Two years later and this is the best tutorial ive found for toonboom yet. Im used to Adobe products and moving over to toonboom was very jarring, your tutorial both helped me learn the basics of the various toonboom tools and getting a good arm rig. Thank you, you've earned my sub! This is knowledge id pay for, if you ever launch a skillshare, or udemy class id be more than interested!

I've come back to this tutorial 5 times now when I want to improve my rigs. Thanks Matt!

This might be the best Harmony tutorial on youtube. If not on the interwebs. Thanks! Watching it multiple times while I... ironically work in a dusty old flash versiom for work. Will follow along over the weekend and soak in all the lessons.

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for that kind comment! I really appreciate it and I'm glad it's useful and helpful to you:)

Thank you for the video. It was really concise and the bits of info in the corner here and there where really useful.

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Elvis, thank you for the feedback. It took quite a bit of time to trim out all the extra, speed up the slow parts and to add the captions, so I'm very thankful to know it was helpful.

Thank you so much for this wonderful video.

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Arjun! You're welcome! Glad you got to see it!

super tutorial - many thanks for the great tips

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you @Heiner Schaal I appreciate the comment

This helped me more than you can imagine... Thanks for all the tips and everything

@mattwattsart

2 жыл бұрын

Wow! Thank you very much for that kind comments. I really appreciated you taking time to write me that note. :)

Your tutorials are the best! Thank you!

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks so much Rafael!

Thanks for this awesome detailed tutorial. I really loved the trick for helping the geometry with adding too many contour points. 👍👍👍

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Awesome! Thank you for that specific feedback. I'm delighted it was useful to you!

wow..it's amazing

Thanks a lot, really helped me understand the subtle details

@mattwattsart

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you:)

Thank you so much for this! Also, I miss you at the studio! I hope you and your family are doing well!

@mattwattsart

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks Rebecca:) We're doing great. Very nice to hear from you.

Wow .. so awesome

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks!

I love your way in rigging ..believe me you are smart..go on

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Haha, thank you:)

I always come back to this tutorial for refreshers. How to add the "Scenes-Default Display" to the Node View right upper corner drop down, as you have it here, to easier change the Display nodes? I dont have it as default and always need to go the main longer route. Thanks

Hey Matt, thank you so much for making and sharing this tutorial! It was full of some really good insight and tips and was explained really clearly and well, it was a great help! Although one thing I noticed when I was playing around with an envelope deformer was that I couldn't exagerate the points too much or the colour layer would start freaking out even with plenty of points added with the contour. Is it simply that I'm asking too much of the rig with squashing it or do you know of some work around to this?

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for taking time to give me this kind feedback. I really appreciate it:) I'm very happy it was helpful

Hey Matt, love your tutorials! Thanks for all this insight, its great to see a rigger at work. I have a question about your composites - they all seem to be created by default to 'Pass-through' instead of 'As Bitmap', is this due to a script you're running, or is there a feature to set the default comp type?

@FleetFootPro

3 жыл бұрын

oh, sorry, I just saw you show us how to do this in part 2 of this tutorial, lol. Thanks Matt!

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

I'm so glad the tutorials are helpful:) In Preferences\General\ there is a checkbox for "Default Pass Through Composite". Check that and every time you press Ctrl H to add a composite, it will come in as pass-through. If you already made a bunch of comps and want to change them all, select everything in your node view and then click on the Node View Toolbar button called "Set Properties on Many Layers" and then change Composite Mode from As Is to Pass Through. Hope that helps. Great question.

@FleetFootPro

3 жыл бұрын

@@mattwattsart thanks Matt! That helps a bunch!!!

Please Mr. mattwattsart ..You have a great talent. We hope that you will explain to us how I designed the character of the shark with a 360 rotation

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you for your interest and suggestion. I actually explained a lot of it just last week on the ToonBoomAnimation Twitch channel. Here's a link if you'd like to check it out: www.twitch.tv/videos/724042835

💙💙💙

Hi, Just completed my first 360 rig and now I realised I need to reduce my pencil size. Given that now I have some 50 drawing layers with endless drawing substitution I don't thing it would be practical to change pencil size on each and every drawing individually. Any help would be appreciated.

