Surface Pro 3

Been thinking about purchasing a Surface Pro 3, but want to know if it’d run fine with Toon Boom Harmony. Seems they’ve switched from Wacom to NTrig when it comes to Pen Technology. The Tablet itself DOES feel better than the previous two, but would love to know if my main animation program gets the pen sensitivity to drawing that I crave.

Also, how does it work with other software?

Adobe CS6 stuff like Photoshop, Flash and Illustrator?

Manga Studio? Storyboard Pro?

Painter and Zbrush?

Anybody with experience with the Surface Pro 3?

I don’t have a Surface Pro 3 but I do have a Sony Vaio PC Flip 15a which uses NTrig. The specs are fairly comparable as well (my system: i7 4500K (w/ dedicated GPU), 16GB RAM, Windows 8.1).

The NTrig pen works like a dream! Just remember to uncheck WinTab in the preferences (in Harmony that is) and you’ll be fine. And this should go without saying but calibration is key. There are more than a few features in Windows 8.1 that can affect the responsiveness of the pen.

Put simply, the Surface Pro 3 has more than enough power to run Harmony smoothly. Be warned, like most tablets and tablet-laptop hybrids the fan might kick in when rendering. I hear the SP3 is pretty loud. My Vaio is too but I have a cooling pad that keeps it quiet :slight_smile:

Other notes: If you’re new to drawing directly onto the screen like I was then it might take a little while to get acclimated to how things work. But now I feel extremely comfortable with it and it makes drawing much more engaging and fun. So much so that I find it somewhat boring when I have to go back to my regular PC and draw with the ol’ Wacom tablet.

I have the Surface Pro 3 and use Harmony 11 on it from time to time. It works great, and the touch gestures work nice as well. You can zoom and rotate the canvas by pinching and twisting your fingers.

And yes you get pen pressure on the N-trig. I had to set my smoothing higher on my brushes to get good lines though.

The interface and buttons are very small in Harmony on the SP3, mostly because Harmony isn’t optimized for the screen size. It’s workable, though I wouldn’t want to spend hours at it. I have a 21" cintiq at home for serious work in Harmony, so the SP3 is just if I need to be mobile.

Storyboard Pro works well too.

You’ll also need to have an external keyboard, or get comfortable with the keyboard attached at the bottom, as Harmony really needs the keyboard for any serious work.

Other apps work good. Manga Studio 5 is what I use constantly on the SP3 and it is awesome.

I have adobe CC so I have the optimized photoshop, and it works fine. Not sure about Cs6.

As for other programs i’m not so sure. You can check a blog called http://www.surfaceproartist.com and they have a running list of software working on the SP3.

A note about the fan: It gets loud. I wouldn’t recommend using it as an internet device because that kicks the fan on in high gear for some reason.

Hi there Lordbryce. I know this was posted a year ago but I gotta ask: how on earth did you get both pressure sensitivity and touch gestures? I’m running Harmony Premium (12.1) on a Surface Pro 4 and I can only have one or the other. With the Qt wintab tablet support activated I can get touch gestures, but lose my pressure sensitivity. If I deactivate it I can get the sensitivity back, but no touch gestures. This problem was also present when I tested out the Surface Pro 3 for a few weeks back in September.
I did have a friend who’s Surface Pro 3 did have both working when I activated my version of Harmony on it, but he couldn’t remember what he had possibly done to make the Ntrig pen/driver work properly.
So if you’re still receiving updates for this thread any updates would be absolutely fabulous. And if anyone else has encountered this, or has some input I’d be greatly appreciative.
Thanks in advance!
Cheers!