the directional keys... I can just move it..to wherever I feel more comfortable. So you think that works. I can live with that? This part of the video..I'll speed it up a bit because it may be a bit time consuming. So all I'm going to do here is just basically, draw a rough inbetween between this Keyframe and the Keyframe that comes afterwards. Okay, so I decided to speed up the video. Not to bore you guys. Also, Skillshare does not allow teachers to just be silent during a class. So I just decided to record a voiceover. My thought process here while I'm working on the inbetween is... First of all, I usually flip back and forth between the different frames using the (comma and full stop keys) on your keyboard... Works the same in Windows and Mac, and that way, i'm able to see that everything is moving as it should and everything stays consistent. And I'm not just guessing. So that's something you should also try to do Always flip back and forth between the different frames, make sure everything is the right size. So there you go... That was a quick inbetween. It's very, very rough. But I just wanted to show you how I would use this tool. So now that we are done our in-between for this part of the animation. All you need to do is, again.. click on this to reset. So once you've reset, the current frame that we're on..select that drawing and reposition it to fit the animation so place it right inbetween these two frames. So that it matches as... close as possible. So right there....Now if we scrub through the timeline..using the comma and full stop keys, on the keyboard.. you can see that it's proportional and everything's moving nicely.. That's how the shift and trace tool works in Toonboom Harmony It's a very useful tool and will help you keep all your drawings consistent, when you're animating traditionally. Thank you for watching this video and I'll see you in the next class. Take care. 9. Xsheet: Hello Guys. So in this class we're going to learn about the 'Xsheet' in Toonboom Harmony. So the Xsheet is also called the 'Dope sheet' and it's used by an animator to plan a scene As you can see here, in the this menu on the right. This is the xsheet in Toonboom Harmony So if you do not see the xsheet menu in your Toonboom Harmony, just make sure to click on this plus icon here on the far right. You'll see this plus sign. Click on that and then scroll down here, you'll see the xsheet.. So the Xsheet was also used traditionally.. on paper and was mainly created for the animator to communicate with the cameraman regarding the scenes timing, the camera moves and element trajectories and it could get quite complex. As you can see on my screen here, I'll put an image of a traditional xsheet..Which was crazy. It had all the types of camera angles and different notes, including the mouse shapes, and it could get quite crazy, but nowadays it's very simple, as you can see here. It has all the different frames and I mostly use it to label my frames and also to rename my frames. So the animator enters data in the different columns, on the layers..and the names of the drawings and the exposure into the xsheet And the xsheet also allows you to see the animation timing in detail. So, it's basically a different version of the timeline menu here. As you can see here in the timeline, the 'Red' are my keyframes and the 'Blue' are my breakdowns. But if you look in the Xsheet, you can see that it's labelled K and B and also you can see the number of my frames similar to the timeline. You can see what frame i'm on.. But if we look at the Xsheet here, you can see my frame starts at number one. But what follows is frame thirty one. Which is strange right? It's like this because, I drew frame 'one' as a keyframe and frame 'thirty one' is an in-between. So that's why it's number 31. But let's say we wanted to change this and we wanted it to be correct. So that it goes as one, two, three, four, five, six..All we need to click on that. First frame..click on (Ctrl+A) It's going to select every frame. Click on the right button on your mouse or your keyboard, and then scroll here to rename by frame. So if you click on that, it's going to rename your frames as it should be by frame. So it starts as 1,7,9,11 like that, like that. Let's say, we wanted this to have a prefix like a K or F or whatever prefix you want. Select the drawing you want to update and then right click..Go to drawing. On the drawing, you'll see 'Rename drawing with prefix', click on that and then you can put whatever prefix you want. But by default it's 'pose+', but let's say we want to use a K, you can also do that. So it's going to be labelled 'k30'.. maybe you want to symbolize that it's a keyframe. If you want to just manually rename, you can also click on that drawing/frame and then you rename it whatever you want...If you want to call it 'ggh' You can do that as well. I also use the Xsheet to track all the different parts of my my character rig. So this is a head rig that you've probably seen or will see in the other classes to come..or the previous classes, if you've watched the other classes before this one. So this rig has different elements ..separated into different elements and different elements have different names as you can see here we have dimples, we have a chin, we have a face... And so I usually use this to kind of track everything and make sure everything is named as it should be. This is because, when I rig different drawing substitutions, for example, we have the nose, this is the front nose, it's labeled 'F1'... 'F' stands for front. See, if I click on these buttons, you'll see that I can switch from this nose to the other nose drawing substitutions. And you can see on the xsheet, this is labeled 'QB1', this is for the quarter back. Also I can switch again, this is the quarter front. If you can look at the Xsheet.. now back to the nose (in the camera view) This is 'S1' .This is for the side view. And so I have different noses, I have different ears as well..If I want to change the ears I can do so and yeah... So...It actually just helps me keep track of everything. All the different elements, make sure everything is named correctly, but you can also..mark your drawings as well. But I already showed you guys how you can mark your drawings. You can also increase exposure or decrease exposure. You can import images through here, you can copy/paste..You can do all kind of stuff using the Xsheet.. Thanks for watching this class. I'll see you in the next one. Take care. 10. Library and Drawing Substitutions: Hello guys Welcome to a new class..In this class we are going to go through the library and drawing substitutions in Toonboom Harmony. So if you look at my screen, you'll see that I have a rig here open..This is a rig I made As you can see..This is a '180 degree' rig. On the right side of my screen here you'll see the library menu. If you do not see it in your Toonboom Harmony, Click on this '+' icon here on the far right, at the top. Click on that and then look for library..here it is and click on that. And then you'll see this option here...this option menu. So if I select one piece of my rig, you'll see that these are different drawing substitutions of my character's jaw. So the library is used to change and see the different drawing substitutions, but you can also create folders in here that you can store different rigs or different assets. You can also use it to import assets into the Toonboom file that you're working on. So let's start with the drawing substitutions. When you're rigging a character in Toonboom Harmony, you're going to use drawing substitutions If we select the hand. If I manually scrub through the drawing substitution menu using this slider in the library, you can see that I have the different hands in my library. So these are called doing substitutions and these are dfferent hands I use depending on what I'm animating (In context of this character) So i've created different hand assets for the different uses. Every piece has the same thing. The feet also have different drawing substitutions and as well as the eye, as well as the mouth. I can change the mouth to open, smile. I can change it to the side mouth as well. I can be able to see all those different drawing substitutions in the library. but, you can also open another option called the 'Drawing substitution menu'. So just click on the plus sign as well and then you'll see 'Drawing substitutions'. If I click on that, I'll be able to see all my different mouth drawing substitutions, but this is a much better view. So you can see it a lot clearer here. It depends on what you're comfortable with. So now that I've showed you how to view and swap between the different drawing substitutions, how do you go about adding a new one? If I zoom into my character and select my hand, just click