Harmony too slow for big tv series production ?

Hi toon boom friends,

Reading an interview with:
Dreamworks “The Croods” Executive producer:

"but unfortunately we found that Harmony wasn’t the best fit for what we were doing. Bardel was a fantastic partner, but because we really wanted to build out a neighborhood around our family, which has six characters, it became tough to use Harmony whenever we got to scenes with more people. "

**This means that harmony is not good for production with more than 6 characters??
but Mercury/boulder media had animated so many shows already Example: Star Vs. The Forces of Evil some scenes have more than 10 characters, fx, and destruction in a fighting scene in one episode as far as I remember, so is this person wrong? or Bardel Ent. did not know how to handle the show with Harmony?

Do Harmony needs more optimizations? maybe using nvidia CUDA GPU?

comments? opinions?

10 harmony characters.png

I looked at some clips of the series and frankly it doesn’t look extremely complicated in terms of rigging, by comparison, for instance, with “Ever After High”, whose characters are told to have around 90 layers and has many scenes with 10 or 12 characters simultaneously on screen. I wondered what type of scenes were too heavy to handle. That said, sometimes seemingly regular rigs are actually quite complex. I saw a scene of a TV series episode that had some 500 elements on a scene with only two characters. Such complex rigs with 10 characters easily make up a scene with a few thousand layers. I’m really curious about the type of scenes that made them decide to go hand-drawn.

But I wonder. It’s not clearly stated that the issue was such heavy scenes that the computers couldn’t handle, he says"…it became tough to use Harmony whenever we got to scenes with more people". Could it be other things related with the workflow? Animating too many rigs, having to create new rigs very often due to new secondary characters appearing?


Luis Canau

Two different issues arise from the article. One, Harmony apparently not being able to handle scenes with a certain number of cut-out characters; two, they don’t say that they moved from Harmony to a software that would be able to handle those scenes, what they did was moving from cut-out to hand-drawn. So they might be using the expression “Harmony animation” in the sense of “cut-out animation”? I know some of those Korean studios work with Harmony doing traditional/traditional. So maybe they didn’t decide not to use Harmony, but to not work in cut-out?


Luis Canau

I’m kinda curious what they mean as well in regards to the performance. Does the performance tank heavily if you have more than 6 rigs on screens? If so couldn’t they render those animations out seperatly and combine them together as video in a symbol or just bake the animation so that theres no active deformers? Shows like R&M seem to have tons of characters on screen at once and it’s made in toonboom as well.

Although i’ll never say no to more optimization, cuda based opengl mode would be neat!

I am skeptical of people making such a comment and actually naming software. It may be that the comment was taken out of context or Brendan Day has an axe to grind. The question was, “Can you talk a little bit about where the animation was made?” They didn’t ask how it was made or about software. Brendan Day did not have to mention Harmony at all. He seems to have used this as an opportunity to blame Harmony for their turning to overseas sources. The implication is that Harmony cannot handle 6+ characters. Whether it can or cannot I don’t know. It doesn’t matter because this comment could create negative buzz about the product regardless of its accuracy. Maybe he benefited from plugging the South Korean partners and discouraging people from using Harmony and or Bardel.

“Once we chose 2D, we initially planned Dawn of The Croods to be a Harmony-based show. We were working with Bardel in Canada, but unfortunately we found that Harmony wasn’t the best fit for what we were doing. Bardel was a fantastic partner, but because we really wanted to build out a neighborhood around our family, which has six characters, it became tough to use Harmony whenever we got to scenes with more people. So I think three of the first 13 episodes that come out on the 24th were made with Harmony and Bardel, while the rest of them were traditionally hand-drawn with out studio partners in South Korea, EMation, NE4U, and Dong Woo Animation.”

Nvidia CUDA or OpenCL can be a nice speed-up optimization… but maybe can be difficult to implement…

Yes, you found your own conclusions. Have you asked the guy what he meant by his comments? Are you curious if his comments have any accuracy? You said here:

"The implication is that Harmony cannot handle 6+ characters. Whether it can or cannot I don’t know. It doesn’t matter because this comment could create negative buzz about the product regardless of its accuracy. "

To you it doesn’t matter if his comments are accurate, only that they will create a negative buzz about Toon Boom and you don’t want that to happen. Am I reading that right?

interesting to know, is true, the character design is so simple, no shadows, expressions are simple too…I do not understand why BARDEL Ent. have not finished the job…what happened ?? is a mystery

I’ve worked on 7 Harmony-animated television shows. (well, one was done when “harmony” was still “digital pro” lol) Every production has it’s own unique set of challenges and the really complex rig-heavy shows can have lag issues. It’s not necessarily a lot of elements, but throw in deformers, and a bunch of other nodes and it can get bogged down.
Frequently the simplest solution is set up several versions of the same scene. Set up A has the main characters, Set up B has support /extras, and you could set up a C with PNG sequences of the characters to do the FX if you wanted to.

No software will be perfect, Harmony isn’t perfect, but it is a huge exaggeration to say it’s not good for television production when it is used so much for it lol.

Agree.

Rick and Morty is done on Harmony using Bardel as the principle animation house. Go look at ANY episode and tell me it can’t do more than six characters. The show may look simple but the rigs are insanely detailed.

well i worked with “Rick and Morty” in animation and rigging… what i noticed with the process are quite complex in terms of their pipeline. Instead of just use hand drawn in some incidental characters they asked to rigs it in full rigs like the main character… which is not practical in the production… knowing every scenes has a lot of characters and some of them are static but still they want to rig those incidental, so the outcome is files are heavy and somehow harmony 10.3 version are the latest version that came out that time which for me cant handle a lot of rigs that time. Also computer specs are also help if you have higher specs to accommodate that kind of project.

imagine how hard is to lose money and time for a production, so he is blaming directly Bardel AND Toon Boom Harmony…
I am agree with you, this was direct with name and harmony name too "unfortunately we found that Harmony wasn’t the best fit for what we were doing. Bardel was
a fantastic partner, " this was a direct punch in the face…

So before we circle the wagons to prove our undying love for Toon Boom and assume that the guy is just out to hate and somehow prod artists to send all their animation projects overseas… maybe it would be a good idea to just ask him to clarify?

I worked on a pretty big project and I managed to get 8-12 cut outs in a scene, but it slowed down quite a bit and it was a pain to work with and I’m sure my finnicky cutouts were not nearly as complicated as a studio would use.

I have an Nvidia 970, 18 gigs of ram etc.

For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgIiDq3GjdI

Hurry before two people agreeing that it is questionable the way this was presented goes viral or as you see it, “circle the wagons to prove our undying love for Toon Boom and assume that the guy is just out to hate and somehow prod artists to send all their animation projects overseas.:wink:

Hurry and what? Jump to conclusions?

Where are the conclusions?

Oh wait… I found them:

Monkeyface,

An implication in a presentation and the consequences of that presentation are not dependent upon anyone’s intent.

Also, I don’t care about Toon Boom receiving warranted criticism and I may have even contributed more criticism than any other member since I joined the forum.