Below I took some time into researching how to create a background in Toon Boom Harmony without having to draw a background for each individual shot of my animation. Because I am pressed for time in terms of producing my animation, I want a background that I can be used for my entire animation and I just have to animate over the top, as I want to focus on making the animation the best it can be. Therefore using the link below I went onto Toon Boom’s website and found a simple step by step tutorial for making a 3D background with 2D image planes.
Below is a link to the google images page that I found researching into this idea and I found that programmes like South Park use a similar method to get the room backgrounds for their characters.
Anyway below are a few screenshots that show my interpretation of following the step by step instructions. This process seems quite basic to setup as all you need to do is import your Photoshop file and then double click on the layer and tick enable 3D and click Euler angles to help make the plane rotate, scale and move in 3D space. Therefore to test it out I created a basic room using a Photoshop file which I duplicated twice to make the other panels and then I used the Euler angles menu to rotate the planes at 90 or -90 degrees and then I used the move tool to move them next to each other to build a basic set/ stage for an environment. Seeing how simple this is I am going to use the same technique for my backgrounds because it will allow me to quickly construct a background and then work on the animation.
I was going to make my background in Maya but the issue was that the modelling process was taking too long and I would not be able to animate the door open and close without having to render out the animation in Maya first and then import it frame by frame. This seemed way to long to do so I thought that working straight in Toon Boom would be more effective since I am animating in Toon Boom Harmony anyway.
Dan Sanders Art & Animation 