on it..In the library you'll see that i've selected this hand and all you need to do, is go here to the 'Timeline menu'..you'll see, create an empty drawing, and then you'll see create a duplicate drawing. So the shortcut for creating an empty drawing is (ALT+shift+R) and this one is (ALT+shift+D) Let's say we want to create an empty drawing, just click on that and it's going to be empty. And then you can go to the color palette and you can select your outline color. Mine is black, and then you can draw your new hand. like that..or You can work with this already existing hand Let's say I don't want to start with an empty drawing. I can just click on create duplicate drawing and it's going to assign my hand a different number. So the original was 'one'. If I click on create a duplicate drawing, it's going to duplicate that original hand and assign it a new number, which is 'seven'. And then using this..I can just modify..So I can just modify this hand. You want the fingers to look like that? It's just a quick illustration, so don't worry too much about how the hand actually looks. I know It's not appealing in any way..Also I haven't used this rig in a while. So i'm a bit rusty on how I draw the hands. So let's say we were comfortable with this.. you can go ahead and add the color of the costume and whatever element you're using. And I've copied the color and pasted it into the 'colorart' (sublayer) where we should be. And so if I turn off the light table, you can see we have a different hand and you can just swap between the different..hand assets you have, depending on what you're doing. So let me show you how this would come in handy. So in this file, as you can see, if I click on the play button. We have a simple walk cycle. Nothing crazy. It's just a character walking. So if we zoom in to the animation, you can see..if I scrub through the frames, you can see that the hand changes..Here our hand is labeled number 'two'. But if we scrub through the frames, you can see that it swaps to hand number 'six', you click on the library, you can see that it's changing as well. And so throughout the whole animation, it swaps from 6 to 2, depending on the angle of the arm. So this is how it will be useful. Also if you just add a new drawing in your timeline..ah.. this is empty... For example, here we have the the legs and the feet. If you look in the drawing substitution, you'll see that it swaps between sketch no. '1', sketch no. '2'.. So.. if you do traditional animation, you'll be able to see all your frames here as different drawing.. substitutions. Now, I said that you can also store an asset here in the library. So let's say you wanted to store this rig in the library and use it in a different shot in the future. All you need to do here is click on 'Right to modify'..Here in the Harmony premium library. You have to unlock that because by default.. It's locked. So once you've done that, you need to click on 'New folder'. And that's going to create a new folder. here as you can see. So you can rename it as you want. My alien character is called 'GAR' for whatever reason. And so we're going to store this rig in this 'Gar' folder in the library. So all you need to do is go back to the layer menu. At the left bottom side of my screen. Let's click on the 'Alien rig group' ..for this rig. Then let's drag it into this section. This empty section in the library and then let it go..and then it's going to save it as a TPL file. That's the format that saved in the library. So you can call it whatever you want, i'm going to leave it as is..Assuming this was an empty scene. Maybe we had background elements and we wanted to import this rig into that scene or that shot. You click on this 'Green Alien TPL' (On the right side of the screen). It's going to always be stored in Toonboom.. So even if I open a different file, you'll still see this 'Gar' folder in the library. and so all I need to do is click on the green alien.tpl file..and then drag it into my scene and let go. And voila! I have my rig in a different scene or a different shot. And that's how you use it to import and store different assets in the library. As an assignment. Whatever assets you've made from previous classes, group them in the Layers menu and then make a new folder in the Harmony Premium Library and then drag and drop that asset into the library and store it Then try importing it in a different Toonboom workfile Thank you for watching this class. I'll see you in the next one. Take care. 11. Deformation tools and Node view: Hello guys, welcome to a new class. So in this class we're going to go through the deformation tools and the node vie in Toonboom Harmony I originally wanted to make these two separate classes, but it made a lot more sense to have them as one because, in order for me to properly explain the deformation tools in Toonboom, I'd have to use the node view and so I didn't want you guys to be confused. So, as you can see on my screen, we have three different arms and a cloth texture on my right. For the different arms, we are going to use different deformation tools to rig them and I'm going to explain how each of them works. So for the first arm, we're going to use the Bone rig deformation tool and for the second arm, we're going to use the Curve deformation tool, and for the third arm, we're going to use the envelope deformation tool. If you want to access the deformer tools, you're going to go up here, you'll see a wrench and a hammer icon. If you click on that, that's the rigging tool and then on my right, you'll see the Tool Properties menu. When you click on the Tool Properties menu You'll see this. For the Rig Tool Options. These should stay as is, so don't change anything here. So we're going to focus on the Bone deformation tool, the Curve deformation tool, the envelope deformation tool and the freeform deformation tool. We're not going to focus on the Game Bone tool because that's used in making games and that's not what I do. I focus on animation for TV. So these are the only ones that I use. We're going to go back to the node view and i'm going to deactivate all the other stuff. And we're going to focus on the first arm. So you click on the arm group, you're going to be welcomed with these nodes here. And so I've gone ahead and organized all the pieces like this. So I'm going to explore this in a future class in further detail. But I'm just going to explain how I rigged this arm for now and actually, whatever you'll learn here will be enough for you guys to rig something but I'm going to have a future class for rigging an entire character in Toonboom Harmony So, as you can see, I have the upper arm, the lower arm piece and the hand. And like in real life, I've organized it in a hierarchy. So the upper arm controls the lower arm, which controls the hand, and the hand is controlled by the lower arm and the lower arm is controlled by the upper arm. So if I go to the arm in the camera view or in the OpenGL view. You will see the upper arm here. If I control that, you can see that it's moving the entire arm like it would in life. If I select the lower arm, it will control the hand. So the hand will follow along like in life. And you have the hand that moves on its own like that. So before anything before you start rigging, I'm going to give you a tip on how I'm able to maintain this perfect angle here. This is an issue a lot of riggers in the beginning have, is to place your anchor point where it you should be in order to get a nice bend like this. One thing I do is to use a guide. So if I go to my layer menu at the bottom here, at the bottom left on my screen, you'll see a pivot point guide layer that he made. And if I click on that. So we have the pivot point guide, it's over here. So let's move it to where this arm. I'm going to select that drawing and just move it. Let's activate the Light table tool, so that I can reduce that lighting on the other parts. So let's place it at the center right there. As you can see. I use this in order for me to place my anchor/pivot point in the right place so that I can have a nice bend on my arms and legs. If I select that, you can see it's exactly at the middle. So how you create these guides, is by going to the shape options. Where you can make a rectangular, a circle, a square and all those different shapes, and if you click on that, you'll see all these options. You have a line, eclipse, a rectangle and a polyline. So select the eclipse. Holds (SHIFT and then drag) It's going to make a perfect circle. So if you zoom in and select the circular shape, you'll see at the center, we have a dot here. You kind of have to wing this. You're going to have to use the your memory to kind of like... Remember where that center point is and then you're going to draw that point manually. So if I select again, you