Toon Boom Animation officially announced the highly anticipated release of Storyboard Pro 24 and Harmony 24 during the opening day of the 2024 International Animation Film Market (MIFA) at Annecy today.
Storyboard Pro is a versatile pre-production suite which empowers artists to structure sequences, refine visual storytelling and pitch stories on their own terms, while animation studios around the world rely on Harmony for productions which use traditional digital and 2D rigged animation techniques. The latest release brings new possibilities for traditional animation, cutout animation, hybrid 2D/3D workflows, as well as improved integration with the next generation of production pipelines.
“We are excited to introduce Storyboard Pro 24 and Harmony 24 as significant steps forward in the world of animation production,” said Colin Bohm, CEO of Toon Boom Animation. “The team at Toon Boom Animation believes that every major release is an opportunity to create new possibilities for our community, the artists and animators who use our software, while also improving workflows throughout a studio’s entire production pipeline.”
To demonstrate these new features for the launch, Atomic Cartoons collaborated with Toon Boom Animation on an extended proof-of-concept trailer for Justin Lovell’s independent short film, The Cloud Train. The in-progress film is a love letter to the craft of traditional animation which also showcases features introduced in Storyboard Pro 24 and Harmony 24. Artists learning workflows in the software will be able to add techniques to their repertoire by following along with downloadable scenes inspired by the project.
“As a studio, we always seek to boost our talent and their creative endeavors when we see an opportunity. Justin’s work is amazing and we were happy to help lift it,” Nadine Westerbarkey, Studio Creative Director at Atomic Cartoons, which provided systems, tools and production support to the project. “Additionally, as The Cloud Train integrates traditional 2D digital animation with rigged and 3D, we were very excited. It’s not something we’ve traditionally explored with the TV series we animate, and this really gave us the chance to push the boundaries of our technical expertise.”
“While we’ve modernized a very old way of making animation, I feel like we capture that nostalgia,” remarked Lovell, while describing the digital hand-drawn techniques used in The Cloud Train. “We still get to see that craftsmanship in every frame, which is important to me. It’s not just an art. It’s something that you can learn, you can get better at, and you can master your craft.”
Full Steam ahead with Enhanced Drawing Tools
Interested in adding natural texture and variation to your brush strokes? Whether you want the coarse grit of a drybrush or the fuzzy softness of an airbrush, subtle variations can add character to your drawings. Both Storyboard Pro 24 and Harmony 24 offer adjustable settings to randomize the brush tip’s position while drawing textured strokes. This feature recreates the natural variation in physical media, and allows artists to fine-tune increasingly convincing brushes.
Looking to bring more lifelike ink and paint effects to your line art? The Pencil tool has been improved to allow for pressure-sensitive changes to opacity while drawing. This feature, previously exclusive to the brush tool, can now be adjusted with the full versatility of a vector line, ideal for the cleanup process when bringing outlines and fine details on-model.
Get On-Track with New Deformers for Cutout Animation
The essential building blocks of modern cutout animation have been the deformers in Harmony Premium, which empower skilled animators to flexibly pose, adjust and manipulate assets within 2D character rigs without the characters appearing rigid or robotic. With the introduction of Harmony 24 Premium, Toon Boom Animation brings a new category of deformation tools to Harmony, which are ideal for a wide range of use in productions.
Harmony 24 Premium’s Shape Aware Deformers not only allow for quick and convincing manipulation of static assets but also expands options for designing and animating production rigs. This innovative deformation engine allows artists to add point controls, cage controls or bone controls which quickly apply a wide variety of translations, rotations and scale effects. When stretching and skewing textures within bitmap assets, Shape Aware Deformers produce consistent results with minimal visual artifacts. This advanced toolkit will propel productions beyond the current capabilities of 2D rigs.
The Express Route to Hybrid 2D/3D Workflows
With Toon Boom Animation’s robust 3D stage tools, Storyboard Pro and Harmony have been go-to solutions for studios which seamlessly blend 2D animation with 3D scenes and assets. Storyboard Pro 24 and Harmony 24 are equipped with a redesigned 3D engine, powered by the Vulkan API. This update significantly accelerates the loading, display and manipulation of 3D models within a scene. The Vulkan-powered rendering engine enhances the convenience of working with 3D assets in real time, both for production and reference, eliminating the friction of prerendering video for complex scenes.
Storyboard Pro and Harmony 24 bring improved workflows for integrating 3D in productions. Assets rigged with bone deformation can now be fully posed and animated in both Storyboard Pro 24 and Harmony 24. These posed assets can be rendered as-is in sequences or as reference for the artist to draw over for more expressive poses. In addition, Storyboard Pro 24 allows artists to attach drawings to 3D models. This feature is particularly useful in scenes where a character can be drawn on the surface of a 3D vehicle or a drawn expression moves with a 3D character. These features will make working on hybrid 2D/3D workflows more
seamless for animators and artists.
“Toon Boom Animation engages in research and in-depth discussions with clients about the future of 2D animation pipelines,” said Francisco Del Cueto, Chief Technology Officer at Toon Boom Animation. “This version of the software offers significantly more 2D/3D integration features than ever before alongside cutting-edge creative tools.”
“Toon Boom is such a strong partner for us,” said Joel Bradley, Head of Production at Atomic Cartoons. “Their team is a joy to collaborate with and very supportive.”
New Features in Storyboard Pro 24
Drawing tools
- Opacity on pencil line: Adjust opacity on pencil lines with pressure-sensitive input.
- Enhanced brush properties: Randomize brush tip positions for natural, textured strokes.
- Symmetry drawing guides: Mirror pen strokes with vertical, horizontal and dual-axis guides.
- Drawing on rotated layers: Draw on rotated layers regardless of the displayed orientation.
3D Integration
- Efficient 3D model previews: Load and manipulate large 3D models in real time.
- Character posing with deformation: Quickly pose 3D models using bone armatures.
- Snapshot workflow improvements: Enhanced interactive previews when converting 3D models into 2D assets.
- Attach drawing layers to 3D models: Attached drawings smoothly follow the position of 3D objects.
- Toon Shader: User-friendly rendering options for blending 3D objects into 2D scenes.
Animatics and conformation
- Preview and insert audio: Enhanced functionality for importing audio files from sound libraries.
- Keyframable audio effects: Manipulate audio effect parameters over time, including panning and echo.
PDF Export
- Revamped PDFs export workflow: Powerful editing process for PDF export, enabling panel sizes and position modification with live preview.
Learn more about Storyboard Pro 24.
New Features in Harmony 24
Drawing Tools
- Opacity on pencil line: Adjust opacity on pencil lines with pressure-sensitive input.
- Enhanced brush properties: Randomize brush tip positions for natural, textured strokes.
- Symmetry drawing guides: Mirror pen strokes with vertical, horizontal and dual-axis guides.
Animation & Compositing
- Shape Aware Deformers: Precisely manipulate areas of a drawing or texture with points, bones and cages.
- Node view port filtering: Use port names and filters to simplify the node graph while applying effects to complex character rigs.
- Cryptomatte support: Read and write EXR files with embedded cryptomattes for compositing pipelines.
3D Integration
- Efficient 3D model previews: Load and manipulate large 3D models in real time.
- Snapshot workflow improvements: Enhanced interactive previews when converting 3D models into 2D assets.
- Toon Shader: User-friendly rendering options for blending 3D objects into 2D scenes.
- Improved external 3D rendering: Cache and retain rendered frames within Harmony when using external applications for 3D rendering.
- Blender support: Blender is now available as an external application to render 3D models in scenes.
