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Previewer

The Previewer is a WYSIWYG canvas. What you see is exactly what OVB writes to Harmony — the same width model, the same fit, the same points, the same colours. Nothing here is a rough approximation.

The Previewer canvas with 4 numbered regions 1 2 3 4
  1. Context header — the active subartlayer/frame range you're previewing (here, Pressure · Frames 2-8).
  2. Field frame — the blue-cornered rectangle is the Harmony camera frame; everything is drawn in this shared coordinate space regardless of the art layer's native size.
  3. Points overlay — the vector anchors (blue) and pressure points (red squares) on the active subartlayer.
  4. Pivot — the transform origin; appears together with the gizmo when you solo an art layer or its parent peg.

Framing & the camera

The preview is drawn in field space — the Harmony camera frame — so every art layer lands on the same origin regardless of its native SVG viewBox or pixel resolution. Navigate the canvas with:

  • Zoom — mouse wheel (cursor-anchored — it zooms toward the pointer).
  • Pan — drag with the middle mouse button, or hold Space and left-drag (the cursor turns into a hand). Space-pan is handy when your middle button is busy or you're already painting with the left button.
  • Reset — F or Home re-frames the content to fit.

Zoom and pan persist while you scrub frames, and reset automatically when the subject changes.

The top bar

The previewer top bar — display toggles, brush, and colours

Along the top of the canvas:

  • Display toggles (left) — points/pressure overlay, grid, snapping, onion skin, and the brush selector for the weight-paint tools (see below).
  • Weight-paint controls — the active brush's Strength slider, plus Subtract and Clear, with the size hint (size: [ ] or hold O + drag · Ctrl = inverse). These smooth the input non-destructively.
  • Colours (right) — Pts recolours the overlay/pressure points; Bg picks the canvas background (Dark / Grey / White).

The frame bar

The previewer frame bar — scrubber and onion range

Along the bottom:

  • Sequence label & path count — the active file and frame count on the left (octo_frame_0009.svg (20 frames)), the vector path count for the current frame on the right.
  • Frame scrubber — drag or type a frame to jump; the count (e.g. 9 / 20) is the current frame over the sequence length. The red / green handles on the track are the onion reach.
  • Onion Range — the −back / +fwd numbers set how many neighbour frames the onion skin shows.

Display toggles

  • Points overlay — shows the vector anchors and the red pressure points on the active subartlayer, so you can watch them thin out as Simplify smooths the input.
  • Grid — the Harmony field chart overlay.
  • Snapping — snap the gizmos and points to the grid.
  • Onion skin — faint ghost frames around the playhead (see below).
  • Background — Dark / Grey / White presets, plus the point colours (Pts) for the overlay and pressure points.

Onion skin

Onion skin shows the neighbouring frames faintly around the current one so you can judge motion:

  • Red = frames behind the playhead, green = frames ahead.
  • The window follows the playhead and is capped by the reach, so it never floods the canvas.
  • It works for every content type — vector, live-traced, and bitmap frames (a bitmap ghost is faded and tinted red/green, exactly like a vector ghost).

Onion is a view aid

Onion skin never changes what's written — it's purely a reference. (The weight-paint brushes can optionally paint across the onion window; that's opt-in and separate.)

Editable gizmos

When you solo an art layer, its blue gizmo appears for art-layer transform; on the composite of a drawing with a peg, the green peg gizmo appears for whole-drawing transform. See Offset & Scale for the difference.