can see the circular point in the middle, so I'm going to select my pencil real quick and then, place that in the middle there. So you have to quickly remember where that point is. So if I select the circle again, you can see it's off. So select that point you've made and move it to the side. Until it lines up with the original circular point. We're getting closer. Maybe i'll scale this down a bit. It's getting closer... Let's move it slightly... And there you go! Now you have your guide. Now you'll know where to put your anchor/pivot point. And this way, you're going to have a nice bend with your arms and legs. Let me close that... So now that you know how to rig an arm and a leg in Toonboom Harmony, all you need to do..Again, is to arrange everything as a hierarchy and then use the guide to know where pivot points should be. And now you have an arm. So if we go back to the node view. You'll that we have different nodes here. Once you've rigged your arm. You select all your nodes, and then you will see this icon here at the top, which is called 'Set properties on many layers' You'll see this menu here pop up and all you need to change here is, on the 'Use Embedded Pivot' option. You'll change that to parent peg. This makes the drawing layer follow the peg (It's attached to) You're not supposed to animate the drawing layer. You're supposed to connect it to a peg. And using the peg, you animate that drawing layer. This this option makes the drawing follow the peg. And then down here, you'll see the 'Animate Using Animation Tools'. Set that off. So this prevents your drawing layer from being animated. We do not want that, especially when you're rigging. You only want to animate the peg. So you click on 'OK' and there you have it. All your nodes and everything's good to go. Also here you have this tool It's called the 'Cable cutter' You can use it to cut a cable (Sorry for sccreaming LOL) So here we have this connection. If I click on that using the cable cutter, it's going to cut that connection. But you can also just manually disconnect. A cable connection. So you don't really have to use this. Also on the node view, if you want to move around, you hold the (SPACEBAR, then you drag your mouse or your stylus) and you'll able to move around. (1) is for zooming out, (2) is for zooming in. Also, if you want to change how your nodes are organized, you have these two options here. Called the order 'Node View Up' and you have the order 'Node View Down' I don't really use these as much because you can just manually organize this, but you can see how both of the options work. If I click on the order node view up. You'll see all these options, I don't really change anything here. So if you click, okay, it organizes everything. If you click on the Order Node View Down but I prefer just manually moving all these *Nodes around. You also have these things called the 'Waypoints' on the cables of your node view. You can use that to clean up your node view. As you can see on my screen, I have an example of a node view of a full character rig and as you can see, it can get quite messy. So using the waypoint you can be able to organize everything and make it less messy and you'll be able to navigate through the Node view with less stress. You also have this icon here that you can use to move around, but again, you can just hold, spacebar and move your mouse or your stylus around. So we also have these two nodes here... In the main composite. Here is where you connect your animation, your background, your effects... They're all connected to this main composite. Underneath the main composite, you'll see the 'Write' node and the 'Dsplay' node. So if I click inside the Write node..This is used to control or rather to change the settings of the image that we want to export. So if I click on file and go down to export, the first option you'll see up here is 'Render write Nodes.' So this is used to export image files out of Toonboom harmony and then import those images into a compositing software such as After Effects. The shortcut Is (Ctrl+Shift+Y) So if I click on that, I can be able to render image files. So in order to edit those image files...Assuming you want it to be a JPEG instead of a PNG, we can change it here assuming we want to change the image file name. Also if you want it to be transparent. You can come here to colors and change it to 'Color+Alpha' and it's going to be a transparent image and many other options, such as where the files are going to be saved. So you can click on Choose and you can change the file location. And then on my right we have the 'Display' This is used to focus on a particular display in the node view. So if we go back to our arm rig..Let's say I selected the top part of my arm and I wanted to add an envelope deformer The first option would be to switch the other parts off. I could just select those and click on 'D' and it's going to deactivate. If I want to reactivate them Click on 'A' So select that, click on D and then it's going to only focus on this top piece because that's the only one I want to rig But the other option is to keep these on and then go to your 'Note library' and type in (Display) You'll see this display node drag it into your view and then connect it to the piece that you want to focus on. I want to only focus on the upper arm. so that I can add deformation chain to it. Connect that to the top part of the display node. And then up here, we have the display menu here that I did in the beginning of the course. In the 'Setting Things Up' video So if I click on that, you'll see that this is my display..'Display_1' So if I select 'Display_1' , it's going to only focus on that piece and not the other pieces. So if you want to go back to the original display, just click on display. This display. You can also rename this if you want. And then finally, we have something called the 'Backdrop' So you click on this top menu here and then go down here. You'll see.. Insert-Backdrop. So if I click on 'Backdrop", you'll see this box here. You can set it to whatever size you want. And this is used to group different parts of your rig So assuming this was a full character rig...This is the arm. So we can click on this...Properties box here and then you can name it whatever you want. So this is the arm and then here you can add text if you want. In case there's any information you want to pass to your animators, you can add some text here. And then we also have color here. For different parts, you can have different colors. So assuming this was yellow and assuming this was the head. So you can type in 'Head' and voila! You can go in here and change the color to maybe red and so on and so forth. Like you can add the legs etc..etc.. And then you can assign them different color, different names. You can add notes if you want. And that's all for the node view (For now) So now we have our arm here. We're going to use the 'Bone rig deformation' tool as I said in the beginning...So go up here at the top, you'll see the 'Wrench and Hammer' icon. Click on that. On the right side of my screen, You will see 'Tool properties', click on that. The deformation tool we're going to use is this one. The first one or rather the second one, it's the one with a 'Bone' icon. So we're going to click on the 'parent piece', which is the upper arm. What I mean by that is the upper arm moves the entire arm. So if I select the upper arm, it moves everything. So that's where we're going to put our deformation chain. We're going to go back to the deformation tool. Select the bone and then using our pivot point guide. So let's go back and reactivate that guide We're going to select again the upper arm. Select the Bone deformation tool And then we're going to put points. We're going to put the points where the anchor/pivot point should be, so that you can have a nice bend (As mentioned before) Then all you need to do is just click and it's going to set the Bone deformation point..Now....... Let's make sure it's where you should be. On the anchor/pivot points. Should be the same for this. Nice So we're going to go back to this center point... As you can see, this circular point here is not lining up with the original one used as a guide. So what you need to do is.. At the bottom here, you'll see this yellow spot. Once you hover on top of it, you'll see that it creates this directional icon. So if you drag that, you'll be able to increase/decrease the size of that circular shape. And it's going to line up perfectly with the guide. Which is what we want. So let's make it line up.. Like that. Perfect. Now we can close our guide, and now we have a deformation chain in our arm. But if you move it around, you'll see that you're only able to manipulate the top part of the arm. So we'll go back to our node view. And here in the node