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The possibilities are endless when considering the fact you can combine multiple effects in Digital Pro. Not only can you create unique looks with these, but you can create your own effects using plug-ins.

Here are just some of the possibilities already built-in to Digital Pro:

A full list of available effects can be found in the workflow guides under “Compositing”. For sample scenes using effects in Digital Pro visit our Templates page.

Workspace

Once the animation, timing, ink and paint and trajectories have been completed, you are ready to move on to adding special effects using the Module Library and the Network View. First, let’s open up the Module Library so that we can see what is available in the way of effects.

Module Library

Click on the All Modules tab inside the module library. For now we will only look at the effects, which are usually represented by a picture of a blue flower.

Network View / Module Basics

Each element in the Network View is called a module. There are different types of modules. Each module carries an Input port on the top and an Output port on the bottom. Some modules contain more than one Input port. When the two ports are blue, the Drawing is on the right and Matte is on the left. If it is light green, the drawing needs extra positional information.

Applying an Effect

1. In your Module Library, select the desired effect module and drag it to your Network View
2. In the Network View, connect the drawing’s output port to the effect module’s input port and connect the effect’s output port to a composite, display or other effect module.
   You can also select the effect module, hold the [Alt] key and connect the effect to an existing connection.
3. In the Network View, click on the module’s yellow square to open the editor.
4. In the editor, modify the desired parameters.
5. Click on the Apply button to see the modifications.
6. Once done, click on the OK button to validate.

In order to preview your effects, it is important to make sure they are connected to a display module. You can have multiple display modules in your network and choose which one to preview from the Camera or Playback View.

Before adding effects to your network, it is recommended that you familiarize yourself with a few points in the Paperless Animation Workflow Guide: Effects and Modules Available on page 506, Functionality on page 532, Effect Suggestions on page 536.

Tone or Highlight Effect
Use a Tone effect in your Network View to add a dark coloured region to the top of drawings in an element. To produce the tone effect, you must create drawings to control where the tone will appear (the matte). The drawing element is connected in the right port and the matte (shape, mask) in the left one.

The Tone Module then applies darker colours where the matte overlaps the image, blurs the tone edge, and finally clips out the extra tone zone outside of the drawing before outputting a final drawing with a tone. The tone’s parameters can be adjusted in the module editor can be linked to a function column to be animated over time. This means that all of the effects can be customized.

You can apply more than one effect module to an element. When several modules are adjusted and combined, it is useful to be able to reuse them and not have to rebuild them every time. You can store the modules in the Template Library and reuse them in other scenes and productions. Refer to the Toon Boom Digital Pro Basic Concepts chapter in the Introduction and Basics Guide to learn about creating templates.

Users often want to apply a shadow or light on their animations but do not want to draw it. Here is an effect to create computer-generated tone, highlights and drop shadow, and to avoid drawing matte. Creating shadows and highlights without matte drawings can be useful for Traditional, Paperless and Cut-out animation.

You can find this pre-built effect in your Templates > Effects folder. To use it, simply open the Template Library, select the Shadow_Effect template and drag it to your Network View.

For step-by-step instructions on creating this particular effect refer to the Paperless Animation Workflow Guide on page 536.