Toon Boom
Harmony V15.0

Release Notes

TOON BOOM ANIMATION INC.

+1 514 278 8666

4200 Saint-Laurent, Suite 1020
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
H2W 2R2

contact@toonboom.com
toonboom.com

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Legal Notices
Toon Boom Animation Inc.
4200 Saint-Laurent, Suite 1020
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
H2W 2R2
Tel: +1 514 278 8666
Fax: +1 514 278 2666
toonboom.com
Disclaimer
The content of this guide is covered by a specific limited warranty and exclusions and limit of liability under the applicable

License Agreement as supplemented by the special terms and conditions for Adobe®Flash ® File Format (SWF). For details,
refer to the License Agreement and to those special terms and conditions.
The content of this guide is the property of Toon Boom Animation Inc. and is copyrighted.
Any reproduction in whole or in part is strictly prohibited.
Trademarks
Toon Boom® is a registered trademark and Harmony™ is a trademark of Toon Boom Animation Inc.
Publication Date
03-22-2019
Copyright © 2018 Toon Boom Animation Inc., a Corus Entertainment Inc. company. All rights reserved.

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Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Table of Contents
Table of Contents

2

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.6

3

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.5

5Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.4

9Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.3

11

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.2

15Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.1

18

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.0

212

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.6
Here is a list of changes in Harmony 15.0.6, build 15.0.6.14310 (2019-01-10):l

Scripting on page 3lFixed Issues on page 3

ScriptingFeatureDescription

Set the value of an
attribute at any frame

The new setValueAt method of the Attribute class can set the value of the attribute at a
specific frame rather than at the current frame.

Documentation of thenode class

Examples of how to use the node class have been added to the Harmony scripting interface
documentation.

Documentation of the
Attribute

Examples of how to use the Attribute class have been added to the Harmony scriptinginterface documentation.
The node.getTextAttr() and column.getEntry() methods can now return up to four

Higher decimal precision

decimals of precision rather than three, which is the amount of precision supported by most input
fields in the user interface.

Fixed IssueslHarmony fails to connect to the license server when its port and address are specified in the TOONBOOM_LICENSE_
FILE environment variable in the port@hostname format.

lCrash when exporting a QuickTime movie from a scene with deformations applied to a drawing layer with the
Preserve Line Thickness layer property. The crash only affects specific scenes.

lMemory leak when selecting an Alembic 3D model with vertex colours

lMemory leak when using deformations on a drawing layer that has the Zoom Independent Thickness option
enabled.

l

The rendering of drawings with deformations is very slow in the Top and Side views.

l

A blank welcome screen appears when opening a scene directly from Finder on macOS 10.14 (Mojave).

lHarmony does not always display error message when audio playback fails.

lClicking on a drawing with the Transform tool with the Peg Selection Mode tool property enabled does not selectits parent peg if the drawing is connected to a deformation that uses a Transformation-Switch.

3

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notesl

Selecting a drawing layer in the Camera view may fail if it is the parent of another drawing layer.

lPosition and zoom level of Node View sometimes changes when manipulating a Master Controller.

lWhen importing a template with groups with the Publish Attribute Mode enabled, the Publish to Parent Group
option the groups is always enabled.

l

The scene.checkoutLock(), scene.checkOutDate() and scene.checkOutUser() methods always returnthe default valuel

The TB_PL_IBINKPencil_to_brush script only converts the drawing's pencil lines to brush strokes in the firstdrawing of the layer.

4Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.5
Here is a list of changes in Harmony 15.0.5, build 13929.
lFeatures on page 5lColour Management on page 5l

3D Models on page 5lExport on page 6l

WebCC on page 6lScripting on page 6lEnhancements on page 7l

Bug Fixes on page 7

FeaturesColour Management
FeatureColour Space for Original
Bitmaps

Description

EditionIf you have an element that uses original bitmap images that are not taggedwith their colour space, you can now set whether to display the image in a
Linear, sRGB or Rec.709 colour space.
To do this, open your element's Layer Properties and, in the Drawing tab, set
the Colour Space parameter to the desired colour space.

Advanced,
Premium

3D ModelsFeatureDescription

EditionColour Alembic

Harmony now supports Alembic (.abc) 3D models with vertex colours,
provided that they are exported from Autodesk Maya with the Write Color Sets
option.

Premium5

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

ExportFeatureExport Layout

Description

EditionThe maximum size of images exported with the Export Layout dialog has been
increased from 10000 to 524288.
The maximum scaling of images exported with the Export Layout dialog has
been increased from 999% to 10000%.

Premium

WebCC
FeatureDescription

EditionAutomatic Preview
Generation

WebCC will now automatically regenerate the thumbnail and the preview
movie of a scene after it has been updated, whether by importing the scene
into WebCC or by updating it directly from Harmony.

Advanced,
Premium

Custom script on scene
update

You can now configure WebCC to automatically run a custom shell script or
executable when a scene is updated. This is done by storing the path to thescript or executable in the environment variable WEBCC_POST_IMPORT_SCRIPT on the WebCC server. This command will be executed with theAdvanced,
Premium

environment, job and scene name as its command line parameters, in thatorder.

ScriptingFeatureDescription

EditionClosing Scene Script

When closing a scene, Harmony will now automatically run the script TB_
sceneAboutToClose.js. This script is executed after saving the scene, butright before closing the scene. By default, the script does nothing, but you cancustomize it with routines that you want Harmony to run each time a scenecloses.