view, you'll see this deformation node. Go here (Inside that node), you'll see all your deformers So, at the moment we have two deformation points. This is 'Bone1' and 'Bone2' So let's go back out. Now what we need to do again, like I said, the upper arms needs to control the lower arm and the lower arm needs to control the hand. So we're going to disconnect this original peg connection. The upper arm peg was controlling the lower on Peg. But now what we need to do, is connect the deformation chain of the upper arm to the lower arm. That way, If we go back to our 'OPENGL' or camera view, you'll be able to now move the lower arm using this point. This bone deformer point. As you can see. And it looks good, but not so fast. If I move the arm up to this point and select the hand, you'll see that the hand's pivot point is being left behind. So what do we do here? We do not want this because we want to be able to rotate the hand and this is affecting that. You'll go into to your node library and then type in...'Kinematic output'. So what is the kinematic output? The kinematic output node lets you hook a seperate element that you want to be linked to the deformation chain but not be part of the deformation, such as the hand here. As you can see, the hand's pivot is being influenced by the bone deformation tool. If we don't use the kinematic output, the piece's pivot wil not follow the deformation, as you can see. So if we connect the kinematic output, it's going to fix this problem and we will be able to rotate that hand as we want. So what you do is, go back to the node view. You will connect the upper arm deformation chain that we made on the top port of the kinematic output. Move the kinematic output on top of the hand's peg and then connect the bottom port (of the Kinematic output) into the hand. Now if you select the hand you can see that the pivot point is where it should be and you can rotate it as you please. Now another thing, if we zoom in, you can see that the elbow looks a bit funny in the OpenGl view, but if you click on 'Render view',, you'll see that it's actually normal. This usually happens, but if it's really extreme, just make sure to check and make sure that it doesn't look too bad. If it looks bad in the render view as well. What you need to do is activate you deformers and then move this around... Play around with the scaling of it and just try and see what works, in order to fix this issue. Now, another trick as well. If you want to reset your arm back to the default. Select the deformation chain of the upper arm in the Node View and then click on this icon here. In the Deformer Rig menu here at the top. Select this last option here and then it's going to reset it back to the default, as you can see. So that's all for the Bone deformation tool Now let's go to the 'Curve deformation *tool, for the second arm So I went ahead and positioned the pivot guide where you should be. And now we're going to again select the upper arm, go to the tool properties, after selection the rigging tool Icon And then this second option is the curve deformer tool. Let's place our *deformer points where the anchor/pivot points should be..and let's position them correctly. And now, as you can see, this top point here is in a tricky position. So what you need to do is...click on (ALT) You'll be able to select and move it around like that. So now you need to play around with this 'Bezier' tool here and make sure it's long enough for you to be able to deform the arm as you please. Let's make sure this bottom one is also well positioned. Now, like the previous deformation chain that we had with the bones...I'm not able to move the lower arm. So we need to go back to the node view Enter into this group and connect the upper arm deformer chain to the lower arm and that way, we're able to move it around. As you can see. Now the difference between the bone deformer tool and the curve deformer tool is, this is used for more 'rubber hose' characters. More cartoony characters with more rubbery arms. So.... this is what this is used for. You can stretch out as much as you want. Again, like the previous deformation chain we had. The hand's pivot point is misplaced. So again, you need to connect the kinematic output. This to the top port of the node and then this to the hand and now it's where it should be. If you want to reset. Select that deformation chain, go to the rigging menu here at the top and click on Reset. It's going to reset it back to how it should be. Now let's go to the third option, which is called the 'Envelope deformers' This is used with a regular 'FK' arm. So this is used when you're just animating the character like this. Rotating all the different joints like that. And so ...The difference between the envelope deformers and the other two is.. You use the envelope deformers to manipulate the shape of your different pieces rather than rotate the different parts of the arm or the legs. Use it to manipulate the shape of your arm or the shape of your leg pieces, or the shape of different pieces as well on the head, the torso, or all kinds of different pieces. So this is used more on the general rig, as compared to the bone and the curve deformers, which are used specifically on the limbs or anything that's rotating and flowing. So now the envelope deformer is useful if you want to foreshorten your arm. Let's say your character has a forshortened arm and it has a tricky perspective. That's when you use the envelope deformers So this will be used on all the different pieces except the hand. So for the hand, if you want to change, you have to redraw the hand. So that's why we have the library here. Where you have the different drawing substitutions. So now you have this hand and you can have one with the perspective that will match whatever you make with the envelope deformer So we select the upper arm. One thing I do when I'm adding the envelope deformation chain is... I like separating these pieces. I like deactivating this So that I can focus on each individual piece and make sure the deformation chain goes around each piece as perfectly as possible. So let's start with the upper arm. So let's set our points like that.. Go in and add each point that you want. And then for this last one, you need to connect this to this. So what you do is. On the last point, click on the last point here, then hold (ALT) and click on this first point that you made. And that's going to automatically connect the two points and then you can... tweak your 'Bezier' curves here. These are what you're going to use to manipulate the shape of the arm pieces. Now if I want to make this thicker, you can just do that and move it around and manipulate and shape how you want. It's like clay... So you can play around with that. And you can do the same thing with the other parts as well. Again, for the hand, usually it stays as is. You don't add any envelope deformers to the arm and you just focus on using the drawing substitutions so you can have a hand that's more forshortened than this one, depending on whatever shot you're animating. And finally, we have our texture PNG image here...Let me center it. So if we go back to our rigging tools. The last rigging tool is called the Freeform Rigging Tool. So this is used to manipulate texture. If you have different textures in your rig. Let's say we have a character with a T-shirt on and they are this texture inside the T-shirt. You can use this to manipulate that texture. All you need to do is select the freeform rigging option in the rigging menu. Set your points, your rigging points...So you set them in the different points of the square and I adding it in the center... That way, I can be able to manipulate it like that. As you can see, it's a really useful tool. You can manipulate your different texture shapes. Your different textures into various shapes as you need. And that's all for the riggiing tools in Toonboom Harmony. I hope that you learned a lot from this video. As an assignment, make your own.. arm in Toonboom Harmony And also you can import a texture from either Photoshop or you can download a texture from Google. Then the different deformation chains that I've showed you in this class and manipulate and play around with it. I'll see you in the next class. Bye! 12. Camera, Transformation tool and Pegs: Hello, guys. Welcome to another video. So in this video, we'll be discussing the camera, transform tools and pegs in Toonboom harmony. So I decided to combine these three topics because they're all interconnected. I think for the pegs, it would be nice if they were separate, but I will still explore them in future videos. It just made more sense to have those three topics combined in this particular video So, what I'm going to do is... delete one of these characters .These are from the color