MONTREAL, Nov. 25, 2013 /CNW Telbec/ - Emmy^® Award-winning Toon Boom Animation Inc. ( toonboom.com), the market leader in animation technology, is proud to announce the release of a new version of  Toon Boom Harmony in its standalone version for small businesses, as well as its network version. Recognized as the industry standard for animation, special effects, and 2D/3D mix, Harmony now offers additional powerful and impressive new special effects, making its compositing engine the most advanced in the market within a complete animation software.

Impressive New Special Effects

Advanced Blurs
Take advantage of the wide array of blur tools, including new Gaussian and box blurs, rotational blur, zoom blur, and spiral blur. Achieve effects such as blur around a circle, which is similar to blurring a rotating merry-go-round. With zoom blur, you can blur towards a central point, like when a character is running towards a camera.  And spiral blur gives the effect of water draining down a drain.

Lens Flare
Take advantage of the lens flare to create lens flares with up to 10 flares.  Adjust the hotspot, angle, and spread, and animate these values over time for cool effects.

Turbulence
Use the Turbulence effect to modify a drawing and break it apart. Create interesting effects like making a drawing disintegrate or explode. Create vibrating lines, heat waves coming off a road, or ripples on water. Break up the lines to look like crayon or other paper effects.

Turbulence Noise
Play around with Turbulence Noise to create new effects like lighting or sun rays. Make your drawing look like an overexposed photograph. Experiment with creating walls of fire, smoke, mist, or clouds.

Colour Effects
Use the Channel Swap effect to extract red, green, blue, and alpha values and use the channels to make adjustments. Use the new Hue-Saturation effect to perform colour correction or colourize the drawing to get looks like sepia tones.

Harmony 10.3 delivers also many other improvements, such as navigation in the Network view, Expression column, scripting, and SDK improvements.

"You know that moment when you've just done something beyond what you thought possible and you ask yourself "..whoa, did I just do that?" Harmony 10.3 is full of those. I can say without exaggeration that the new effects are astonishing. The new colour adjustments, zoom and spin blurs and mind-blowing turbulence open up possibilities previously inaccessible to the average 2D effects animator" shared Adam Phillips, bitey.com

Video tutorials developed by Adam Phillips are available online in Toon Boom Harmony's Resources section.

Harmony Stand Alone runs on Mac OS X 10.6, 10.7, and 10.8, and Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit), Windows 8 (64-bit). For the network version Harmony, refer to the Tech Specs online.

For more information, please visit toonboom.com/harmony or contact Email Contact

About Toon Boom Animation Inc.
Toon Boom Animation Inc. ( toonboom.com), a Corus^® Entertainment Inc. company and a 2012 and 2005 Primetime Emmy Engineering Award recipient, is the worldwide leader in digital content and animation creation software, delivering products and services online to its global community. Toon Boom carries user-friendly applications for all, catering to children, home users, creative professionals as well as students, educators and schools. Toon Boom is fully dedicated to education and goes far beyond just developing technology and curriculums that enhance the classroom experience. Toon Boom is an influential advocate of bringing industry and education together, while partnering with value-added partners to help students achieve their goals.

At the high-end studio level, Toon Boom offers a wide product range from powerful pre-production tools to leading-edge animation production solutions. Relying on its extensive expertise in animation production, Toon Boom provides consulting services in the fields of optimization, pipeline integration, production assistance and custom development.

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Copyright © 2013 Toon Boom Animation Inc. All rights reserved. Toon Boom^® and Toon Boom Harmony^® are registered trademarks and the Toon Boom logo is a trademark of Toon Boom Animation Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE TOON BOOM ANIMATION INC.

Video with caption: "Video: What's New in Toon Boom Harmony". Video available at: http://stream1.newswire.ca/cgi-bin/playback.cgi?file=20131125_C4688_VIDEO_EN_33802.mp4&posterurl=http://photos.newswire.ca/images/20131125_C4688_PHOTO_EN_33802.jpg&clientName=TOON%20BOOM%20ANIMATION%20INC%2E&caption=Video%3A%20What%27s%20New%20in%20Toon%20Boom%20Harmony&title=TOON%20BOOM%20ANIMATION%20INC%2E%20%2D%20Toon%20Boom%20Releases%20a%20New%20Version%20of%20Harmony%20Packed%20with%20Unlimited%20Effects&headline=Toon%20Boom%20Unveils%20a%20New%20Version%20of%20Harmony%20Packed%20with%20Unlimited%20Effects