T-H21NEW-005-003

The improvements added to workflow and interface features in Harmony 21 are designed to optimize performance and increase workflow speed. Below is a list of these optimizations.

Improvements to Search Filters

Improvements have been made to the search filters in the Node View and Node Library.

The Node View Find and Insert search results are now ordered to quickly find the nodes you want to insert by showing best matches at the top rather than alphabetically. For example, typing 'Peg' now lists results in the following order:

1. Peg
2. Apply-Peg-Transformation

The Node Library search filter has also been improved to better match what users expect. An option to search in both the node description and name has also been added.

The improved search filters now have an X button that appears in the search field when a filter is applied. Clicking this button or pressing the Esc key can be used to quickly clear the search filter.

Library View Improvements

The Library view Thumbnail display mode has been improved with the addition of a slider that can be used to change the thumbnail sizes. This is the placed on the bottom right of the view, Filenames are now written below the thumbnails to allow them to align in a grid-like fashion.

Higher resolution thumbnails are now used to display the drawing substitutions in the Library and the Drawing Substitution view, as well as thumbnails of drawings when opening a template as a folder.

Colour Management for OpenGL Rendering

In order to provide consistent colours between OpenGL previews and software renders, a new option named Read Toon Boom Drawings using sRGB Colour Space has been added to the Colour Space tab of the Scene Settings dialog. When this option is selected, colours from Toon Boom drawings are converted from sRGB to the project working colour space before being composited.

This allows Harmony's Camera view to use the same colour space, which can be selected from the list at the bottom of the Camera view, when displaying drawings in OpenGL and Render modes. The Display Colour Space option that was available on the Camera tab of the preference is not required anymore and has been removed.

This also allows using a different colour space for each camera view in the workspace, which is useful when using monitors with different colour spaces.

The Read Toon Boom Drawings using sRGB Colour Space option is selected by default for any new scene created in Harmony 21. When a scene created in a previous version is opened, this option remains unchecked, to ensure colours in the scene render as they did in previous versions of Harmony.

General Optimizations to Tools and Interface

Multiple optimizations have been applied to various tools and interface features . Below is a list of these optimizations.

Feature / Tool	Optimization
OpenGL Rendering Optimizations	The performance of the Camera view has been improved by making OpenGL rendering in this view multi-threaded. This allows Harmony to use multiple CPU cores to simultaneously perform render operations of multiple drawings and effects. Scenes with high numbers of drawing layers benefit the most from the multi-threaded OpenGL rendering. Performance improvements are noticeable when manipulating artwork using the Transform tool or when panning and zooming the camera view in those types of scenes.
Transform Tool	Transform Tool overall responsiveness and performance when selecting, editing and interacting in the scene has been improved, specifically with heavier scenes that have many nodes which is common in rig-based projects.
Interactive Camera View Cache	The new Interactive Camera View Cache preference, available in the OpenGL tab of the Preferences, is now enabled by default. This improves the performance of tools in the Camera view by reducing the number of refreshes required when using those tools.
Weighted Deformer	The Weighted Deformer now renders faster and manipulates faster in heavy scenes that contain detailed drawings and textures.
Master Controller Improvements	Numerous improvements have been made to the Master Controller concerning UI and refresh issues, making it more responsive and easier to use.