palette and paint bucket tool class that you just previously watched. So what is a 'Peg'? A peg is a tool that we use in Toonboom Harmony to move objects around. So you use it to animate. So how do you add a peg? You go to this layer, a section in the timeline. On the far left side of my screen, at the bottom Here you have your layers.Here we have the current layer we're on of our drawing and a color card. So if you want to add a peg, you can click on this option here called 'Add peg' So if you click that after you select your layer, click add peg and then it's going to add a peg. If you go on the right side of my screen, you'll see this is the 'Node view'. This is where all the nodes for your scene are located .As you can see it's added a peg Also another way to add a peg is to go down here back to the timeline. On the right, you'll see the Node library and then you'll see here a peg node. Or if you don't see it, you can type it and it's going to show the peg. So let's go back to our timeline. We have a peg added to our characters and so we're going to animate this character. In the previous videos, we explored these two options here: Add keyframe and remove Keyframes options...or rather delete keyframes options. So if we click on Add Keyframe, we are going to add a keyframe here. Also, first of all, when you add the peg, you need to set up a pivot point, which if you go to the top of my screen, you'll see this option here for adding the anchor point or rather setting the pivot point of your object..Of your character or your rig. So if you click on that, you're going to be able to move your anchor/ pivot point all around the character, wherever you want it...Let's say you want it at the bottom. You're going to be able to move it around to the bottom. If you want it at the center. You can be able to rotate it from the center point...I think you get the point So, once you add the peg, you select the peg, and then you select where you want your anchor/pivot point to be. I think for this one, we can have it at the bottom, here. So I'm satisfied with that. Another thing we need to do is to go back to the node view..In the right side of my screen. You'll select both the peg and the drawing that it's controlling or that it's going to control. You're going to click on this option here, at the top right side of my screen called "Set Properties On Many Layers' click on set properties on many layers. It's a green-white icon here. Select that. You'll see these options for setting properties for your layers and then we will go to 'Animate using animation tools'. This should be OFF. The reason why this should be off is because we don't want to animate our drawing layers we want to only animate the pegs So the peg is used for the animation, the drawing should not be animated. It's going to cause problems for you. So this should be off. Another thing to change will be 'Use embedded pivot', at the top here, the second option You'll select parent peg. So this will make the drawing follow the peg. So whatever the peg does, the drawing does. So that's all. And then click on 'OK' And now we have a head that's ready for animation. As you can see, I was going to set a keyframe, but my drawing is not visible here. What you can do is you can extend the visibility of your drawing. Go to the first keyframe on the timeline. Right click on it, and then you will see this 'Extend exposure' the shortcut is 'F5' If you want to extend the exposure of a drawing. I want to extend it to maybe...frame ten. So you click on Extend Exposure. Again, shortcut is F5 and then we'll extend the frame to frame ten. So now if you go back to frame ten, you'll see that it's visible up to frame ten. If you want to extend it to frame 100. You can do that as well. So let's set the key frame there and let's say, I want to move it from here to here and then let's stop the frame at ten. So that it can loop from from 1 to 10.. Stopping it at frame ten means that you can stop it where the drawing visibility ends So if I want to loop the animation, you can click on this loop animation icon here that I showed you in a previous video, and then you can click on play. So you can see that the character is moving, you can also probably.. make him like jump...and that's what the peg is for. Here on the Tools menu. On the left side of my screen, you'll see this transform tool and that's what you use to move the peg around like that. On top of it, you'll can see the animation tool So it's currently set to animate current frame, but you can switch it off. Meaning if we... remove this keyframe here and then move this drawing to this, let's say, let's go back to frame ten We move the character to the other side of the screen. It's not animating. That means the animation tool is off. So you need to have this ON. If you want to animate. Make sure this is on. It is yellow when it's ON and red when it's OFF. So now to move it again, it's going to set your keyframe and you're going to be able to move your character. So now that we have been able to add a Peg to our character and we're able to animate it, we can move on to the next thing, which is the camera. And the reason I had introduced the peg first is because without a peg you can't move your camera around. So now let me switch back on my 'Animate current frame' tool and then we are going to go back to the layers option on the bottom left side of my screen and then you click this + sign/icon. Hold it..You'll see the camera and it's going to add the camera again, like the peg. You can go to the node library and you can type camera and you're going to have a camera, which you can select and drag it to your scene. But since we already have the camera in our node view, we can go back here....Once you've added the camera. You can not move it around. If you select the transform tool, which is for animation, again. You will not be able to select your camera and move it around. So what you need to do is to click on the 'Add peg' icon here. On the layers section of the timeline. Or you can again, go to the Node library and type 'Peg' and you can drag it into your scene. but we've already added a peg. So now if we select the Transform tool, you can move your camera around and you can actually, animate a camera movement We can actually try that Let's say... We want to add a camera move from here to here. We can... again select 'Add a keyframe' and add a keyframe on frame 10 as well and we can move camera from here to here. And so now if we...the loop is on and we press the play button, you can see that the camera is moving. Right now let's turn on the camera mask. So that you can see in the view of the camera. So that's the camera mask. It's on. So if you move, you can see that this is how you're going to see the character. So right now you can't really get a sense of the camera moving. It almost looks like the character is one that's moving because we don't have a background So the next process would be to add background elements and now we can move the camera around and you can see how it looks with the camera. So now we're going to go ahead and import an image file from a previous project I worked on. And this background is from an old student film. So we are going to click on 'File' at the top left section of my screen. I'm going to go down and click 'Import'. Click images. So you're going to get this import images menu. Make sure import option is 'Import as Toonboom bitmap drawing' And then also here in 'Alignment', select 'Actual size' and then for transparency.. make sure it's set to 'Straight'. If you select either one of these..Premultiplied with white or premultiplied with black, it's going to have a nasty white or black outline. And so it's going to look very ugly. So amke sure it's set to straight and it's going to be completely transparent and clean..It's going to have a completely clean edges and it's going to be sharp. So let's go ahead and import this 'Hut', this 'Shrine' here. Also this ground image... It's going to be a ground object. And also maybe...I'm going to import this background. So let's select a background here and import it... Select 'import' click 'OK' and there we have a background. So let's click on the camera mask. and now we have a background, we can do another camera test. Let's set our keyframes. Press that and then let's move our camera this way... And as you can see, if we play the animation, you'll see that the camera is moving and not the character. So, now we can move on to another level. this, where i'll import... We close this character.. I don't think we need him for the rest of the tutorial...and we will import more assets into this scene. So we'll do a multiplane camera effect. And this is where you get like...a sort of 3D like ...effect using the Toonboom camera. So let's go ahead and import our