I am new to 2d animation, not counting a short film I made in flash ages ago, and would like some help regarding compositing/finishing choices. I am aware that theoretically everything can be done in Harmony but I am wondering if there is a more commonly used pipeline, like for example sending separate layers to After Effects or other compositing software for finishing.
Currently I am using the Premium version and my goal is to do short animation films -without any collaborators at the moment- and a TV series pilot. My preference is in bitmap images. The look I am aiming for, especially for the short films, would be very cinematic with attention to detail, but I am interested in both quality and time efficiency. I am also thinking about in terms of effects. For example I am thinking about a shot of a fluorescent lamp that is flickering. Would that be best achieved inside Harmony or in a composting software After Effects, Nuke etc.
Any info/links to existing pipeline methods, that are not too complicated to handle would be very helpful.
You can get a lot out of the harmony tools for compositing. I’ve done a demo of some things you can do with a flashlight that might help you with your lamp. https://youtu.be/ya327n5_D9A
If you’re exporting to AE you can export each layer as a PNG4 using separate write nodes. Harmony can render more than one write node at a time. PNG4 allows you to retain the transparency, so you can bring it all into AE and do whatever you like on each layer. Or you can render out a mask using a write node as well. The only issue is sometime blur effects come out kind of ugly if it’s on a transparent area. So if you are exporting to a comp software save the blurs for then. Blurs on opaque bgs seem to render fine.
I’ve worked on productions that are 100% harmony, some export to AE, some export to Nuke.
There’s no right way - just whatever works.
Thanks for the link. It’s not just a bit fast, this is WAY too fast for a beginner, but you really know what you’re doing. Do you have any tutorials for beginners?
