Hiyas,

I was wondering how important the drawing tablets are in 3D work for productivity. Is this considered a necessity for all professionals and students alike, or is it something more of a luxury for those refining their developed skill-sets of many years?

Which brand is the best? Wacom I assume, as it is the only one I've heard mentioned anywhere, yet there are several other brands available.

Intuos vs. Graphire? Which size? The 4x6 is obviously the most portable of the three sizes available, but is it so small that it is difficult to realistically work with?

Has anyone had any experience working with the new 6D Art pen, or the stroke and airbrush pens made by Wacom?

Cheers,T.

:?: :idea: :?:

I never use tablets for 3D(2D, sure), but I will tell you it's a personal choice in terms of model/size. Personally, I think big tablets are a waste of space - I like them small, and scale the swipe range. Others swear by big honking 24" tablets.

Wacom is a reliable choice.

Personally, I'd hold off spending money on one for now if you're just doing 3D.

Cheers,

J.C.

I prefer to use tablets for everything.
Better than a mouse in terms of ergonomic.
For £D is better to use a smal tablet tobe fluent with the program, A6 or A5 size are the best.
And a table is not a luxury, you can get a graphire that is a great mouse subtitute and much better for painting than a mouse for a very afortable price.
To use a tablet as a substitute for a mouse I revomment a graphire A6 or A5, ity you need to paint a lot maybe intuos is better, but much expensive.
And even better wacom models works everywhere, W$, Linux os Mac.

I like them… they are good in modelling…
But with Houdini… where you need 3 buttons… it may get strange sometime…

Do you know how to install WACOM Graphire BT (bluetooth) on Linux?
Has anybody done it?

Thanks.

Symbolic
I like them… they are good in modelling…
But with Houdini… where you need 3 buttons… it may get strange sometime…

Do you know how to install WACOM Graphire BT (bluetooth) on Linux?
Has anybody done it?

Thanks.

Bluetooth is not corrrectly supported at the moment, but I know that the wacom linux driver team is working on it.

I just bought an Intuos3 4x5 (previously used a Graphire3 of the same size). Much nicer for drawing obviously than a mouse, but no, hardly a necessity for 3d work.

That said, it works just fine for Houdini. Pen tip is Left Mouse Button, and the duo-click button thingy on the pen can serve as MMB & RMB. The 3D brush tools in Houdini also have some support for tablets (namely responding to pressure for brush radius & opacity). What I do find a bit difficult sometimes is connecting node inputs/outputs, still a bit jittery. Maybe I need more practice, I've only used tablets on and off so far.

As far as size.. this 4x5 does feel a little bit constrained, to me at least, but it's not too bad. For the Graphire I definitly wouldn't go for 4x5, as the drawing surface just isn't as nice as on the Intuos.
I'd certainly love to try one of those Intuos3 6x11 wide aspect models (would need a new widescreen monitor too ), those look yummy.

About the Art Pen/Airbrush… I'd think those are strictly for 2D guys/gals. Pretty sure no 3D app has support for their extra functions. Hope that helps…



Now… while we're on this general topic… how about some paint tools in COPs SESI!!
Photoshop has such a shit interface (that most other paint apps sadly choose to mimic for some reason), I really want to see painting done Houdini style. 8)

I use a tablet all the time with Houdini. But it's important to have the duo click to emulate a 3 button mouse.

As Juice says selecting points or carve handles canbe a little jittery and bounce out of active mode foe that SOP. Keep your mouse handy for that.

I prefer to use an A4 sized tablet to the smaller A5.

As an interesting side note, I've got a dual monitor setup, with an SGI widescreen and some Dell monitor. When the tablet gets too close to the Dell the cursor on the screen bounces around like popcorn. Better put the foil hat on. But seriuosly if your desk real estate is tight, beware.

lisux

Symbolic
I like them… they are good in modelling…
But with Houdini… where you need 3 buttons… it may get strange sometime…

Do you know how to install WACOM Graphire BT (bluetooth) on Linux?
Has anybody done it?

Thanks.

Bluetooth is not corrrectly supported at the moment, but I know that the wacom linux driver team is working on it.

Thanks!

I did a search recently and found that there is a wacom (albeit small - i can't remember the dimensions but sort 6 inches across) that was less than 100 dollars, so for the same price as a night down the pub you could get one at not much of a loss. Don't remember the model or where I saw it but was tempted myself.

Hey Everyone,

I think how much you use a tablet totally depends on what you do in 3D. If you do a lot of modeling, texture painting, etc then a tablet is a must and will seriously speed up your workflow about 10 times. If you don't do either of these and you just do effects then a tablet won't really help you. So the real question is what are you doing with 3D.

Tablet can also be useful for painting weight maps for rigging, for painting masks for compositing, painting maps for shading, etc. If you are a character animator you won't use it either. I recommend a larger tablet because you won't have to fight with a particular software to get something done you just have your control there and now and don't have to do a ton of zooming. I recommend a Wacom Intuos 12x12.

