Node view features

Harmony Harmony Feature Requests
1

Hello,

I have been using Harmony for about a year now, mostly for traditional frame-by-frame animation and compositing. Having used a few other compositing apps before (After Effects and Blender) I gradually came up with a few ideas for the Node View to be more efficient.

  • The Blending node could rename itself to whichever blending mode is selected (Multiply, Overlay, etc.) and ideally, it wouldn’t have to be a unique name (which would avoid ending up with Multiply_7 or such)
  • There could be a button to align node vertically. The horizontal one is of great help already, why not have a second one ? Some of us are borderline obsessive when it comes to alignment :smiley:
  • A “follow cursor” toggle feature that would have all the selected nodes follow the cursor wherever it goes after we pressed a key. This feature exists in Blender with the G shortcut. It avoids maintaining the mouse button down while moving stuff around.
  • Having a “Displacement map” Node that would work like the same effect in After Effects. Based on ANY type of black and white input, this node would displace pixels in a set axis. This would be similar o how the “Turbulence node” works, but with a custom input that wouldn’t only be a predetermined set of noises.
  • Custom color links : just like we can give a color to a node or a backdrop, coloring links would be immensely useful sometimes.
  • Pulling a link out of a Port and releasing the mouse button would automatically open the Node search menu, and whichever new node is selected would be automatically attached to the Port from which the link was pulled out.
  • More custom Ports: being able to tick a checkbox inside the Layer Properties of a Node would make it appear as an Input or Output Port where we could link what we need. That would be very useful when we want to have the same property value in different nodes without having to change all of them manually. This is different from the duplicate/clone system which doesn’t work for everything.
  • A “Value” Node that would simply output a value (boole, string, array) that can be set and animated by the user. This would come in handy with the previous suggestion.
2

Hello, Simon!

MEL from Toon Boom here!

Thank you for these cool suggestions! I will be sure to transmit this to our lovely RND dev team!

Additionally, I have some knowledge to share about some of these suggestions:

* There could be a button to align node vertically. The horizontal one is of great help already, why not have a second one ? Some of us are borderline obsessive when it comes to alignment :smiley:

The button already aligns node vertically. If you select a bunch of nodes tied together in a straight flow, it will align them in a tower.

The button will NOT reorganise all your nodes, even in a ‘‘horizontal way’’. Really, all it does is ''allign nodes right next to each other, or on top of another. At the moment, there is nothing smarter than our human brains, to reorganise our nodeview. Maybe in the future it will be smarter about reorganisation, who knows! :slight_smile:

* A “follow cursor” toggle feature that would have all the selected nodes follow the cursor wherever it goes after we pressed a key. This feature exists in Blender with the G shortcut. It avoids maintaining the mouse button down while moving stuff around.

While Harmony doesn’t have that feature, are you aware that you can select a one, or bunch of nodesand then press alt and click on a composite, or another node to connect all of them? For example, if you have a drawing and you want to insert it in the cutter’s mask port, but it’s far away, you can click on the drawing layer, then navigate to the cuter and ALT+CLICK on the mask port and it will connect.

Same thing with a bunch of drawing layers to connect to a composite, etc.

* Custom color links : just like we can give a color to a node or a backdrop, coloring links would be immensely useful sometimes.

Do you mean like, colouring the wires between the nodes? :slight_smile:
(Just making sure I have these suggestion right, for when I log them!)

* Pulling a link out of a Port and releasing the mouse button would automatically open the Node search menu, and whichever new node is selected would be automatically attached to the Port from which the link was pulled out.

While we don’t have that at the moment, you can however click on a node, and then you can press enter, and choose a node and it will be attached under it automatically.

* More custom Ports: being able to tick a checkbox inside the Layer Properties of a Node would make it appear as an Input or Output Port where we could link what we need. That would be very useful when we want to have the same property value in different nodes without having to change all of them manually. This is different from the duplicate/clone system which doesn’t work for everything.

While it is not possible in the exact way you described, Harmony already HAS a way to do what you (seem) to be explaining.

Let’s say that I have 5 robots in my scene. They all have an individual GLOW node attached to their eyes: I want to be able to change the radius and intensity of ALL those glows at once.

To do that, you can simply create a FUNCTION on any of the parameters you want to share, in our case, Radius:

Screenshot 2023-11-27 at 9.48.21 AM
Screenshot 2023-11-27 at 9.48.21 AM998×650 65.2 KB

This will create an animation ‘‘function’’ which means an animation link that is able to be shared amongst many items.

From the moment you have created a function on a node’s properties, if you COPY and PASTE this node, their curved parameters will be shared. Note that a shared parameter can ONLY be animated in the timeline or in the function view:

Screenshot 2023-11-27 at 9.49.13 AM
Screenshot 2023-11-27 at 9.49.13 AM950×576 46.8 KB

If you want, you can also COPY and PASTE a function link :

Screenshot 2023-11-27 at 10.01.20 AM
Screenshot 2023-11-27 at 10.01.20 AM548×638 59 KB

Hope this is helpful!

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have more questions :crown:

  • MEL!
2 Likes
3

Hi,

*Having a “Displacement map” Node that would work like the same effect in After Effects. Based on ANY type of black and white input, this node would displace pixels in a set axis. This would be similar o how the “Turbulence node” works, but with a custom input that wouldn’t only be a predetermined set of noises.

The “Volume-Object” combined with an image which is used as a “HeightMap” seems to do something similar to what you’re looking for.

4

Thanks a lot for these answers, that’s really helpful. The sort of thing that hadn’t come up in conversations with other animators :slight_smile:

Special thanks for the FUNCTION system. This actually works great and is quick enough to implement.

And about the colors, that’s right, I mean we could color the wiring between the nodes.

@stefman : thank you too for the suggestion! It seems like it can be the solution to my needs.