improved importing and library

Retired Products Animate Feature Requests
1

Harmony is sold as an After Effects replacement, and I have begun to use Harmony where I would have normally used AE instead. However, it is lacking in a few areas one of which is how Harmony imports.

In AE, I import a PS document (or any image file) and AE will point to the file being referenced. Harmony imports the PSD and makes a copy of the file in the shot’s elements folder. This creates two major issues. One is that file sizes for a project balloon very quickly. Some shots have one more more PSD’s each around 200MB. Throw in a few characters in the mix and I’m looking at close to 500MB for one shot.

The second issue is updating a PSD from Photoshop. As long as the layer structure remains intact, as AE reads the PSD anything you do to the file instantly updates into your AE timeline. If a revision needs to take place to the PSD after it is imported into Harmony, you have to re-import it all over again. This causes headaches as sometimes you have multiplane and layering set up, etc, and as far as I know you can’t replace/update layers in TB like you can in AE. It would be nice to be able to update a PSD in Photoshop, and have those revisions instantly reflected in TB.

The Library on the side at times shows me image files in any open lilbrary. However, I can’t just drag and drop them into my scene. I need to go though the process of importing them. Why? To me, the Library should show me image files in a folder I have opened and when I drag them in they should just import. Otherwise whats the point of showing me? The same should be true of any drawing element (.tvg) created in TB that I see in an open Library. I should just be able to drag and drop it into my scene giving me the option to copy it into my elements folder if I wish.

Anywho these are my experiences with working in TB, and comparing it to my experience in AE.

2

i kind of stumbled onto something that addresses one of my points in the manual listed under “link to external file” where you could import a file in a way so that it doesn’t not make a copy of the PSD into the scene structure. this is handy for updating the file and more importantly to save on disk space. however, this seems to be Harmony network only. add to stand alone, please!

3

nice! so this was added to harmoyn 11 which is super handy for organizing BGs and assets that are built outside of harmony. love it.

unless im missing something my ONE grope with it is that i am not given the option of how i want to import, say, a PSD with layering to build multiplane. form what i can tell so far it bring it in flatened?

4

This lack of replacing possibilities is a pain.
I use toonboom a lot with PS files, and it feels very much like i’m stuck with the artwork as soon as i imported it. Because it is not user friendly to replace the artwork after importing.

Second thing about that is the lack of options while importing.
In After Effects, i can choose which layer i want to import from a PSD.
Sometimes i need them all, sometimes i need it flattened, but when I did a correction on only one layer, i don’t want to import al the additional layers as well again. (now i export the corrections as a separate file, but would be nicer if i can choose just to import that layer from the file.