other assets. I'm going to import a shrine, like I said, and maybe some trees or some grass ... And we're going to mess around the perspective and then we're going to move around the camera and it's going to be this really cool effect, like it's a 3D scene. So let's go ahead and import the other background assets into this scene.. Now we have imported our various background elements. So we have this original background here with the trees and the hills. Let me deactivate the camera mask...so that you can see everything. We have this shrine I made for a shot film. We have this grass image and we have this ground image. So I'm going to organize everything.. and then we're going to do a zoom into the scene. If we try and zoom in now. We can just do a quick test. So let's say We want to zoom in. As you can see, it's just a flat image and nothing exciting is happening. But if we organize everything and try out the multiple feature in Toonboom, you'll see that it gives sort of depth and more life to your scene. So, let's organize everything and then we can go ahead and add the camera movement I'm going to deactivate some of these layers for now because I want to focus on the on the ground and this layer here. So right now, in the Node view, on the right side of my screen, you'll see that we have these nodes. These are for the different background elements. So we have the ground, which is this grainy image here. We have this background. We have the shrine and then we have the grass. So I have deactivated the shrine and grass because I want to focus on these two first, organizing them. I want the ground to have a 3D feel to it and we can actually make it a 3D object inside Toonboom So what we need to do is add pegs to these four nodes. So you select all of them and click (Ctrl+ shift+P) and it's going to make individual pegs for the different elements. Like I said, the pegs are used for animation and right now we need to position everything where it should be. So I'll actually need the pegs in order to move the drawing elements around So i'll deactivate these, I don't need them now So for the ground texture. We'll click on the peg here on the right side of my screen In the node you will see this orange yellowish box. You click on that and then you'll see this menu here, the 'Layer properties' for the peg..Here at the top you'll see Enable 3D. So click on that and then close it. So now this will help us to be able to manipulate this in a 3D space. As you can see, we can rotate it all around and do all kinds of amazing things with it. Look at that.. so now it's a 3D element. Now what we're going to do...At this top menu here next to where the camera and the drawing is.. You're going to click on this '+' icon and then we'll scroll down to perspective and we're going to add the 'Perspective view' So this view is where you're going to view all your objects in a 3D space. You'll hold (Ctrl+ALT) and then with your mouse or your stylus, you're going to move around the scene like that and you can see your object in the 3D space. So what I'm trying to do here is to basically make this ground texture flat. So let's rotate it how I want it to be... like that. perfect And then again, control+alt and you can move around and then you can use this..Let me just move it down I want to move it down... Like that.. Yeah. Like That. That's perfect. If you need to reset your view, you click on (Shift+M) and it's going to reset your view. It works the same way in the camera view If you want to reset, let's say, you move like that. Click on (Shift+M) and it's going to reset your view back to the default. So now we have that background. The background is off like in terms of the color of the background. So don't worry too much about that.. Just make sure all the elements of your background match I just picked random elements from different projects Just to show you guys how this works. So now let's activate the other two, the shrine and the grass PNG's So what we're going to do is select the grass...So now that we have our elements, let's organize them in the 3D space. Then we're going to be able to animate our camera Let's go back to the camera view..let me switch off the camera mask and then we'll click on this menu. On the top right side of my screen. You'll see this '+' option here. You'll click on that and then go down to 'Top' and click on top. So you'll see this 'Top' menu that's going to open. So this will help you move around your objects in the z-axis or rather in a 3D space. So you go to the top tools here, at the top of the Toonboom Harmony software. You will see this transformation tool, this one. This is to move around the objects in the X, Y and Z axis. So..we're going to select each and every one of our elements here. I Want the grass to stay at the front. I want us to zoom in past the grass and then reveal the shrine. So let's move objects. Let's start with the background..Select your element and click 'B' so that you can select the peg and then click on this tool here at the top menu. On the right side of my screen. Here you'll see the shrine, the background and the grass. So these are the 3 different elements. So if you move this, you can move it back into the background. This background is actually smaller than what I would use for this shot, or maybe we can just Scale it afterwards. It's not really a big deal, but make sure all the elements fit the background space that you're using. Now let's move the shrine to the middle. You can go as extreme as you want. and let's move the grass forward. The grass is actually already forward. uh, let move it somewhere.....there And yeah, that works for me. So, once we've set the position of our elements in the 3D space, we can actually check in the perspective view again..Ctrl+ALT and move You can see that they are organized..So the grass is in the front, the hut is in the middle ground and the background is in the back. We can go back to the camera view and now we can animate our camera. So let's set our first keyframe...I'll zoom in a bit because I want..to scale the background because I want it to cover the whole shot. So i'll scale that and I'll move the grass up a bit because I want to come around to move past the grass. So let's set our camera there.. and now when I move the camera...Let me switch on the animation tool..Let's go back to the first frame As you can see, it looks like it's already giving us the illusion that this is a 3D element. So this is one way you can make your camera movements interesting. So here we can do a zoom in. Past the grass..Like that and maybe we can ..the grass is very pixelated Like that.. maybe there was a character walking into the shrine, so you could do that. So yeah..It's a really cool tool..So again, all you need to do is go up here on the top right of your screen, click on the plus and then click on top and using the transformation tool here at the top menu and the transformation tool and pegs, you can create this effect. That's all. I hope you learnt something new in this video. As an assignment, you can create your own background with different elements. The foreground, middle ground and background and then you can add a camera with pegs and all that and you can animate a camera movement. I'd like to see what you guys come up with and thank you for watching this video. See in the next class. 13. Cutter Node: Hello guys. Welcome to a new class. In this class we'll be going through. The cutter node in Toonboom. So a cutter node is simply used to cut out parts of a layer.. Here on my screen we have a head that we used in a previous class. In the 'Autopatch' class. So if you look in my 'Node view', on the right..You'll see that we two different glasses. I went ahead and separated the glasses as their own separate pieces. So with one of the glasses we're going to use to make a 'Regular Cutter node' and the other one we're going to use to make an 'Inverse cutter node'..So let's deactivate our second glasses here... then let's go to the 'Node library' and type in 'Cutter'..On the search bar type in cutter and you'll see this cutter node. Drag it into your..node view and then what we want to do is, we want to use this 'glasses shape' to cut the head and this is especially useful when you're making the mouth of a character rig Let me share an example of how this would be useful.. Here in front of me I have a simple mouth rig that I was making. As you can see, this is the outer shape of the mouth So what I'm doing here is.. The mouth shape is cutting the skin of the head and then it's exposing what's underneath this Which are the teeth, the tongue and the back of the mouth. So it can be especially useful for things like this. So let's go back to our simple example. Here what we're going to do is, we're going to connect this 'cutter node' to the head because