All

Save As

The saveAs() method has been added to the scene global object to allow
saving the scene under a new name via scripting.

All

Clear Art Layer

The clearArt() method was added to the DrawingTools global object. It
can be used to empty a specific art layer in a specific drawing.

Advanced,
Premium

6

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Enhancementsl

It is now possible to assign a keyboard shortcut to the Rename by Frame command. This shortcut is in the General
section of the Shortcuts tab of the Preferences dialog.

lOptimized the Colour Selector node to reduce its impact on rendering time.

l

The script TB_PL_IBINKPencil_to_brush.js, which can be used to convert the pencil lines to brush strokes in
multiple drawings, now displays a progress bar while processing the drawingslInstallation on Windows is now faster. The installer no longer registers the fonts packaged with Harmony in the
Windows font database.

Bug FixeslFixed issue causing artwork drawn with a Wacom Stylus/Cintiq tablet to be offset on Windows, since the Wacom
driver update 6.3.30-6.

lFixed issue where having two drawing tablets connected to the machine would cause one of them to offset thestylus input.

lFixed occasional random crash when running Harmony on GNU/Linux.

lFixed issue causing unwanted extra lines to appear when using a bone deformation on a layer with the Preserve
Line Thickness property enabled.

lFixed crash when exporting a layout image larger than 45000 pixels in width or height.

lFixed issue causing a Transformation Switch to break when pasting a pose onto a character rig using the Pose
Copier.

l

Fixed a crash that occurred when undoing the creation of a layer after toggling between selecting the Transform
tool and the Brush tool.

lFixed issue where Master Controller node could cause Harmony to slow down or freeze in heavy scenes if the
Master Controller node was connected to an input image.
NOTE
As a side effect of this fix, Master Controller nodes will no longer run scripts in their Softrender tab.

lFixed rendering issues when using a 3D composite in Seamless Bitmap mode.

lFixed issue causing some 3D models with both top-level and sub-node animations to appear as hairlines in the
Camera view, in the OpenGL preview.

lFixed issue where Harmony would crash when using the scripting interface to create an empty table widget in a
dialog.

lFixed issue where the Action.validate() method would report an action as disabled when no responder is
specified.

7

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release NoteslFixed issue where exporting a layout image for a scene with layers that have been moved on the z-axis would
render them in the wrong position.

lFixed issue where using the TB_PL_IBINK_no_colorart script would not work on layers that do not have adrawing in the first frame.

lFixed issue where thumbnails would not appear in the Library view when using Harmony in trial mode.

lFixed issue where creating colour art from line art would not clear the colour art layer first if the line art is made withpencil lines only.

lFixed issue where exporting the OpenGL preview of a scene as a QuickTime movie using theexporter.exportOGLToQuicktime() method would ignore the EXPORTOGL_LAUNCH_PLAYER preference
which, when set to true, automatically opens the movie in a movie player and, when set to false, renders the movie
without opening it.

lFixed issue where exporting the OpenGL preview of a scene as a QuickTime movie using theexporter.exportOGLToQuicktime() method would offset the starting frame by 1.

lFixed issue where a Radial-Zoom-Blur node with a blurriness value set to 0 would slow down the rendering of thescene.

lFixed issue causing the script manager to fail detecting and listing the functions inside an encrypted script.

lFixed issue causing some elements under deformation nodes to be invisible when rendered on Windows.

lFixed issue causing Harmony to try to renew an expired subscription license when launched in Trial mode inJapanese.

8

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.4
Here is the list of changes in Harmony 15.0.4, build 13658:lFeatures on page 9lScripting on page 9l

Bug Fixes on page 10

FeaturesFeatureSource Maya project fromoriginal location

Description

EditionThe Render Maya Batch node can now source the Maya project from its
original location to render the 3D model in a Harmony scene.
For more information, refer to the 3D Integration chapter of the User Guide or
to the Maya Batch Render node documentation of the Reference Guide.

Premium

It is now possible to import images in OpenEXR (.exr), Deep Texture (.dtex)
and Interchange File Format (.iff).

NOTES

Import EXR/DTEX/IFF
imagesll

Although all three of these formats support deep pixels, they
are flattened when imported in Harmony.

All

Importing Deep Texture (.dtex) images is not supported
in Harmony Essentials.

ScriptingFeatureDescription

EditionEnhancements were made to the scripting documentation packaged with
Harmony:lDocumentationll

The style and layout has been updated.
A tree view navigation pane was added to the left of the
documentation to make navigation easier.
Most of the information that is not useful to users, such as private
classes and members, hierarchy graphs and file references wasremoved.

9AllToon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

EditionThe scripting documentation can be viewed by opening the view menu

inthe Script Editor view and selecting Help > Scripting Interface Documentation.

Bug FixeslFixed issue where the Minimum, Maximum and Constant parameters of the Line Thickness adjustment settings of adrawing layer were ignored if the drawing was under a deformation layer.

lFixed issue causing Dynamic Spring node to ignore rotations from parent on macOS and GNU/Linux.

lFixed a crash when exporting a movie in Windows Media Video (.wmv) format containing certain audio files.

lFixed a rare crash when adding a drawing layer.

lFixed a rare crash when importing certain 3D models in Alembic (.abc) format.

lEnhanced performance when manipulating deformation points in a scene containing a Transformation Switch nodethat has a lot of connections.

lMade the colour scheme in the script debugging dialog more legible.

