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From the beginning, Toon Boom Storyboard was designed to resolve the problems associated with using unspecialized tools by providing an intuitive, non-intrusive technology for storyboarding. This technology is compatible with any type of production tool and is designed to meet the needs of Movie producers, Cartoonists, Games developers, Broadcasters and CGI developers.

Every artist has different needs and often uses different processes to complete his task. Storyboard was designed to respond to these needs and yet be very easy to use. To get the most out of Storyboard, understanding how to optimize your project is the key to ensuring peak performance at all times. In this article we describe the following tools so that you will understand their advantages and benefit from their use:

1. Texture vs. Plain Vector Brush
2. Texture Size Optimization
3. WYSIWYG Previewing
4. Drawing Size Optimization
5. Bitmap Integration
6. Project Management

Tools

Texture vs. Plain Vector Brush

In Toon Boom Storyboard, all the elements that you see in the panel (and therefore in the drawing view) are vector elements. There are basically two kinds of vector elements in Toon Boom Storyboard:

• By default, the brush tool creates vector strokes filled with either a colour or a gradient. Vector strokes use a very small amount of memory and can be used rapidly because they don’t contain any pixel information, only mathematical functions.
• Toon Boom Storyboard allows you to draw using texture brush. This also uses a vector stroke but is filled with a bitmap texture. It provides you with the ability to have natural media looking brush strokes like an airbrush or crayon.

Because they are using a bitmap image mapped inside vector strokes, texture brushes use much more memory and processing time than brush strokes filled with color.

Texture Size Optimization

Since texture brushes use bitmaps, is it important to use a reasonable size for your texture. In Toon Boom Storyboard, the parameter Stroke Texture Quality is used to control the size of the texture bitmap. This parameter can be found in the Preferences dialog, under the Drawing tab. There are five levels of quality, ranging from Very low to Very high. By default the value is set at Medium.

To determine the size of the texture, Toon Boom Storyboard uses the resolution of the Drawing view and the parameter Stroke Texture Quality. On a computer with a 1280x1024 resolution in the Drawing layout and with a Stroke Texture Quality set to Medium, a stroke (hand drawn rectangle) covering the camera view will have a texture with an approximate size of 1200x900 pixels. With a Low value, the texture will have an approximate size of 800x600 pixels. With a Very high value, it can easily reach 4000x2400 pixels!

WYSIWYG Previewing

Toon Boom Storyboard offers two drawing display modes. Those modes only affect the display while you draw - not the quality or the end result:

• Fast Preview is the default mode. While you draw, the stroke is displayed on top of the drawing view, independently of the current layer or the Draw behind parameter. Once the stroke is done, the display is updated after a small delay and the stroke is composite at the correct position.
• Realistic Preview provides you a true WYSIWYG preview while you draw; there is no need to end a stroke to see the result. This mode requires more processing time and the speed depends on your graphic card.

There are three ways to switch between each of these modes:

• In the View menu, under Advanced Drawing entry you can activate it using Show Realistic Preview.
• In the Preference dialog, under Drawing tab, you can activate it using Show Brush Strokes in Place while Drawing parameter.
• By defining a shortcut for the entry Toggle Draw in Place in View Shortcut Category in Shortcuts tab from the Preference dialog.

Drawing Size Optimization

Since Toon Boom Storyboard is a vector-based application, strokes inside a layer are independent (also known as "layer-inside-layer". This means the strokes are not attached to each other, and you are free to select a specific stroke and edit its position, scale, rotation, skew, color and so on, when ever you want. Because strokes are independent, it also means that when texture strokes overlap there is only one bitmap texture per stroke. This also increases the amount of memory and resources used by Toon Boom Storyboard, especially when you have a lot of strokes in your drawing (which frequently happens when you sketch).The Flatten tool takes all strokes with overlapping areas from a layer and blends them together.

Bitmap Integration

Toon Boom Storyboard allows you to create storyboards by importing scanned images or bitmaps drawn in other software applications. As mentioned above, texture resolution can affect performance and storyboard project file size. Imported bitmaps are treated the same way as paintbrush textures.

When importing bitmaps into your storyboard there is rarely a need to use a high resolution: it will not increase the quality of your PDF. Try to import bitmaps with a resolution close to the project resolution. For example, in an NTSC project, using a bitmap with a 720x480 resolution or a 72dpi quality will be sufficient.

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