we want to cut the head using these glasses shape. You can use any other shape if you're doing this along with me.. So... On the right port (of the cutter), here's where you connect the shape that you want to cut. And on the left port, is where you connect the 'matte' that you want to use to cut this shape. So we want to use the glasses to cut this shape, so we'll connected there... And then...voila! As you can see, the glasses are cutting the shape of the head and it's that simple. So what if I wanted to do the inverse version of this? If you zoom in to this cutter node, you'll see this icon on the left. You can see that we have a 'mask' icon that's white and the background is black. But if you double click...You'll get the inverse of that, which is a black mask and a white background. That means that the cutter is inversed And as you can see here in the camera view or in the OpenGl view, my head stays within the glasses shape because it's 'Inversed' and which is going to be our second example. So I went ahead and deactivated the first example. So now we're going to focus on the inverse cutter. This can be especially useful when your character has like different clothes that you want within a certain shape.. So let me show you an example of what I mean... The inverse cutter can be especially useful in situations like this, where we have the pupil of the eye, so we want the people of the eye to stay within the eye. So if I move the pupil around, you can see that it's not going outside the shape of the eye. So that's the importance of using an 'Inverse cutter' Also the same thing with the eyebrows and the hair as well. But you can also use it with clothes. If you want the clothes to stay within the shape of the body of a character. You can use the inverse cutter for that. So let's go back to our example. Now I want the shape of the glasses or rather... I want the glasses to stay within the shape of the head like I showed you in the previous rig... How I made the 'Pupil' stay within the shape of the eye. Or how I made the hair stay within the shape of the head. We're going to do the same thing here... We're going to have the glasses stay within the shape of the head. So what we're going to do is take the inverse cutter node that you've made.. Connect the glasses to the right port of this node, and then we're going to use the head as a 'Matte' So the head will be connected to the left side. Of the cutter node Now, it's not that simple. If we zoom in, you can see that the glasses are cutting the outline of the head and we do not want this.. Assuming we wanted the outline of the head to stay throughout, there's a way to fix this. So how do you fix this? You go into the Node library and we're going to use something called the 'color override'. So typing the color override in the search bar...You'll see the color override icon here on the right side of my screen.. Drag that into the node view. And then what the color override will do is, we're going to be able to separate the line, the outline of the head and the color of the head. So they will be two separate elements, and we're going to take that line of the head and put it in front of the glasses. So that way, the outline of the head stays on top of the glasses and we have a complete outline and not this. So, now that you have a color override, you'll disconnect the head and connect it to the right port of the color override. And then you'll click on the color override layer properties. Once you're in here, you're going to go to the 'Render selected colors only' Here you'll see render all and you'll see 'Appy to matte ports on input effects' So select 'Appy to matte ports on input effects' And here on 'Render All', click on this option menu here and then select 'Render selected color and bitmaps' Once you've done that, we want to separate the line and the color of the head. So the line is black, so we'll select those colors and click on this icon here. It's going to store them in this menu.. and then you're going to do the same thing with the color. So connect this again to the right port of the color override.. Go in here and then in the color section, We're going to select the color of the head, which is this 'yellowish' 'orangish' color. And then we're going to connect these two to the composite. So you want to line the outline of the head to be on top of the glasses. So what you simply do is..Disconnect this color override and put it in front of the glasses layer on the composite here. So the line comes in front of the glasses... and that way, as you can see, it fixes the problem. So now you don't have this issue here..Where the outline of the head is being cut by the glasses and voila, the glasses stay within the shape of the head. And the problem's fixed. So that's an introduction to the 'Cutter node' in Toonboom Harmony. I hope that you've learnt something in this video. As an assignment. You can use the head you made in the 'Color palette and paint bucket tool' class, and you can use that to test the different cutters, the inverse cutter and the regular cutter. So I'd like to see what you guys come up with and I'll see you in the next class. Bye. 14. Autopatch: Hello, guys. Welcome to another class. So in this class, we'll be going through the 'Autopatch' system in Toonboom harmony. In front of me, I have two examples on how you can create the 'Autopatch' system. What is an 'Autopatch' system you ask? So the 'Autopatch' system is a system in Toonboom Harmony, used to create joints on characters..In front of me I have an old character rig that I made So as you can see, if I bend the joint..The arm looks like it's one piece. But if I move to the side, you see that it has a complete outline and so does this other piece. So an auto parts basically instructs one piece to cut the outline of the other, to give the illusion that it's one, as you can see here, and it's used on all the limbs..You can use it on the legs as well. As you can see here. We also have the autopatch here as well. So, let's delve deeper into how I created these two Autopatch systems. The first one is just the regular Autopatch..this is usually how people make it normally. And the second one is a custom system I created with the help of one of my previous lectures, as I was working on some projects and either one of them is fine. Don't think one is superior to the other one. So.. whatever you feel comfortable using after watching this class, you can use that. So let's dive deep into how I made these.. Let's start with the regular one. So.. you can see it has two pieces. I have two rectangular shapes. If I move this rectangular shape to the side, you see that it has a complete outline and so does this other one.. but if you go back here, you will see that.. One of the shapes is cutting the line of the other one. So it create's the illusion that it's one piece. Same with this one. Different techniques, but the same result. So let's start with the regular one.. Let's go into the group ...This first drawing. So as you can see here, I have two pieces. Here is the autopatch If you want to find this Autopatch node, you can go into the Node library and type it in here in the search bar and you will see the autopatch icon. You click and drag it here.. To the nodeview, on the right side of my screen. So let me reconnect this. So that I can show you guys how this works. Here are my original two pieces, as you can see in the camera view that the lines overlap here. We did not want this. So how do you accomplish this? You go back to the Node library, you click on the auto patch, you drag it to the node view, and then you select the piece that's first on the composite..On the right side of the composite. So here we have 'Piece2', which is the one at the bottom. So you connect it to the autopatch like that, and then you connect this bottom section to the beginning of the two pieces. So in front of the two pieces. Assuming that you had other nodes here, you don't put it in front of those, just put it in front of the two pieces. You're working with So in this case, 'piece1' and 'piece2' So, this means that the color art of 'piece2' is going to cut the line of 'piece1' And so also when you're drawing, you need to use these sub layers..So the line should be in the 'Lineart' layer and the color should be in the 'colorart' sublayer.. So if I click on this drawing and go to the drawing tab here at the top, you'll see that the color is separate and on it's own in the 'colorart' layer and the line is on its own in the 'Lineart' layer. So if we go back to the camera view, you'll see that autopatch works. So yeah, so that's how the 'regular' autopatch works.. Now let's go to the custom one that I made..here on the right side of my screen.. So if we go in here, you'll see that it's a little bit more complicated. You