10

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.3
IMPORTANT
If you use Harmony as a WebCC client, you must enter the full URL including protocol, domain name and port
number of the WebCC server in the General tab of the Preferences dialog before you can download andupload changes made to a scene via Harmony.
Here is the list of changes in Harmony 15.0.3, build 13585:lFeatures on page 11lEffects on page 11

l

WebCC

l

Utilities on page 12lEnhancements on page 13l

Bug Fixes on page 13

Features
Effects
FeatureDescription

EditionOrtholock Node Rotation
Axis

Added a preference to the Ortholock to rotate the input image only on the xaxis or on the y-axis. By default, the Ortholock node will rotate the input image
on both axes.

Premium

Description

Edition

WebCC
FeatureSupport for SSL in
Harmony

Harmony is now able to update scenes exported from WebCC even if theserver only accepts SSL connections. If the WebCC server requires SSL, youmust specify it in the General tab of the Preferences dialog by adding https://before the name of the WebCC server. You can now configure Harmony to use
the full URL to your WebCC server, instead of entering the hostname and theport number separately.
For Harmony to be able to validate the certificate of the WebCC server, you
may have to configure the WebCC server with the root CA certificate and/or its

11

Advanced,
Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

Editionintermediate. You can now do this by launching WebCC with the following
parameter:-ca <path to root CA/intermediate certificate>If you want to specify the root CA and its intermediates, you can use the -ca
parameter several times, once for each certificate you need to specify.
It is now possible to override the security restriction on Animator-type users
Permission to import andexport any scene foranimators

requiring them to be assigned to a scene before they can export and import it.
This can be done by running WebCC with the following command line
parameter:

Advanced,
Premium-permission animator import_export_any_scene on

Utilities
FeatureDescription

EditionThe following changes were made to the utransform utility:lutransform

The -flatten_scale parameter has been added. Using thisparameter with a scaling factor will scale up the input drawing by thisfactor, flatten it, then scale it back down to its original size. This can beused to preserve texture quality when flattening drawings containing
textured brush strokes. If the pixels of different strokes are not aligned,
scaling them up before flattening them will prevent them frombecoming blurry.
All

NOTE
As of Harmony 15.0.0, the pixels in textured brush strokes arealigned by default, except when brush strokes are transformed
with the selected tool.

lWhen flattening a drawing with textures, with either the -flatten or-flatten_scale parameter, utransform will clean up old texturesfrom the drawing file and only keep the flattened texture, significantly
reducing the file size of the drawing.

12

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Enhancements
Enhancement

EditionHarmony will now remember whether the Onion Skinning by Drawing option is enabled between sessions.
This option can be enabled by doing one of the following:l

In the top menu, select View > Onion Skin > Onion Skinning by Drawing.

l

In the top-left corner of the Camera view, open the Camera view menuAlland select View

> Onion Skin > Onion Skinning by Drawing.
Harmony will now remember whether the Xsheet's Enable Playback option is enabled between sessions.
This option can be enabled by opening the Xhseet view menu

in the top-left corner of the Xsheet andselected View > Enable Playback.

Advanced,
PremiumSignificantly increased the speed of template creation on Windows.

All

Flattening drawings with textured vector brushes will now discard unused textures in the drawing files,
reducing their file size.

Advanced,
Premium

Increased the precision of colour art generation by scaling up the line art before generating the colour art, thenscaling both art layers back down.
By default, this is done by scaling the artwork by 4 times before generating the colour art. This factor can be
adjusted by setting the hidden parameter LINE_ART_TO_COLOUR_ART_FIT_SCALE to the preferred factor.
This can be done by running the following code in the Harmony Script Editor, replacing <preferredfactor> with an integer:

Advanced,
Premium

preferences.setDouble("LINE_ART_TO_COLOUR_ART_FIT_SCALE", <preferred factor>);Harmony now only initializes the machine's printer when attempting to print instead of when launching theapplication. If the machine's printer has driver issues, this will prevent such issues from occurring
systematically when launching Harmony.

Advanced,
Premium

Removed the Distribute to Layers command from the contextual menu of the Camera view, so that tablet
users will not accidentally select it.

Advanced,
Premium

Bug FixeslFixed issue causing the frame rate to drop or vary when playing a scene with sound enabled..

lFixed crash when attempting to play a scene containing a missing sound file.

13

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release NoteslFixed crash when logging in to Control Center with an Archive, Xsheet, Scan, Ink & Paint or Animator type user.

lFixed crash when attempting to copy an Element node that is not linked to an element.

lFixed memory leak when rendering Portable Network Graphic (.png) images in 16 bits/channel, referred to as
PNGDP3 and PNGDP4 in the Write node properties.

lFixed issue causing the Ortholock node to rotate the image on the z-axis.
NOTE
To avoid affecting the rendered image for existing scenes, existing Ortholock nodes will still rotate their
input image on the z-axis . To fix this issue in an existing scene, you must replace the existing Ortholock
node with a new Ortholock node.

lFixed an issue where the Tool Properties view for the Brush tool would not always update when switching from avector layer to a bitmap layer or vice versa.

lFixed issue when pasting keyframes from an action template into an Animated Matte Generator would not work.

lFixed issue where, in rare cases, some drawing layers would be invisible when opening scenes created in Harmony
14.0.

14

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.2
Here is the list of changes in Harmony 15.0.2, build 13407:lFeatures on page 15lPreferences on page 15lUtilities on page 15lScripting on page 16lEnhancements on page 16l

Bug Fixes on page 17

Features
Preferences
FeatureDescription

EditionA new preference, Create Key Exposure, was added to the Drawing Substitutionsection of the Timeline tab in the Preferences dialog. This option is enabled bydefault.

