Hello… is there a way to time shift, or offset an animation other than selecting and sliding things around in the timeline?
For example, say I have a 20 frame puff of smoke animation that starts at frame 1, but I’d like to puff up again at frame 12. Is my only option to duplicate it and then slide it in the time line? Is there a module or something that can say… take what’s plugged into me and offset it by 12 frames?
Using Harmony version 10.3.1
Thank you
M
You can also use the Library to make a template and drop it
where it’s needed in the timeline.
This video is for Animate Pro but the info is equally valid for Harmony:
https://www.toonboom.com/resources/video-tutorials/chapter/library
Admittedly I’m new to toonboom… so I’m not all that familiar with how it uses memory. I wondered if it would help to keep file sizes more manageable if I could bring in a cycle or bitmap sequence once, and then just time shift it 20 times, instead of importing the whole thing 20 times and sliding key frames and art around. Seems a little inefficient.
Thanks for your feedback.
M
That’s really not how Harmony works. Once you import a drawing, the scene continues
to have access to it. Let me give you an example…
You create a layer called myDrawing.
You select the first cel of this layer in the timeline and draw something.
If you look at the Xsheet, it created a cel label numbered “1” at frame position 1.
If you want this same drawing to appear at frame position 5, all you need to do is
go to the Xsheet and at frame position 5 enter the number 1 to be the cel label.
You don’t need to copy the drawing or anything, just the cel label to reference it.
Just for some background… If you physically look at the elements folder for this project,
you would in fact find a folder within called “myDrawing”. Inside this folder you would see
one drawing called “myDrawing-1.tvg”. The number 1 after the minus sign is the what the
cel label in the Xsheet is referring to.
By the same token if you have a sequence of animated drawings for one layer, you can
repeat the animation just by copy/pasting the cel labels (or typing them) starting at some
frame number.
Cutting/pasting in the timeline works similarly with the added complexity/flexibility of
the “paste-special” where you can control extra aspects of what is pasted but the
important thing to be aware of is that drawings are not physically duplicated unless
you take special steps to duplicate them.