Hey guys, I posted about this in GD as well. It appears that Animate2/AP2 does not play with Harmony very well (really at all). As an in-studio animator we often use out of house animators to fill our ranks (generally by Fed-Exing paper around) per project, and we’re planning to ease our way into the world of paperless animation by outfitting our in-studio team with Harmony (most importantly our Ink & Paint department). The TB response for our out-of-house folks (who often live thousands of miles away) was that we should purchase Harmony stand-alones for these freelancers that generally work for us for a few weeks at a time, a few times a year - just not feasible. My understanding is that Harmony is very similar to AP2 with a few extra bells and whistles, it just doesn’t make sense to me why the files couldn’t travel back and forth (as long as you didn’t utilize those extra bells and whistles, of course). I would even be ok with a workaround being able to import the .tvg files or something. Not happening. So I’m officially asking for this situation to be remedied, whether that happens in Animate3 or the next version of Harmony. We’re big fans of ToonBoom products around here, but this is potentially a pretty big deal as 2D studios get progressively more and more paperless - we want TB leading the charge and this is could be a huge stumbling block. Thanks!
Just curious if anybody else thinks this is as big a deal as I do? Seems like a lot of people on these boards are either freelancers or want to be, I thought it would be a big concern for them - am I wrong?
I think at lot of freelancers don’t work for studios but for small independent projects they create themselves.
There isn’t much discussion of Harmony here because toonboom prefer to do it all via email. Personally I have never used it or seen it in action or have any idea what it costs so I have no real opinions on it.
One possible solution would be for studio to buy x number freelance licences and lend them out as required. When finished you get the key back and lend it to someone else.
I agree it seems logical Animate and Animate Pro files should be able to be opened in Harmony. I can’t actually see a downside for toonboom in users being able to do this (unless Harmony standalone is more than Animate Pro).
From what i read, before version 2 came out you actually could open them in Harmony, although I may be wrong on that.
I’m concern about this situation too, since I have same problem as you describe above, I’m just a small business and I can’t effort to buy for every painter I need a Harmony license. I’m working on some workarounds maybe we should join in this matter might come something out.
I deeply hope Toon Boom change there thinking and make Animate again compatible with Harmony.
Thanks for the input guys! My experience with Harmony thus far is that it is extremely similar to Animate Pro (which makes me very happy since I’ve been using AP for a year and a half now) - I haven’t gotten into the higher level uses, I’m sure there are some differences when you get into that. I’ve always thought the secretive nature surrounding Harmony is kind of strange, don’t really get why that’s necessary. Agreed Marcus, if either of us come up with anything be sure to share. So far our only option would be to ship off the files to ToonBoom to convert but I have no idea how long that would take - we work in commercials and deadlines are always super-tight…
It would be interesting if they could somehow decouple the networking part so you can plug Animate Pro into Harmony.
So When you buy Harmony you are buying the networking solution (which is the real selling point of Harmony), but instead of plugging Harmony into you just plug Animate Pro. That said I am not aware how much Animate Pro differs to Harmony except in the networking sense.
Actually we have 2 Fully networked licenses of Harmony for the ink and painters and several stand-alone (un-networked) versions for animators. That’s what I’m using, so far it seems like the main reason for it is so that our networked versions can open the files created by the stand-alones. So I guess I’m already decoupled so to speak… I think there are some extra uses in terms of 3D stuff but that’s not anything I see us getting involved in.
Out of curiosity, with the Standalone Harmony you work locally with database or just in the Offline mode?
What I found out so far, the only difference between Animate Pro and the Standalone Harmony is actually you can work locally with the database and you have Timing Columns what is quite useful if you want import remote date from another location and of course Linux is natively supported. As far as I know the 3d feature will be available in the next release, right now there is no difference.
For simple Paint job you can try Pencil Check Pro it’s on sale right now, the TVG files working forward and backward, but it has really very limited tools for correction and editing.
Well then, Happy New Year.
Hi, I am working freelance with a studio and it seems to be a problem to open my animate pro 2 files in harmony 10. Has there been any advance in solving this issue over the past two years?
The solution is basically buy harmony standalone.