Drawing
Substitution Create
Key Exposure

When enabled, swapping a drawing with another one using the Drawing
Substitution panel of the library view creates a key exposure at the current frame.
This means that even if the drawing at the current frame is the same one as thedrawing in the previous frame, there will be a key exposure at the current frame. This
was the default behaviour in previous versions.

Advanced,
Premium

When disabled, a key exposure is added to the current frame only if the drawing in
the drawing in the current frame is different from the drawing in the previous frames.
Hence, if you use drawing substitution to change the drawing at the current frame tobe the same drawing as the one in the previous frame, the current frame's exposure
will merge with the exposure behind it.

Utilities
FeatureDescription

EditionThe following changes were made to the ConsolidateDb utility:
ConsolidateDbll

Duplicate elements that get emptied by ConsolidateDb will be automaticallydeleted, even if the -removeEmptyElements option is not specified.
The -removeEmptyElements option will now remove any element in the

15

Advanced,
Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

Editionscene that is empty and unused, even if they were not emptied byConsolidateDb.
ll

The -removeUnusedElements option will remove any element in the scenethat is not linked to a layer or node.
The -ignoreElementPalettes option will force ConsolidateDb to delete
empty elements even if they contain palette files, which it does not do bydefault.

ScriptingFeatureDescription

EditionOptimize Artwork

The optimize function was added to the DrawingTools global object, which canbe used to optimize a drawing.

All

Flatten Artwork

The flatten function was added to the DrawingTools global object, which can beused to flatten a drawing.

All

Check Files

The Check Files command located in the Scene top menu can now be executed
through scripting using the checkFiles function of the scene global object. The
information it reports can be customized by passing options to it in an object.

All

Image Information

The new CELIO global object allows you to obtain information, such as thedimensions, bit depth, amount of channels and type of an image file.
For Photoshop Document (.psd) files specifically, it is able to obtain the path, name,dimensions, visibility setting and position in the list of each layer in the file.

All

Enhancements
Enhancement

EditionThe parameters of default eraser for bitmap layers have been optimized for performance.

Advanced,
Premium

Enhanced the display quality of bitmap drawings in the OpenGL preview of the Drawing and Camera views
when the artwork is zoomed in at a level between 100% and 350%.

Advanced,
Premium

16

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Enhancement

Edition

Added scroll bar to Animated Matte Generator view when the view is too small for its content.

Premium

Bug FixeslFixed crash when searching for an asset in the Library view.

lFixed crash when selecting a disabled layer using the Select Parent (B) or Select Child (Shift + B) keyboard
shortcuts.

lFixed issues where using the Go to Previous Column (H) or Go to next Column (J) keyboard shortcuts to cycle
through layers would often skip layers if some layers are disabled.

lFixed issue where zooming in or out, then copying and pasting artwork in a bitmap layer using the Cutter or Selecttool would cause the artwork to be pasted in the wrong position.

lFixed issue where attempting to give a scene a name with more than 23 characters with the Save As command
would fail even if the Allow Unicode Names preference is enabled, which also allows long scene names.

lFixed an issue where database corruption could occur with scene version tables.

lFixed issue where a Colour-Override effect's individual colour overrides would be broken if they referred to palettes
that are stored at the job or environment level, when doing either of the following:ll

Exporting a scene from WebCC and opening it in Harmony Stand Alone.

lUpdating a scene exported from WebCC on the database with changes made in Harmony Stand Alone.

Fixed error occurring when using the Download Database Change command if the database scene contains newlayers.

l

Fixed issue where layers created in scenes exported from WebCC would get disconnected from their element andbecome invisible after the scene was imported back into WebCC, then exported again.

lFixed issue where a Colour-Override's individual colour override would appear to be missing if from a palette stored
on a different drive than the application's installation drive on Windows.

lFixed issue where accessing the webcc-api section of the Developer Help menu in WebCC would lead to an error
page.

l

Fixed issue where, when attempting to add a Supervisor type user in Control Center, the OK button would begreyed out unless the user type was selected after inputting the user's name.

lWhen launching Harmony in database mode and browsing the database for a scene, the Version drop-down is
now greyed out until a scene is selected. Attempting to open this drop-down when no scene was selected would
cause an error message.

lFixed issue where the Colour Wheel type colour editor for effects would only allow negative values down to -254
instead of -255.

17

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.1
IMPORTANTAn important fix was made to the licensing mechanic of Harmony in Harmony 15.0.1. If your studio uses alicense server, you must upgrade Harmony 15.0 to Harmony 15.0.1 on the license server before upgrading
your workstations.
Here is the list of changes in Harmony 15.0.1, build 13289:
lFeatures on page 18lEnhancements on page 19l

Bug Fixes on page 19

FeaturesFeatureDescription

EditionThe Interpolation Grid script allows you to create a 2D point Master Controller thatmakes a character rig take one of many poses set in a 2D grid without having to do
any scripting.

Interpolation Gridfor Master
Controller

Premium

The Multi-Layer Write Node allows you to export multi-layered Photoshop
Document (.psd) and OpenEXR (.exr) images.

Multi-Layer Write
Node

Premium18

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

Added a Refresh

Editionbutton and menu item in the Script Editor view, to refresh thelist of script files.
Refresh Script File
List

All

Enhancements
Enhancement

Edition

It is no longer necessary to uninstall the previous version of Harmony before installing the latest version on
Windows. If an earlier version of Harmony with the same major and minor version numbers is installed on themachine, the installation wizard will automatically uninstall it before installing the latest version.

