If you made a walkcycle that works fine and you want to use that in a scene I dont think there is a way like in flash ( using symbols ) to loop that sequence over and over.
You might use a Harmony symbol here.
What ways are there besides just copying and pasting the keys and images you made to extend the walks to more steps and keeping control of everything in the best way.
Hi,
I think that symbols would do the job if you don’t want to copy paste the keys of your actual animation.
This is as well the way I repeate real cycles in Flash when there’s is no lip sync or other individualised stuff to adapt.
The thing that makes things a bit harder in Harmony is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to change the frame’s play mode to ‘Play Once’ or ‘Loop’ as you could in Flash (at least I didn’t figure out how to do so).
This means that you have to expose every frame of the symbol according to its content.
Besides from symbols, I don’t see any other ways to do something like ‘Time Remapping’ in Harmony.
This makes me think that it would be great if there was something like a composite node behaving, in the timeline, like a symbol, allowing you to re-expose the animation that is plugged above without having to put its elements into a symbol. And of course, it would be great if this 'Time Remap- ’ or 'ReExpsose- ’ node had the three play modes like a Flash symbol.
stefman
I am very familiar with the symbols in flash and like the way you can build/nest objects and in the end move the total object.
I tried to add the layer to a symbol but I did not relly know what to do with it to work. As you mention above.
in TVpaint you can end a seq of images with "keep loooping ", “hold last frame” etc and I find that very useful. Something similar would be great here.
There is something in Harmony called “create cycle” but I haven´t really found the best way to use that.
Anyone know how to use that in a good way?
Howdy,
Stephen Sloan has a really comprehensive course on using symbols in Toon Boom Harmony over on pluralsight.com (formerly Digital-Tutors).
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/exploring-benefits-symbols-toon-boom-harmony-1556
It was done in April 2014, so probably done with Harmony 11?, my guess would be, but it should still be relevant. I did go through the course and did find it helpful to understand symbols in Harmony. I never used Flash, so was curious if there were any benefits or special use cases for symbols where it would come in handy. The course is 1 hour and 39 minutes.
They seem to have a glitch right now with the pricing on their site, it is $49 a month with access to exercise files normally, and $29 a month with no exercise files. The exercise files are nice to have but you can pick up a lot just by viewing the videos.
Mattiasgordon,
I tried to add the layer to a symbol but I did not relly know what to do with it to work. As you mention above.
The way that I would use symbols in order to cycle an already existing animation is as follows:
in TVpaint you can end a seq of images with "keep loooping ", “hold last frame” etc and I find that very useful. Something similar would be great here.
Yeah.
There is something in Harmony called “create cycle” but I haven´t really found the best way to use that.
You could use this fucntion in order to cycle the exposure of your symbol by selecting the frames you want to cycle and then running the function.
Hi scungyho,
I never used Flash, so was curious if there were any benefits or special use cases for symbols where it would come in handy.
The reason what symbols are used in the Flash environment for are that:
stefman
Thanks for the info. sounds like a helpful course.
The flash symbols is based on symbols inside symbols etc. the all loop and you can easy update the content.
Since loops is a very useful thing in animation every feature that let you works easliy with these are good. And the possibility to change the loop just by change at one place.
If you made a loop with Harmony and the copy and past Kframes way and you want to update it you have to recopy/paste the scene again.
It must be a better way to solve it with loops.
Stefman, I get the gist of symbols and how Flash used them, but they are a bit different, or at least in how you resolve them with Toon Boom Harmony’s main timeline. Like syncing the two timelines, symbol and main timeline. This is where I found Stephen Sloan’s course helpful. It is funny though, even Stephen himself in the course talks of how symbols are not really that necessary because of the power and flexibility that Harmony provides.
I must confess that after finishing the course I wondered why anybody coming fresh to Harmony with no prior Flash use, would use symbols at all. It just seems to make things convoluted, in my opinion. I can understand how Flash users would gravitate to symbols because it is familiar to them, but I think it really impedes progress in learning and exploiting everything that Harmony offers.
I must confess that after finishing the course I wondered why anybody coming fresh to Harmony with no prior Flash use, would use symbols at all. It just seems to make things convoluted, in my opinion. I can understand how Flash users would gravitate to symbols because it is familiar to them, but I think it really impedes progress in learning and exploiting everything that Harmony offers.
Yes I agree with you. There is even a video tutorial on symbols somewhere, where Lily explains that symbols were added to the Toon Boom programs in order to make the transition easer for people coming from Flash and that she does not advice users to use them.
But, in our special case (where we try to loop an animation without having to repeat the original keys and drawings) symbols could turn out to be the solution.
Yes, I understand the need to have loops, to have that, but what I don’t get is how people will come from Flash, and use symbols to set up their characters, to just resist the use of Pegs, of true hierarchies, of setting up powerful rigs, but instead try and use symbols in the way that they are accustomed. To me why even bother, stay with Flash, save yourself the money.
Mattias, the course by Stephen Sloan does go into detail about setting up loops for a character animation, a walk cycle. He even shows how to divide up a walk cycle into the upper body, and the lower body (the legs) into separate symbols. He then has the bottom half loop, while he makes changes to the upper half symbol, he has a character change and wave his arm.
I think it is well worth your time, again, probably the most detailed course I have seen on symbols in Harmony.
I like to use cycles because they easily repeat a series of drawings (and any keyframes as well), and yet can be individually adjusted so as to not have a perfect repetition if you wish. Simply select and [copy] a range of cells, then select the cell where you want the cycle to start and right-click, and choose [paste cycle]. You can tell it how many times to paste the selection, so you don’t have to manually do a number of individual pastes. Also, you can choose whether it pastes [forward] (1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4…), [reverse] (4-3-2-1-4-3-2-1), or alternating [forward → reverse] (1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1…) or [reverse → forward] (4-3-2-1-1-2-3-4…).
So a cycle that is a ‘rock and roll’ sequence of 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1… can be made by animating only one direction (1-2-3-4), selecting it, and pasting [reverse → forward] for as many cycles as you wish. It’s more manual than Flash symbols, but you can alter any variable of the paste (position, duration, which drawing is used, etc) in a single iteration without changing all instances. However, it uses the same base DRAWINGS, so changing the artwork of one drawing changes its appearance in all pastes of the cycle.