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, you can do that without too much trouble. First of all, you need to make sure that all the drawing swaps are exposed on the Timeline somewhere. In the Camera view, use the black arrow Select tool. In the Tool properties, click on all three of these buttons: Apply to Visible Drawing Layers, Apply to All Frames, and Apply to Line and Colour-Art. Drag a big lasso selection around everything in the Camera view and you should see a bunch of orange lines indicating that all your drawing swaps are being selected on other frames as well. Then in your Tool Properties\ Pencil Selection\ turn the Maximum Size of the lines up. I like to click the up and down arrows until it looks good. See if that helps.

I want to know how to move the arm across the body if the arm is some how behind the body

@mattwattsart

2 жыл бұрын

Go to one of the upper pegs and press Alt Up or Alt Down. The way I like to think of it is this way: Alt Down brings it towards you... Alt Up pushes it further into the screen. The Composites below need to be set to Pass-Through mode, not Bitmap mode.

I am really greatful for the video So many things to learn. Quick question though Is there a way to apply deformation to only 1 or 2 of the four sublayers? Example Case 1- Deformers only affect line art and not the other sublayers Case 2- Deformation chain 1 affects only line and color art and Deformation chain 2 affects only overlay and underlay art ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Hi Frank! Yes, the best way to do that is to do it this way: Let's say you wanted to apply different deformers to the same Upper_Arm drawing layer. Draw whatever you want on the Overlay, Line-Art and Colour-Art layers. Then copy and paste (regular, not paste special) the Upper_Arm layer. It should paste as Upper_Arm_1, which is a timed clone, whenever you swap either the Upper_Arm or Upper_Arm_1 layer, they will both swap at the same time and if you edit any art on one, they will both update. So they are pretty much the exact same layer. Use an isolate filter Overlay-Art node below the Upper_Arm_1 and use a Layer-Selector node below the normal Upper_Arm layer to include the Line-Art and Colour-Art only. Then you can apply separate deformers to the Upper_Arm_1 and the Upper_Arm layers. Ask more questions if you need more clarification on that. Good question!

@frankfrankenstain3128

3 жыл бұрын

@@mattwattsart Thank you, you the best

For the opposite arm. Do you have to do the same steps over again or is there a way to clone and flip the nodes for the other arm?

@TatiHardt

3 жыл бұрын

You can go to the little menu on the node view and click on Clone nodes - drawings only. That way you can share the drawings between both arms, but move them independently

@mattwattsart

2 жыл бұрын

Tatiane, thanks so much for answering that question. I didn't see it.

hello matt love your works. Can you have a toon boom full tutorial on drawing character to rigging it in 3 views front, side, and 3/4 view in youtube. step by step tutorial please

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you Michael. I'll see what I can do... Building a full rotating rig like this can take 40-80 hours, but I may be able to do a simple stick figure kind of demo. Thank you for the request. The key is using envelope deformers. Here's a quick run-down: Import the turnaround. Line the FR Front view of the character up in the dead center of the screen. Add a peg to the reference layer, keyframe the first position of the peg, then go to frame 2 and keyframe the peg so that the QF Quarter Front view is dead center and finally on frame 3, keyframe the peg to show the PR Profile view in the center of the screen. As you scrub back and forth on the timeline, it should look like your character is rotating in 3d. First, build the Front view where everything is close to symmetric. Only build one each of the left arm, leg, cheek, ear etc... anything that is symmetric because they will be cloned later (see kzread.info/dash/bejne/n4el27SHl8m8ebw.html). Draw each part of the body on separate layers. Add envelope deformers to anything that needs to change shape as you interpolate (motion keyframes/ tween) between the positions of the rig. This is especially good to do on the jaw or chunks of hair. That way, you can eventually spread your first 3 poses apart and tween (Ctrl K) and have all the pieces interpolate nicely between the views. If you were to ever select all your layers and groups in the Node View and press R and also click on the Reset Current Keyframe on the deformation toolbar, the rig should reset to the front view. Those are the basics. Feel free to ask a specific question. I'll see about making a simplified tutorial down the road.