All

Renamed the "Project" scope in the Script Editor view to "Scene", since it is used to create scripts in the scene
directory.

All

Improved drawing speed with large brushes on bitmap layers.

Advanced,
Premium

Bug FixeslFixed issue with licensing service where Harmony and Storyboard Pro would not launch with a standalone license.

lFixed issue where curve deformation controls would no longer move after performing some manipulations on them.

lFixed issue where importing scenes in WebCC on a macOS or GNU/Linux server would cause some files to becorrupted.

lFixed issue with copying extra files linked to a Master Controller node would not work on Harmony Server.

lFixed issue where packages exported for another database from macOS or GNU/Linux-based WebCC servers
would not contain the scene data.

lFixed issue where extra files linked to a Master Controller node would not be copied over to the scene when using
the Save As command.

lFixed issue preventing from creating script within the project folder in Harmony Server.

lFixed issue where pencil texture palettes did not preserve their palette type when copying them into a template.

lFixed issue where opening two scenes one after the other in the same session, both with a palette that had the19

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

same name, but different colours and textures, would load the wrong palette in the second scene.
lFixed crash when converting brush strokes to pencil lines.

lFixed occasional crash when a mouse button, stylus button or keyboard shortcut was used while drawing with thePencil tool.

lFixed occasional crash when using the Eraser tool on a bitmap layer.

lFixed crash when undoing operations done with the Cutter tool.

lFixed issue where drawing with the Brush tool with Repaint mode enabled, undoing, then drawing with the Brush
tool with repaint mode disabled would redo the strokes done with Repaint mode enabled.

lFixed issue where extending exposure on drawings with embedded pivots would temporarily offset their pivot.

lFixed issue where using keyboard shortcuts to flip through drawings while drawing a stroke would cause the stroke
to be discarded.

lFixed issue where Transformation Limit node would increase rotation instead of decreasing it if parent
transformations included a flip.

lFixed issue where constraint node would invert transformations on the z-axis applied to nodes that are flipped.

lFixed where connecting a cable to a Composite node would make the cable flicker between two ports.

lFixed issue where clicking and dragging a group node while holding the Alt key would not insert it into or detach itfrom cables.

lFixed issue in the scripting interface where setting the ANGLE attribute of an element using the setTextAttr
method would not work.

lFixed issue allowing to create jobs without assigning them a TD and ATD when running Control Center in a nonEnglish language.

20

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0.0
IMPORTANT
If your studio uses a license server, you will need to upgrade it to Harmony 15 before you can upgrade toHarmony 15 on client workstations. License servers with Harmony 14 or earlier cannot be used to activate
Harmony 15.
Here is the list of changes in Harmony 15.0, build 13055:l

Features on page 21lDrawing on page 21lAnimation on page 23lWorkflow on page 24lColours and Palettes on page 25lEffects on page 26l

3D on page 29lPerformance on page 29lUser Interface on page 30

lMultimedia on page 31

lNetworking on page 31lScriptinglCommand Line Tools on page 32lEnhancements on page 35l

Bug Fixes on page 35

Features
DrawingFeatureDescription

EditionDrawing Guides

Guides can be used to help draw backgrounds and objects with perspective bydisplaying vanishing points and axes in the drawing space and locking your drawing
tool to them.

All

21

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

EditionThe Brush tool now has the same texture drawing capabilities when used on vector
layers as when used on bitmap layers.
Textured vector
brushesAdvanced,
Premium

This new drawing tools allows you to manipulate brush strokes, whether solid or
textured, as if they were pencil lines.
Centerline Editor

All

The Contour Editor, Envelope and Perspective tools can deform the texture in
textured brush strokes.
Texturedeformation

Advanced,
Premium

Polyline withpencil textures

The Polyline Tool can now be used with pencil textures.

Autofill, Trim Extra
Lines and Align
HandleThese new options in the Tool Properties view allow you to quickly fill and trim
closed shapes drawn with the Pencil, Stroke and Polyline tools.

All

Disable antialiasing

It is now possible to draw and render without antialiasing:

Advanced,22

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescriptionllEditionAntialiasing can be disabled when drawing with a textured brush, on both
vector and bitmap layers.
Drawing layers have an option to disable antialiasing when they are renderedin the Advanced tab of their Layer Properties.

Premium

Animation
FeatureDescription

Edition

The Master Controller node allows users to create widgets that can be manipulatedby animators to affect elements in the scene. The widgets are created andprogrammed using the Harmony, scripting interface, giving them near infinite
flexibility as to how they can be used to streamline animation.
Master Controller

Premium

A series of new nodes have been implemented to rig elements together so that they
are constrained in specific ways. They can be used to rig parts of cut-out models
with realistic physical restrictions and controls that represent their articulations.
These nodes can be found in the Constraint category of the Node Library view:

Point Constraint

Deformation
manipulatorl

Two Points ConstraintlThree Points ConstraintlMulti-Points ConstraintlDynamic SpringlConstraint Switchl

Static TransformationlTransformation GatelTransformation Limit

Premium

It is now possible to move, rotate and scale a selection of multiple envelope
deformation points using a bounding-box style manipulator.

23

Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

EditionPreserve line
thickness with
deformations

An option in the Element node can be enabled to preserve the thickness of pencil
lines that are deformed by a deformation chain.