just don't drag an autopatch in.. and the magic happens. You have to use something else called a 'Color override'. So a color override is a tool in Toonboom Harmony that's used to process colors of a drawing layer Using this effect, you can change the colors from the palette without affecting the actual color palette. You can swap clone palettes or even replace specific color zones. You can also substitute color areas with bitmap textures. So it's really cool, but you can also use it to accomplish customized autopatch systems And the reason why I developed this is because, if we go back to the regular autopatch, while it works great... If I move this piece in front, it's going to have a line around it. So, if I wanted to move this piece on top of this piece, the autopatch breaks and you don't have that effect anymore. Whereas with this custom one, you can actually prevent this from happening. So let's close that and let's actually reconnect this from scratch. Now we have our two original pieces, as you saw in the beginning. So now let's start setting everything up. So what we'll need is a color override. So go to the node library, go to the search bar and type the color override. You'll see this brick wall icon..You drag that in, and we'll also need a cutter let's drag it into the nodeview. So let's set this up. So again, I want the color of 'piece2' to cut the line of 'piece1' and to prevent the autopatch from breaking when I push one piece in front of the other. I'll also make the color of 'piece1' cut the line of 'piece2'. So that way, if I move either of pieces in front or behind. Nothing changes. It stays the same. So I'll need two color overrides. So one is for the line, one is for the color, and then I'll need the cutter, as you can see here. So i'll connect this 'Line color override' to the left side of this cutter node and the 'color color override' to the right side of the cutter node So once you've done that, you need to duplicate this because we'll need two groups.. So one, we'll need to group on its own, because one is going to use to cut this line for this piece and the other one is going to be used to cut the line on this piece. So this is going to act as a 'cutter group' So we're going to call it the cutter group. And then this is just going to be used to separate the line and the color of these individual pieces, because I want to use this piece to only cut the *line (my bad) of this piece. So it's a good thing to separate both the color and the line...and the way to do that is to use the color override. I'm going to connect this color override to this piece and this one to this piece. like that... So if you go in here, you're going to have this menu, this kind over a menu..At the bottom right you'll see individual color overrides, and here you'll see 'Render selected colors only'. We're going to use the render selected colors only because you're focusing on the colors. The individual color overrides is used when you want to change the color without affecting the color palette. but we'll focused on this only (for now) So go here to 'Rennder all'.. this tab here and select 'Render selected colors and bitmaps'... Here click on 'Apply to matte ports on input effects' and then select your color. So, this first color override is for the line art So.. let's select the black color. And this other one is for the color. So I select whatever color the arm is, which is this 'orangish' color. And again, same thing. Render selected color and bitmaps and this one.. and then we're going to connect the cutter underneath this line color override because we want this color...for this piece to cut this line. And so... I'm going to go into this...Let's disconnect, these external connections. We only need to connect this right 'port' on the furthest right of the color override.. So here we are going to do the same thing. But you first, you need to connect to the piece you want. We want this piece.. Here we are going to go into the color override menu again. Select 'Render selected colors and bitmaps' in this one... and then we'e going to select the line. Then we're going to go to the other one and select the colors (Of our object) So once you've done that, if you click on this little point here, you'll see that this line is cutting this color. And the reason we do this is because, if we use the color for this to cut this line, you're going to see a nasty white line. and you don't want that. So you use the line of the object you want to use as a 'matte' to cut the color. Now you connect this to the cutter, because we want this to cut this line. And right away, you can see that nothing is happening because you also have to do that for the other piece ..The top piece.. So, again, like this one, we will copy these.. Color overrides Connect them to this piece... to separate the line and the color...and then connect those to the composite. Okay. Once you've done that..We need this cutter group. Connect this to the cutter group and then connect it to the cutter..So that way, this is cutting this line and this is cutting this line. There you go. Now you can have two separate pieces and you can animate you (*simple objects is what I meant) So now if I add pegs to these and move them in the z-axis.. How you move it is by clicking on (ALT and down button). So (ALT+ down button) and then you'll move the piece in front of the other one in the z-axis. So if I continue pressing that and pushing the piece forward, you can see the autopatch stays the same and nothing happens. It's not affected and it stays with the autopatch.. So this is why I like this method, because it's more flexible. If I need to have an 'infinite' autopatch system like this one, I can just have that. But the other technique, the 'regular' one, is a lot simpler, so it depends on whatever you want to use. So as an assignment, you guys can make your own auto patch system..Try using the 'Regular autopatch' and the 'custom autopatch'. I would like to see what you guys will make. Thank you very much for watching this video. I'll see you in the next class and bye. 15. Coordinates and control Points view: Hi guys! Welcome to a new class in this class. So in this clas we're going to go through the coordinates and control points view menu. So on the right side of my screen, you'll see the coordinates and control points of view menu open.. If you don't see this...I believe it's not open by default. So.. if you click on this plus icon, you'll see the coordinates and control points menu here. This is how it looks like. So the coordinates and control points view, displays the parameters of keyframes and control points selected in the camera view. So using the coordinates and control points of view menu, you're able to edit key frames and control point parameters..So you're able to control the scaling, rotation and skewing of your objects. For example, here we have an arm, so if I select the lower part of the arm to rotate. Click on the arm Press 'B', so that you can go up the hierarchy and then rotate like that. As you can see..in the coordinates and control points. View Menu. On the rotation section. You can see the angle has changed to 91.6234 If I wanted to do the reverse version of this, I can add a minus in front of that.. and like that, I can manually edit the angle. So I usually use this to just manually change the different scales and sizes of my objects or just monitor if it looks okay. So you can also skew here. For example, if I mess around with skew (of the hand).. you can see that it updates here. You can also flip your objects in the x and y axes. You can also inverse the scale..We can increase the scale etc... So Yeah This is used to manually control those different parameters. But all of these can be done using the transform tool. I said in the previous videos...You can just do that. This is just used to monitor...the change and if you want to edit something manually, just click on the coordinates and control points view menu and you'll be able to do that. That's all for this class. I'll see you in the next one. Take care. 16. (BONUS CONTENT) How to rig a simple arm: 17. Outro: So that's it, guys. That's the end of the course. I hope that was a good introduction to the Toonboom Harmony software Make sure to upload all the assignments below and share it with everyone. I'd like to see what you guys come up with. Also, leave the most honest feedback that you can. I'd like to improve in the future classes that I'll produce. I know that starting out in a new software can be daunting, but with practice, you will get accustomed to the tools and you'll be able to produce magic. I believe in you guys. If you have any questions, you can also ask those. And I'll do my best to get back to each and every one of you. All the best. And I'll see you in the next one. Take care.