Is there an "Ease" or "Tween" tool for stop motion mode in harmony?

Harmony Harmony General Discussion
1

Both Maya and Blender have ways of setting a key for the selected objects by choosing a percentage value between the previous and next keys…

This is super handy when working in “stop motion” mode (held or stepped keys in 3D packages). With Blender it’s a built-in Ease mode, where you select a control, hit Shift+E, then drag left and right to have the currently selected object blend between the previous and next key.

In Maya, there’s a script called TweenMachine that does it.

https://justinsbarrett.com/tweenmachine/

I was wondering if there’s anything like that in Harmony?

Let’s say I’ve got an arm position at frame 10 where the arm is facing down, and at frame 28 where it’s up. I want both an ease-out of the position of frame 10 and a slight ease-in to the pose at 28.

In blender I’d simply go to frame 18, hit shift+E, and drag to the left until the percentage of the previous pose is at 5 (or I could type 5). This provides an ease out. Then I’d go to frame 24, hit Shift+E and type 90, or drag to the right until the pose is at 90% of the keypose. Super quick, all while staying in stepped mode.

In harmony, here’s my current workflow when in stop motion mode.

  1. Start at frame 18.
  2. Select frame 10.
  3. Set the key to Motion Keyframe
  4. Go to frame 12.
  5. Set a Keyframe.
  6. Move it to frame 18.
  7. Make sure it's still a Motion Keyframe (most likely the new key was set to stop motion keyframe).
  8. Go to frame 27.
  9. Set a keyframe.
  10. Drag it back to frame 24.
  11. Select all the keys and set them to stop motion keyframes.

Is there a quicker way?

Thanks!
-Jason

2

Normally one would just make two motion keyframes and then click the
“S” icon on the Transformation tab of the peg or layer whose motion
you are editing. Doing so will make a function for the 3D path. You can
then click on the “S” icon again to open the graph. There you can select
the keyframe and from the pulldown menu of the Bezier Editor window
(right next to the “staircase” icon - select one of the ease curves.

With a 3D motion you could also make a controlpoint and use the
Control Point toolbar to set the tension continuity and bias
numerically:
https://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony-16/premium/motion-path/add-control-point.html?Highlight=control%20point

The super-easy method is just to make a motion keyframe in the timeline
and from the timeline’s toolbar, directly select the ease curve from the
pulldown menu. I mentioned the other method first so that you could relate
to what these function ease curves are actually doing.

3

Thanks for the reply!

I’ve used the motion keyframes to do what I want, but was hoping for something a bit quicker for working with keys in stop motion mode - check out this video about using tweenmachine:

https://youtu.be/C-BUhzOCBfk?t=37

It’s only a few minutes long, but you kind of get the idea - I use it all the time, but mostly when using stepped keys (or stop motion keys in harmony).

If this isn’t clear, I can shoot a more specific video demonstrating what I’m talking about. :slight_smile:

cheers!