Advanced,
Premium

Description

EditionWorkflow
FeatureEach drawing layer in the Timeline view can now display a thumbnail of the current
drawing as well as of every exposed drawing in the scene, allowing users to easily
manage drawings when doing paperless animation.

Timeline
thumbnails

When the Timeline view is sufficiently zoomed in to view the thumbnails of exposeddrawings, it is possible to extend or shorten the exposure of individual drawings
either by overwriting or rippling the following drawings.

When thumbnails are displayed for a layer, the layer also displays an Opacity
parameter which can be adjusted.

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Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

Edition

It is now possible to change the size, resolution and background colour of
thumbnails in the Node view.

Node view
thumbnails

Premium

The new Record and Play command, available from the Play menu and Playback
toolbar, quickly renders OpenGL frames, makes a video file and opens it in theworkstation’s default video player for a quick preview of the scene’s animation withno framerate issues.
Record and PlayAll

Colours and Palettes
FeatureDescription

EditionThe way pencil texture palettes are managed has been completely revamped:lPencil texturesll

Pencil Texture palettes are now stored in a separate palette list in the Colourview.
A scene can now have several pencil texture palettes.
Whether a palette is colour palette or a pencil texture palette is saved in thepalette file.

25

Advanced,
Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

EditionAn option in the Colour view can be used to replace a colour or texture with adifferent colour or texture in the current drawing, all drawings in a layer or all
drawings in the scene.

Recolor drawings

All

The script TB_RemoveUnusedColors removes colours that are not used anywherein the scene from palettes. Note that this script does not remove colour used bydrawings that are not exposed.

Advanced,
Premium

FeatureDescription

EditionAnimated Matte
Generator

The new Animated Matte Generator node adds two major capabilities:

Remove unused
colours

Effectsl

It can animate the points of a vector drawing:

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Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescriptionlEdition

It can generate a feathered effect going from an inner contour to an outer
contour, both of which can be made in any shape and are fully animatable:

The new Matte Composite node allows you to create composite of several mattes byadding, subtracting or intersecting them together.

Matte Composite

Colour Selector

Premium

The new Colour Selector node allows you to only render specific colours from the
input drawing.

Premium

Every effect with a matte port will have their matte input port at the far left of theirnode, with a mask icon

to indicate the port's function.

Matte Ports

Premium27

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

EditionEvery effect with a matte input port can have the matte inverted, making thetransparent areas of the matte drawings act as the matte instead. You can quickly
invert the matte of a node by double-clicking on its matte icon
matte is inverted, the matte icon will also appear inverted. When a node's.

Nodes that do not require a matte, but can use a matte, will have their matte input
port hidden by default. If you drag a cable near the left edge of nodes with optional
matte ports, the matte port will appear.

NOTE
An Invert Matte parameter has been added to the following nodes:lBlur-Boxl

Blur-Directionall

Blur-GaussianlBlur-RadiallBlur-Radial-Zooml

Brightness-ContrastlColour-Cardl

Elementl

Gradient

l

Grain

l

Hue-SaturationlMedianl

Turbulent Noise28

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

EditionA matte port has been added to Element node, allowing you to cut out parts of thenode’s output image without using a Cutter node.

Matte Port for
Element Nodes

All

NOTE
The matte port is not visible by default. To make it appear, you must bring acable near the left end of a node, at which point the matte port will appear. It
will remain visible if a matte connection is made.

New options were added to the Blending and Composite-Generic nodes which allow
to obtain results more similar to the blending modes in Adobe Photoshop. Those
options are prefixed with the term “BETA”.

Premium

FeatureDescription

EditionSupport foranimated Alembic
files

Animated Alembic files can be imported in a scene. The animation will be visible inHarmony, allowing animators to base their animation around it

Premium

New blending
options

3D

Performance
FeatureDescription

OpenGL Caching

The new OpenGL-Cache-Lock node caches the OpenGL preview of theelements connected to it, and only regenerates this preview when one of its
elements it manipulated or changed. When several OpenGL-Cache-Locknodes are used on separate elements of a scene, such as characters,
backgrounds or even parts of a rig, they are cached separately. Hence,
Harmony will only need to regenerate the cache of elements that are being

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Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

manipulated, and will be able to re-use the cache of unchanged elements togenerate the preview. This can significantly enhance the performance ofHarmony when working on a heavy scene.

OpenGL Bypass

The new OpenGL Bypass node can be used to optimize the OpenGL preview
by only displaying elements that are necessary for the animator in the
OpenGL preview, all the while displaying all the elements and rendering all theeffects in the final render. Nodes connected to the left input port of thePremium

OpenGL Bypass node are displayed in the OpenGL preview, and nodes
connected to its right input port appear in the final render.
The following improvements have been made on the way Harmony previews
a scene in OpenGL:
OpenGL preview
optimizationsllRender preview
optimization

Fixed performance issues when making large selections with theTransform tool.

All

Fixed performance issues when the Xsheet view is in the workspaceand has shared functions.

Frames rendered for render preview are temporarily cached so that they are
not regenerated when switching between frames unless a change requires toAllgenerate a new render.
When the Debug option of the Help top menu is enabled, the Node view now
displays information about how many times each node is solicited for the
OpenGL preview and how much time it takes to process the node and its
parents. This can help identify problem areas in node systems that impact
application performance.

