Hello all, I had some questions about tablet monitors in extended display mode and if their connectivity has improved with the software. For anyone who does not know: Some users have purchased tablet monitor displays from various companies: Yiynova, Ugee, Huion, Bosto , XP-Pen and Wacom. The idea is that the tablet monitor becomes the main work area for drawing within the program while the other monitor would be use to extend the user interface. The idea is to make the tablet monitor a bit roomier while leaving other parts that may clutter the work area, to the side. The main idea of course is to improve the artists’ work flow. Upon purchasing said displays there are usually some issue. The cursor will draw, far off from when the pen was placed and other misalignment issues making the dual monitor set up less than desired. Some fixes have been posted by more intrepid users, such as this gent in this video: https://youtu.be/DSdcyZzPdzE?t=52s
Here are some other referenced issues:
https://forums.toonboom.com/toon-boom-storyboard-family/support-and-troubleshooting/cursor-and-drawing-offset-storyboard-pro-4
http://forums.toonboom.com/animate/support-and-troubleshooting/problems-xp-pen-22-hd-tablet
https://forums.toonboom.com/harmony/general-discussion/pen-problems
Toon Boom products officially support Wacom products only. The staff on these forums are extremely helpful to us users when we don’t buy from Wacom to figure out why out stuff does not work as we intended. For that, I am very grateful. I’ve even seen posts of there being mention being in talks with other companies about it so I’d like to invite staff to comment as well, please. Check out the post by Lilly Vogelesang on the Toon Boom team and see what I mean: https://forums.toonboom.com/toon-boom-animate-family/general-discussion/yiynova-msp19u-pen-tablet-monitor .
Just to note I apologize in advance for the length of this and the following posts.
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That still leaves a number of users who have been using tablet monitors from other companies a bit out of the loop in terms of solving their issues. Is the only solution to buy only from the Wacom company? Given how advanced the Toon Boom technology is, is it acceptable that this is the only way? I’ve been combing the forums for some time about this issue but I mostly find a user looking for help and some back in forth in the responses, without a resounding victory. I’d like to change that in hopes of further educating anyone looking to buy such hardware to see what has been successful and what has not been. Also to reach out to users who have perhaps fixed their issues with dual monitor displays so they can share their research and pass it along to other users as well. Which brands work best? Which companies offer customer service to those who are having issues? How did you troubleshoot the problem?
To be clear: This is in no way to be malicious attack on the software company or even the hardware being discussed. My goal is to engage the community on this issues and as a community, see if we can put or heads together for some better solutions.
I’d like to break this down company by company. I’ve been in contact with a few of them in the past few weeks hoping that someone in their departments were aware of this issue or perhaps had a fix for it given with more recent drivers and basic advancements in technology that time provides.
I broke each company down and sent them forum posts that had a similar issue as a reference. Let’s get started.
Yiynova: I started with Yiynova because I own one of their tablets, the MSP19U. I emailed their support website at rma@thepandacity.com in regards to the dual monitor issue and someone did get back to me. To quote the email:
Thank you for the inquiry. Our technical support team has indicated that the software you mentioned will not perform properly with our unit/drivers. Our research team is aware of the issue. If you have any other questions, please let us know!
Have a great day-
W. Bors
The Panda City
Fair enough. One company down. Has anyone else conversed with this company on the issue as well? What were your responses and did you find any solutions?
Ugee: I also emailed the Ugee company about this issue. I got a somewhat similar response. The email reads as:
Thanks for the information. You have tested Yiynova, Wacom, and Huion, and they are unable to accurately use the dual monitor setup and maintain pressure sensitivity and proper tracking in Toon Boom Harmony. I think it is compatibilty’s problem. so we do not suggest you buy a Ugee Monitor to test. Thanks
Once again, simple enough reply and I admit to enjoy the fact that they reply at all. I say anytime a company involved in responding to consumers is a good sign. Has anyone ever troubleshooted these issues on their own set ups?
Thanks for the information. You have tested Yiynova, Wacom, and Huion, and they are unable to accurately use the dual monitor setup and maintain pressure sensitivity and proper tracking in Toon Boom Harmony. I think it is compatibilty’s problem. so we do not suggest you buy a Ugee Monitor to test. Thanks
Huion: I have been emailing back and forth with this company. I appreciate the fact that they responded and did ask me for:
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Product serial number (on the back of the unit);
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Product order number;
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Purchase link where you bought this item;
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A video that can show the problem clearly;(upload to dropbox or google driver would be preferred)
They also got back to ask me about my computer specs so that they could test it. Does any reader here own a Huion and have some views. What has your experience with the product been? Has customer service been cool with you and have gotten you some answers? Please Share.
Bosto: I have been sending emails back and forth with this company as well. They even have a user forum so people can send in some issues for them to test. I’m greatly satisfied with this experience simply because they answer back and seem genuinely interested in how their product is doing.
XP-Pen: The XP-Pen service got back to me as well. Their reply was:
Do you have any graphic tablet or graphic tablet monitor on your hand?
If yes, please follow it to setup.
Go to control panel and display setting.
a. If your main monitor resolutions over 2K, please try to reduce it to 1920x1080 or 1600x900.
b. Please set your text, apps…ect., size to 100%.
c. Click OK button to exit.
Try to test it and make sure will you still get the stylus and cursor distance offset issue?
PS:
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Wacom is top 1 brand name in graphic tablet industry, if it can’t support it, I trust the others also can’t. But I think your question isn’t on the driver, it should be on the display setting.
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XP-Pen products only support dual monitors, if your computer connect over dual monitors, maybe you also will get the offset issue.
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Sorry, I try to find the video on Youtube but can’t. If you have any graphic tablet or graphic tablet monitor, you can try to follow steps to solve it.