After that they start getting pretty small. I personally would not go below 9x12 tablet. I have an 12x18 tablet myself, and I use it all the time. The Intuos comes with a 4D Mouse so you can use it on the tablet has many more buttons than a normal mouse and is really smooth to use. Its a good break from your other mouse and helps avoid carpal tunnel. Anytime you can switch devices every so often you are better off. Its a requirement if you are a student or a pro. Generally the better you get in the areas that use Tablets the more you will find that you use them.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Some people have reported succesfull histories setting up a bluetooth wacom device on linux, some help here:
http://cs.ozerki.net/zap/wacom-bt/ [cs.ozerki.net]
And I quote some tips from a message of the linux wacom list:

I just wanted to report that I have been successful at getting the Wacom
Graphire bluetooth to work on fc6.

I used the drivers and instructions at

http://cs.ozerki.net/zap/wacom-bt/ [cs.ozerki.net]

With two minor changes

1) remove #include linux/config.h from core.c, boot.c, tablet.c, and
sock.c before compiling hidp.o

2) In src/xf86Wacom.c two lines need to be switched.

From:

#if !defined(DGUX)
#include <xf86_ansic.h>
#include <xisb.h>
#endif


To:

#if !defined(DGUX)
#include <xisb.h>
#include <xf86_ansic.h>
#endif

I haven't tested it because I use an usb graphire, I have only pasted some help from the linux wacom list, so I don't know anything about bluetooth devices, but maybe I somebody need urgently to use his bluetooth device this could be useful.

thanx everyone for the info. especially MatrixNAN. that had to be the most indepth and informative explaination i've seen on the subject. well done!

since i'm still trying to find my niche in the pipeline i'm putting the tablet decision on hold. however i am still interested in avoiding the mouse as much as is possible - (repetitive injury concerns).

trackballs: are they a viable alternate to mice and tablets? thumb-operated vs. finger operated. large balls vs. small ones? brand x vs. brand y? thick crust vs. thin crust? any opinions? :roll:

thanx,
t.


p.s.: with this post, i've now officially graduated from “lurker” to “poster”. woo hoo!

Hey Terry,

Do not do a small track ball mouse for the thumb. A large track ball your whole hand uses is different, but a small track ball is going to give you carpal tunnel on your thumb fast with our type of work. I use to use them a lot and play games with them back when but when I started to do animation all the time my thumb would start to hurt after only an hour and sometimes would go numb. This is not a good thing. Its probably the worse device you could get for your hand.

The big roller balls are different but for me I have a hard time rolling those big balls and doing finger combinations with the mouse buttons around them. I tend to be either having to roll that big ball or hitting a button but generally its difficult to do both. I have a large Track Ball mouse and don't use it. I can't remember the brand right now but on mine the way they designed the mouse it will even catch your fingers on the edges and pinch them or tear the skin during operation so I stopped using the mouse rather quickly. This, mind you, was probably the most used large mouse balls of the different ones for the animation industry at the time.

There are some other devices out there that are suppose to be good and they run around $500. Then there are even more expensive devices than that which allow you to use a control board with sliders for animation and knobs that you can turn along with switches. There is a 3D Pen which is pretty expensive but thats different really because thats used for modeling and you need to draw on a model that already actually exists so that does not work for most stuff.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Hey Nate,

Thanks again for all the info bro. If you are not a published writer yet I'm sure you will be someday.

I had the feeling that maybe those thumb operated trackballs had those sort of ergo-problems. Unfortunately, it's been hard to find any of the large-ballers with three buttons. I think I did see one Kennsingtion somewhere. And three buttons is what it's all about with this software!

Definately need to get something with three soon before I get much further into it, only have two right now. But I am trying to avoid the mouse as much as is possible due to previous ergonomic “issues” from too much mousing without taking breaks and/or hand exercises, etc.

Using two hands, one for the ball, and one for the button, might be a way to get around the problems you've mentioned with the larger trackballs. And the nice thing about the trackballs is they don't take up any space.

Some of those other devices you mentioned sound very interesting too. Expensive perhaps, but definately necessary for 3D work I am sure. Have any links to check them out?

Cheers,
Terry

I have a XP-Pen Deco pro Drawing tablet [www.xp-pen.com] and use it daily for Blender work. The other posts here are mostly right in that a tablet is MOST useful for sculpting, texture painting, and grease pencil. But that's not to say you can't use it for everything else. I spent about 2 months using it for EVERYTHING in Blender just to get used to it …and now that I'm comfortable with it, I find myself switching between it and the mouse (50/50) for normal 3D operations, box modeling, vertex pushing etc Just depends what happens to be in my hand….and I use the tablet exclusively for some (sculpt, texture, grease pencil).

So it really depends what you want to do. If you never sculpt, or texture, or grease, then it's not worth having a tablet. I personally love the grease pencil and I'm using it more and more to design my next steps before I model them. Just for that alone I think the tablet is worth it's weight in gold. Also if you ever have to do any texture work beyond Beldner texture painting, for example if you have to work in Gimp, then the tablet again comes in very handy.

I had a quick test with a xp-pen 12 in Houdini but I couldn't have it to recognize stroke pressure. Has anyone had success in using xp-pen or huion kamwas with Houdini?