OpenGL debugging in
Node view

Premium

User Interface
FeatureDescription

EditionRetina and High

Harmony supports Retina display on macOS workstation as well as High DPI

All

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Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

EditionDPI support

monitors on Windows workstation with a scaling factor of up to 200%.

Multimedia
FeatureDescription

EditionExport in Windows
Media Video on
Windows

On Windows only, Harmony can now export in Windows Media Video format. Thiscan be used as an alternative to exporting in QuickTime movie format, which requires
Apple QuickTime to be installed.

All

RemovedQuickTimedependency foraudio on Windows

Audio support on Windows now relies on native Windows libraries instead of
QuickTime.

All

Description

EditionNetworking
FeatureThe following security enhancements were implemented:
l

WebCC
l

l

Users are now required to have a strong password to access WebCC. The
password must be at least 8 characters long, contain at least one digit or
non-alphabetical character, and contain at least one capital letter that is not
the first character of the password.

Advanced,
Premium

Users who do not have administrative privileges must be assigned a scene
before they can export or re-import it.
It is possible to only allow specific users to access specific environment.

Asset remapping through the relink.xml configuration file now supports thefollowing options and features:lAsset Remappingll

The root attribute allows you to set a directory from which to apply aremapping rule and to remap assets while preserving their folder hierarchy.
The filter attribute allows you to apply a rule only if the path to an asset
matches a regex pattern.
The allowRemapExisting attribute allows you to apply a rule on an asset even
if the asset can be found in its original location.

31

Advanced,
Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescriptionllEdition

The allowRemapInScene attribute allows you to apply a rule on assets within
the scene's directory.
The variables %SCENE_FOLDER%, %JOB_FOLDER%, %ENV_FOLDER%, %SCENE%,%JOB% and %ENV% can be used in the value, root and filter attributes of aremapping rule. They contain, respectively, the path to the scene, the path toits job and the path to its environment, the name of the scene, the name of its
job and the name of its environment.

ScriptingFeatureDescription

Edition

Display
Scriptable
Node
Attributes

When you enable Publish Attribute Mode in the Node view, the scriptable attribute names of each
attribute for a node will display in the Layer Properties dialog for that node, allowing you to easily
write scripts that read from or update the attributes of nodes in a scene.

Premium

Command Line Tools
FeatureDescription

EditionThe following features have been added to Pix2vec:ll

Pix2veclll

It is now possible to vectorize drawings with a transparent (rather than opaque white)background using the -vecotirze_alpha or -use_alpha parameter.
Very thin lines that get eroded during the vectorization of the line art can now be
included in the colour art using the -support_thin_lines parameter.
When vectorizing a Photoshop Document (.psd), you can specify which layer in the
document you want to vectorize with the -layer parameter.

Advanced,
Premium

When doing red/green/blue (RGB) keying, the -rgb_alpha_texture parameter will
vectorize red, green and blue lines with their texture instead of in solid vector shapes.
The -rgb_separate parameter, when used with -2pass, will separate the red, green
and blue colour zones from the black zones instead of making them overlap.

The following features have been added to utransform:
utransformlWhen processing a vector file, you can replace colours with a specific colour ID with adifferent colour ID using the -change_colour_ids parameter. This parameter works
with a JSON file which allows you to list the ID of each colour to replace followed by the

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Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

Edition

ID of the colour to replace them with.
ll

Using the -bitmapartonly parameter, you can convert the bitmap art layer in a Toon
Boom Vector Graphic (.tvg) drawing into a regular bitmap file.
The -premultiply parameter allows you to indicate the premultiplication mode of aregular bitmap used as the input image, or to set the premultiplication mode of theoutput image when converting a Toon Boom Bitmap to a regular bitmap.

The dblock utility now has the following options to manage database locks:

dblockl

The -t parameter will list all locked tables on the database server.

l

The -u parameter will list all opened tables on the database server.

ltbprocess

Advanced,
Premium

The -x parameter, followed by the path to a database (.db) file, will release the locks on
the specified table.

The parameter -sleep was added to specify how often to check the queue for batch processing
jobs. This parameter must be followed by an amount of seconds, and this is the amount of theseconds tbprocess will wait between each check. By default, tbprocess checks the queue
every sixty (60) seconds. Using this parameter to check the queue more often can be useful if
you are just launching tbprocess manually to test if it is processing your jobs.

Advanced,
Premium

The dbu utility has been made for flexible and smarter.
l

The -update and -delete options can now work with the -search option to work onrecords obtained by the search results. As a result, you no longer need to specify arecord number, provided that your -search query returns records. If the search query
returns multiple records, the -update or -delete operation will work on all matchingrecords.
To preserve backward compatibility, you must follow -update and -delete with record
number 0 if you want dbu to work on search results instead of a specific record number,
like so:dbu> dbu -delete 0 -se 'UserName:jdoe' /USA_DB/users/user.db
This will delete all records with the username jdoe.
l

The -f parameter has been added. When used in combination with -append or update, you can specify each field followed by their value inline instead of specifying
them through standard input. Each field must be separated from their value by a colon,
and each field and value pair must be separated by a comma, like so:> dbu -update <record number> -f 'FirstName:john,LastName:doe'/USA_DB/users/user.dbldbu can now process multiple commands in the same run, allowing you to perform large
batch operations without the overhead of running the utility once for each step.

