How to Harmony Using Unity and Toon Boom Harmony at Double Stallion

Double Stallion Games Big Action Mega Fight! (2013)

Double Stallion Games Big Action Mega Fight! (2013)

Double Stallion Games ‘Super Secret Mystery Title’ (201X)

Double Stallion Games ‘Project Luna’ (2016)

Hand Drawn Animation Visual signature for Double Stallion Frame-by-frame Undeniable charm and quality

Why Harmony?

Full Disclosure Approached by Toon Boom for support. Working directly with Harmony team to improve tools.

Overview Harmony Intro Authoring Tool Art Pipeline

Advantages for Artists - Live Demo

Art Pipeline Integrating art into the game. Always evolving to be better and faster. Harmony is the latest iteration.

Disclamer We have not completed a full development cycle with Harmony. This is a preview of what we think is exciting about the new Harmony pipeline.

Hand Drawn Animation Visual signature for Double Stallion Frame-by-frame Undeniable charm and quality

FlashSWF Pack Sprites Animation Cycles Mecanim Art Pipeline Flash ProfessionalUnityTexture Packer

Animations

Multi-pack Sheet 1 Idle 1 Idle 3 Attack 1 Sheet 2 Idle 2 Attack 2 Sheet 1 Idle 1 Idle 3 Run 2 Attack 2 Sheet 2 Idle 2 Attack 1 Run 1

Memory Usage 1024 px 2048 px iPhone: 8 MB iPad: 32 MB

Memory Tricks Use 16 bit color or texture compression Shrink assets for devices with smaller screens (LOD) Reproduce animation with cut-out where possible

LOD Support Unity 5.0: Asset Bundle Variants More or less broken Run-time selection of sprite sheet or animation Error prone Mip-mapping 33% memory penalty

Memory Tricks

Pipeline Limitations Many manual steps Tight memory limits No large characters Small number of animation cycles

Desired Improvements No designer required Better memory efficiency Maintain visual style

FlashSWF Read Animations Animation Cycles Mecanim Art Pipeline + GAF Flash ProfessionalUnityGAF

Memory Usage

GAF Gains Reuse symbols within animations to generate smaller sprite sheets Export symbol positions rather than individual frames Plays nicely with other Unity renderers

GAF Shortcomings Manual steps still involved High CPU usage for mesh generation Rigid skeletal look to animations Additional license to purchase

AuthoringExportPlay Art Pipeline + Harmony Toon Boom HarmonyUnity

Harmony Export

No Designer Needed Empowers artist to control the animation Saves us tedium of re-configuring animations and state machines when importing Simple code calls to trigger animations

Optimal Memory Usage Optimal memory for each character Deformers allow further reductions Support for LOD out of the box

Powerful Authoring Tool Authoring paradigm closer to how games work Encourages animators to use memory-reducing techniques

Harmony Shortcomings Doesn’t integrate as smoothly with other Unity tools Native rendering engine has limitations

Conclusion Excited about using this new powerful tool. Excited about improvements to our pipeline. Continuing awesome work with Toon Boom.

Thank You! -