@vip_2496

3 жыл бұрын

@@mattwattsart Thanks a lot Matt We are very excited For the next tut.

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

@@vip_2496 thanks! I finally got the 2nd part up. There's a spot that gets a bit complex about associating Deformation chains. Hoping to get a simplified tutorial up for that on Monday.

@vip_2496

3 жыл бұрын

@@mattwattsart Matt, it is amazing, I have watched the (p1&p2) 4 times and now I am using it as a guide to build my own arm .thanks a lot.🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

@@vip_2496 Hamid! I'm so happy it has been helpful to you.

Please I have a similar problem..when my cursor is in the camera view the software lags..but when I'm in the drawing view or in any other tab the software works fine... please is there anything I can do to stop this

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Hi Mae, sorry for the delay in response. The Camera View can get laggy for many reasons: Too many textures, lots of PNG images, too many Pass-Through composites in the rig (if you turn some of the composites to Bitmap mode instead, it should help... such as for the eyes and pupils, you only need Pass-Through on a comp if it needs to be able to let z-depth work), too many cutters or effect nodes in the rig, too many deformers (classic example, with tiny chunks of hair, you can usually just squash and skew them with pegs instead of creating deformers for every single one) slow computer, slow graphics card (you can Google "Toon Boom Harmony System Requirements" to see how powerful your system should be to run things smoothly), etc. Yesterday, I worked on a rig from someone who was using a bunch of highly detailed imported images. I went ahead and drew some simplified pieces on separate layers, but plugged them below the same pegs and deformers that were exactly the same shape and size as the complex pieces. I disabled the complex pieces, animated with the dumbed-down version of the art and animated with those until I was ready to render. Then I turned off the placeholders and rendered out the final detailed and textured stuff. You can also look up the "OpenGL Bypass node" in the Harmony Help stuff to see how to only show part of the rig while animating (such as maybe just showing the eyes, mouth, torso, arms and legs, instead of showing everything with all the details), then turn on the full rig later after the movement is working nicely. Also, get in the habit of using the middle mouse button to help you move and rotate pegs in the camera view. It allows you to not have to click on just a small part of art to move or rotate or scale it. MMB and drag anywhere on the screen to translate. MMB and Alt and drag anywhere on the screen to rotate. MMB, Ctrl and Shift to Scale. Let me know if you have more questions.

@radertoons5526

3 жыл бұрын

@@mattwattsart thank you so so much😁

when I rotate the peg with drawing using the pivot point but the envelop deformation is not rotating, please help what can I do

@mattwattsart

2 жыл бұрын

I am not sure if I totally understand your question. One thing: please do not use the Drawing Pivot tool in the normal tools toolbar. I hardly ever set pivots on drawing swaps with that tool. Instead, I set pivots using the Advanced Animation Toolbar button called Rotate and I set them on the Pivots. I never put keyframes on drawing layers, instead I turn that property off so that all the keyframes will only go to the pegs. See my video about settings kzread.info/dash/bejne/oKuhs8qim6e1cbA.html

@mattwattsart

2 жыл бұрын

Also, in Harmony 21, when you are using the Transform Tool, there is a property in the Tool Properties called Mixed Manipulation mode where you can shift select multiple deformation points and then rotate, squash, stretch etc. Does that help?

Do you have a patreon

how to do that at 22:14 ?

@mattwattsart

3 жыл бұрын

Oh, I set a shortcut for 'Insert Backdrop'. I use the Insert button on my PC keyboard. Sounds like most Mac keyboards are missing that button. As long as you have one or more nodes selected in the Node View, you can also go up to the hamburger menu in the top left of the Node View and choose Insert\Backdrop. Thank you for asking.

I always come back to this tutorial for refreshers. How to add the "Scenes-Default Display" to the Node View right upper corner drop down, as you have it here, to easier change the Display nodes? I dont have it as default and always need to go the main longer route. Thanks