Hello.
I have Toon Boom Harmony stand alone and I wonder what`s the difference/extra features I would get with the Harmony Netowrk version.
aAlso, anyone knows the price?
Thanks!
The price should vary according to the number of seats - I mean, you can have 4 or 5 or hundreds -, if you upgrade from another software, etc.
Network is the same basic technology but you have Scan, Paint, Xsheet and Stage modules, besides a Control Centre. Modules makes more sense on a 2D traditional workflow, where you can have someone just taking care of scanning, ink&paint artists and compositing artists.
You also have Batch Rendering, so you can manage vectorising and rendering on different computers or have machines dedicated to rendering (render farms). Network makes sense on a studio, where all users work on a production centralized on a server, instead of each artist working on a scene that exists in his own machine.
For the freelance/individual artist it’s not a matter of choice between one or the other. You can work freelance with Stand Alone and export your work to send to a studio working with Harmony Network.
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Luis Canau
Cool.
In my case, I have a startup game development studio. So its just me and one other person. I already have harmony stand alone. So, i was just wondering if its a good idea to get another harmony stand alone license for the other guy, or upgadre to the harmony network version (two machines) and then in the future, if all goes well and we expand and start bringing more people, then ad even more machines to the harmony network.
But for now, how much would it be to upgrade from my harmony stand alone to the harmony network for 2 machines?
Also, i didnt really understand the paragraph about modules. I already use modules on my stand alone version inside the network view.
I think he is referring to “modules” in this case at the individual apps for Harmony. If you have Stand Alone like myself, you have them already installed (Paint, XSheet, Scan, etc), but can’t use them because they require a Network license. They rope off the job into separate compartments for larger productions so that there is more admin control over who sees what.
You work in gaming? I had a friend reach out to me recently about TB. He works for a company using Flash and he wanted to switch up. One thing he seemed to need was the ability to label a keyframe like you can do in Flash because the programmers needed to call on it when they got the FLAs. Do you think this is something any of the TB products can do?
In Harmony Stand alone you don’t have actual modules, but if you go to the directory where you have the Stage.exe file you’ll notice there’s also .exe files called Paint, Scan, Xsheet, Controlcenter and Play. If you try to run them, you’ll get an error saying “This mode requires a networked application. Could not find a valid database license”.
In the Network version you can run those modules. They are actual separate applications from Stage each with their own features. To understand this context, you have to imagine a medium to big studio working in traditional animation with, let’s say, 20 seats. With cut-out or ‘tradigital’ (to a lesser extent) it doesn’t make as much sense.
On a 2D traditional workflow the animators would draw on paper and you would scan the clean up drawings into Harmony. For that purpose you’d work with one or more machines connected to a high-speed scan where you would run the Scan module. With this module you can basically just scan into the system. Batch processing will vectorize your drawings in the machines you define to do that operation.
But before using Scan you would actually have to make the Xshet with the animation timings. You could do it on Harmony, import it from Pencil Check Pro, or transcribe it if you made your line tests outside the TB Network. The Xsheet module has only the xsheet, nothing else.
Then you would paint the drawings. For that purpose you can have ink&paint artists using the Paint module instead of Stage. With the Paint module you don’t have timeline or network distracting, you just paint a layer of drawings separately.
Of course, in Stage you can do everything, but in traditional animation it’s basically the compositing level, where you apply camera moves, effects, and prepare the scene for rendering. If you are painting hundreds of drawings in one scene it’s much more convenient and a lighter way to work in termos of computer memory using Paint and open a layer (or a number of drawings of that layer) than have all layers to paint on Stage. The navigation is also much easier, because you basically shift from drawing 1 to 2 to 3, etc.
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Luis Canau
Play you can run, of course.
You can already do this in the Xsheet using the “Mark Drawing” toolbar in Harmony.
Ahh interesting. Thanks I’ll pass the info along!
Can you do this in timeline view?
I need a label/keyframe with text to show me of when camera in close up or long shot or a cut to other character, I need this because I normally animate with my camera off so It my view doesn’t move around.
Hi Astri_JDWLLR
The xsheet has many features excactly for the purposes you seek.Especially when you work in drawing view.
There is no conflict between timeline and xsheet i Harmony. You can show both windows at the same time. Scrolling the playhead in the timeline will make scrolling the xsheet. In the xsheet you can mark key,breakdown and inbetweens. This will also give you possibilities to settings of what shows in onionskin and what play in the easyflipping.
You can add an annotation colomn. The colomn can be adjusted for witdth. You can write, draw and type in the annotation colomn. The xsheet can be printed out. Wich for most computers also means export to PDF and email. This can be practical for collaboration and animation tasks that will not take place in Harmony or the computer.
You can add a tempo marker that will mark a tempo that you set through the whole scene. You can rename each frame and it will show on the actual cell. Make sure you rename and give an unike name. The frame names are linked to the library of that element. If you use an excisting naming it will expose the frame with the excisting name. To rename a frame that is exposed already, intending to make it a new drawing make sure to duplicate the drawing first.
You will find all info you need to know under the timing chapter in the userguide.
So navigating in timeline and marking, naming, annotate and reading in the xsheet can be a good solution.
Best regards
Ivar