I tried what was suggested and still no luck. I do appreciate the effort though. Has anyone here gotten to the bottom of this themselves?
Wacom: I sent an email on the issue and I was sent the manual for a tablet, but not a tablet monitor. When I inquired further, I got no replies back. This is the golden article and the best there is. Who can confirm Wacom’s ability for dual monitor (extended display) mode? Is it everything you’ve dreamed and more? Is this truly the gold standard tablet monitor with proper dual screen (extended display) functions that no company listed can attain? Please let us know.
Those were are all of the companies I’ve contacted and their responses. If you own some of these things, please reach out to those companies too and let them know your views. It costs you nothing to do so and from what I gather, they really want to help people. Also, feel free to connect with me: acampanimate@gmail.com if you’d like some help to talk about these issues yourselves. I think if we can open a dialogue about this and keep on it (I wish there was an option for a sticky) then we may get some more definitive answers.
Also, ft the Toon Boom staff can; please join in. We don’t have your expertise with the software and would like a little light shining down on some of the facts for us so we can find a joint solution between users, staff, and the companies that create the art supplies we use to express ourselves.
If you are still reading, thank you for your time. I am very interested in your responses.
For more reference, here are some other cases still on the forum:
Huion: https://forums.toonboom.com/harmony/support-and-troubleshooting/harmony-14-completely-freezes-huion-tablet
Yiynova: http://forums.toonboom.com/harmony/support-and-troubleshooting/yiynova-msp19u-penbrush-widely-center-when-touching-screen-canva
Wacom: https://forums.toonboom.com/toon-boom-animate-family/support-and-troubleshooting/cintiq-24hd-pressure-sensitivity
Bosto: http://forums.toonboom.com/toon-boom-harmony/support-and-troubleshooting/harmony-used-bosto-kingtee
Ugee: http://forums.toonboom.com/harmony/support-and-troubleshooting/ugee-monitor-tablet-offset
Random thoughts:
There has not been a strong Wacom competitor in the market until recently. Microsoft has demonstrated an objective to take a large bite out of the Wacom market share by offering a product that many would argue is as good if not better than what Wacom has offered to date. With the exception of Microsoft, there only have been a lot of competitors taking the cheaper knock-off approach.
Hardware does not appear to be as much of a hurdle as firmware. One of the weakest features in Wacom competitor products has been the drivers. If a manufacturer cannot develop and produce a decent driver for their own product what incentive is there for a software company like Toon Boom to support it? It is a relatively small segment pulling on limited resources.
People frequently compare how a product works with other software when complaining about Toon Boom software. Toon Boom may be one of the big dogs, if not The Big Dog, in animation but it is not huge in the software world like Adobe. And/or the software may not be so easy to adapt as people assume.
There is also a possibility that an exclusive Wacom/Toon Boom relationship is advantageous. And if so to whom, everyone, all users, only larger studios, Wacom/Toon Boom only?
I welcome Toon Boom’s response but I don’t think anyone there currently speaks openly beyond a courtesy. I suspect it would be something along the lines of “Thank you for the information, we appreciate and care about your concerns and will take it into consideration.” which could describe most of what has been acknowledged in the Feature Request sub-forum.
Hey o0Ampy0o, thanks for the reply. I’m good with random thoughts. The whole reason I did this was to share thoughts with other users. I’ve seen the Microsoft products like the Surface studio, which is great to see that other companies are taking steps in creating tools for artists. Even Dell has been showing off their 27 inch tablet monitor: https://www.cnet.com/products/dell-canvas-27/preview/ . The other competitors (probably most that I’ve listed already) and their “knock-off” approach, I think is more akin to them answering to their own supply needs. To their own I mean that most of these companies are in Asia and perhaps it is more advantageous for them to create their own product for their market. I do get that some of them are too particularly innovative (like not having a stylus with an eraser on it) like the way Windows and Wacom have been but after researching these companies, I got more comfortable with the idea of more than one company is creating such tools. I think if i was just an illustrator, I would be in a better position on this, with such an array of options. Which I guess leads into the issue of firmware.
One of the most interesting parts of doing this project was getting in touch with the companies I mentioned. One was aware, some just told me not to buy their product, and one company just kind of dropped the whole thing. Those that did respond in kind, did start a back and forth about the issue and how they wanted to solve it. I thought that was pretty interesting simply because, no one ever told them what did not work about their product. I guess those are the companies that have the resources to do so, but they were definitely interested and I hope for results.
I also understand that the software might not be so easy to adapt. All the same, Toon Boom has news clips about studios all over the world using the software. I think maybe a little more adaptability would help. Maybe in the Feature Request forum. Thank again for your reply.
I’ve just got into Toon Boom coming from Anime Studio. I’m using a XP-Pen Star03 ( https://www.xp-pen.com/product/44.html ) with dual monitors. I have to run the program as an admin and sacrifice the pen pressure. I mean I can go back and add tapers when I really want it, but other than that it’s no biggie!
It appears that the Dual Monitor problem with non-wacom tablets like Yiynova, Huion, Ugee, XP-pen, Monoprice and any other Uc-logic driven tablets has finally been FIXED!!! https://youtu.be/ms5gL4SRpIE
Thank you so much for the link. I just saw the video and am glad to see it. I hope this stays up for anyone looking for this info to know what to do.
You welcome I just hope they don’t screw it up in future updates. Also, you can adjust the pen settings through windows so basically what Microsoft did was relieved us of the need for wintab.
Thanks I solved this issue in TBH20 with my Surface Laptop Studio and a 2nd monitor by tweaking the compatibility settings in the Windows 11 app’s properties and also within the App Settings by disabling the Qt Win tablet support. After watching the yt video from the post Toonboom Harmony 14 and Yiynova MSP19u in Dual Monitor Display - YouTube.