33

Advanced,
Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

FeatureDescription

EditionTo do this, you must launch dbu with the -m parameter, followed by the path to the
database to edit:> dbu -m /USA_DB/users/user.db
Once launched, dbu can receive the commands add, update, delete or delete all.
Each command must be preceded with ### and a space, and followed by its parameters,
like so:### add
UserName:jdoe
FirstName:john
LastName:doe
ID:50### update <record number>
Type:9### delete <record number>### delete all
This mode is designed to take scripts piped to it. If you run it without piping a script to it,
you will be prompted to enter the commands in the terminal. When you're done, in the
Windows command prompt, you can terminate the prompt by pressing Ctrl + Z andpressing Enter. In Bash, you can press Ctrl + D.
The GNU/Linux install script has been enhanced significantly. Among other things:lll

GNU/Linux
Installer

l

l

l

l

It is possible to install Harmony interactively on machines that have the whiptail
command line utility.
All component parameters can be used individually. The installer only installs daemon
scripts and licensing utilities if the installation of Harmony binaries has been selected.
The installer attempts to stop running daemons before overwriting them, and launches
enabled daemons after the installation is over.
Desktop shortcuts point to the full path to their respective executables, no longer relying
on the $PATH environment variable to launch applications.
Shortcuts to Configuration Editor, License Wizard and Service Launcher are now added
to the other desktop shotcuts.
An uninstall script has been added. It can be used with the same parameters as theinstall script, and will revert the effect of the install script for that parameter. It canalso be launched interactively on machines that have the whiptail command line utility.
The -openh264 parameter will download and install the Cisco OpenH264 library in the
Harmony installation directory during the installation.

34

Advanced,
Premium

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

Enhancements
Enhancement

EditionThe Reset Zoom keyboard shortcut can now be used in the Timeline viewAll

The colour list will now automatically scroll when attempting to reorder colour swatches below or above
visible colour swatches.

All

Moving the Timeline cursor now sets the frame selection to the current frame.

All

Bug FixesllFixed layout and size issues when launching side applications in Retina on macOS or High DPI in Windows:lHarmony will scale its own user interface for high resolution display.

l

All other applications will be scaled passively by the operating system.

Fixed issue where hiding a subnode in Harmony would cause all its children to be invisible when renderedwith Autodesk Maya.

l

Fixed issue where linking to a multi-layer .psd file would prompt to import layers separately.

lFixed issue where Render Preview would not update when moving a camera peg.

lFixed "Copy palettes and update existing colours" option of Paste Special which require closing and reopening thescene to update colours.

lFixed "Copy palettes and merge colours. Add new colours only" option of Paste Special which did not add newcolours.

lFixed the P shortcut to add a control point to the 3D path of a 3D subnode animation.

lFixed issue where palettes in Colour-Override layer properties were reported missing even if they were available.

lFixed issue where Harmony Server scenes would refresh the entire render of a Preview Render node every time theselection is changed.

lFixed issue where it was possible to overwrite an existing palette by creating a new palette with the same nameand location in Advanced Palette List mode.

lFixed memory leak when rendering in video format on Windows.

lFixed crash when renaming linked drawing layers or timing layers in the Timeline view.

lFixed issue where importing Flash assets would cause a drawing cut by a mask to be merged with the following
layer, even if that other layer was not linked to the mask.

35

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release NoteslFixed missing file when attempting to export movie files that are bigger than 4 gigabytes, which was first found tooccur when attempting to export in 4K resolution with the BlackMagic codec at 10 bit colour depth.

lFixed error message when adding a RenderMayaBatch node to the Node view.

lFixed issue with export layout where each dimension of exported layout images had one extra pixel.

lFixed crash when pasting artwork with grouped lines.

lFixed issue with the Select Tool pivot does not stay in position with zooming in or out.

lFixed crash when launching on macOS with the locale set to Korean.

lFixed issue where lines got flattened when using the Select by Colour option of the Select Tool on scanned
drawings.

lFixed issue where edge of drawing would be cropped out when vectorizing a bitmap layer into a vector layer.

lFixed issue where desktop shortcuts on GNU/Linux would rely on the system PATH environment variable, making
them launch the same version of Harmony when several versions were installed.

lFixed crash when importing and vectorizing images in Black and White in Spanish or Japanese.

lFixed issue where dragging and dropping exposure in the middle of another exposure in the Timeline would
override subsequent exposure.

lFixed issue where dragging and dropping exposure in an empty area of the Timeline would cause loss of timing.

lFixed crash when using the tvg2xml command line utility.

lFixed issue where syncing layers would remove Transformation-Switch node.

lFixed issue where default QuickTime export settings on GNU/Linux would cause movie file to have no audio.

lFixed issue where using the D disable layers shortcut when making a selection in the Camera view would not work
if layers were collapsed or not listed in the Timeline view.

lFixed issue where Cutter and Eraser tool options were not applied when using their temporary tool override
keyboard shortcuts.

lFixed issue where pencil textures were not cloned along with the palette file when using the Palette Operations
dialogue to clone a pencil texture palette.

lFixed issue where exporting OpenGL frames into a movie file on Linux would result in a corrupted file when there
was no movement or drawing change.

lFixed issue where colour art was not automatically created when using the Line Building mode of the Pencil Tool
with the Automatically Create Colour Art option enabled.

lFixed issue where the Use Current Frame as Drawing Name option did not work if the Hold value was set toanything but 1.

lFixed issue where line thickness of a pencil line with a thickness of 0 could not be adjusted.

lFixed issue where moving a selection of curve or envelope deformation points and their offset point would make the36

Toon Boom Harmony 15.0 Release Notes

offset point move faster vertically than the other points.

37