For drawing purposes, to activate the Overlay and Underlay sublayers
This feature will open two additional sublayers on a drawing layer. They work well for rough animation and planning purposes. For instance, you can utilize the Underlay for “under-drawing” and the rough posing and keys. You would then employ Line Art for clean lines and Colour Art for fills.
Referring to the preferences:
- Mac OS = Main Menu > Harmony Premium > Preferences
- Windows OS = Main Menu > Edit > Preferences
Then turning to the top region of the Preferences window, you will find a collection of tabs. Click on “Advanced.”
Looking at the Advanced section:
- Under Advanced Options, choose “Support Overlay and Underlay Arts.” Then, press the OK button to activate the changes.
Returning to Harmony Premium’s Camera and Drawing windows, at the top-right of the interface, in addition to buttons [ L ] for Line Art, and [ C ] for Colour Art, you should now find [ O ] for Overlay, and [ U ] for Underlay.
Settings for cutout puppet animation
These are preferences you will want to set for preparing rigs.
Referring to the preferences:
- Mac OS = Main Menu > Harmony Premium > Preferences
- Windows OS = Main Menu > Edit > Preferences
Be sure to check the following buttons (in addition to what is already activated, by default).
From the General tab:
- Auto-Save > Save scene automatically
- Options:
- Focus on mouse enter
- Shortcut zooms on mouse
- Settings:
- Default separate position for pegs
- Stop-motion keyframes
- Default pass through composite
- Levels of Undo > Do not exceed 200
From the Advanced tab:
- Advanced Options
- Support Overlay and Underlay Arts
- Advanced display (this allows you to open multiple windows for different displays)
- Uncheck “Element Node ‘Animate Using Animation Tools, Default Value.”
- This is important! It will ensure that we only select our pegs and not our drawings when we animate.