Cell Swapping for Multiple Elements

Is there a easy way to animate characters with multiple angles and perspectives? For example, when I want to change the perspective of the head, I can’t just swap the whole head. Since it’s made of multiple elements, I’d have to swap the cell of the eyes, the mouth, the hair, the chin… All parts must be be changed seperately and that’s really time consuming. Is there an option to swap the whole head at once? I mean Cell Swapping for multiple elements? And if that’s possible, do I have to build/name the characters differently?

Not really, it’s still a fairly complex process…

Yes, you do, please have a look at the attached documentation:

http://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony/#HAR/Stage/018_Deformation/059b_H1_Creating_a_Full_Character_Turnaround_Deformation_Rig.html

http://tutorials.toonboom.com

You need to make the different head views into templates. They all need to be rigged the exact same way, then you can drag and drop them in to your timeline when you need to switch views.

This is what you need to do (I’ll try to explain it the best I can)

First you make a master template of your character which includes all the character views: front, 3qtr, side, back etc. Once you’ve made this master template you make head templates of the front head, 3qtr head, side head etc. Now, if your character is facing the side and you want to animate him turning his head to the front you just need to drag and drop your characters front head template from the library onto its head peg in the timeline. This will switch the entire head including eyes, nose mouth etc (provided you have rigged the head with all features attached to the head peg).

Check out “Importing symbols and templates”. Around 1 min 30 secs in she shows you exactly what you want to do:
https://www.toonboom.com/resources/video-tutorials/video/importing-symbols-and-templates

Then I would watch the Rigging Part 1 and Rigging part 2 videos which go through rigging the character in detail.

It’s important that your character is rigged properly for the templates to work. You can only drag and drop a template if it’s rigged identically to the character you’re trying to use it on.

https://www.toonboom.com/resources/video-tutorials/video/rigging-part-1-animate-pro
https://www.toonboom.com/resources/video-tutorials/video/rigging-part-2-animate-pro

And then maybe watch the templates tutorial
https://www.toonboom.com/resources/video-tutorials/video/templates