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A good pen tablet for zbrush 3 ?

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#1

Hi guys

Its been long, since I came here.

I am able to walk now and hence came back to my house.

So I will soon start zbrushing and will be reviving my comics

I need to know about a good pen tablet which I can use for zbrush 3 ?

any more specific system requiremnts have changed from z2 to z3 ? Please do mention that also, so I upgrade in one go.

Please give me links for the tablet as I doubt I will find the specific models in my country.

I think I will have to buy it online.

thanks in advance and I do apologize for not being able to come out with my 2nd comics because of my accident.

Regards

Sunny

#2

I would do yourself a favor and limit your search to just Wacom tablets. There are alot of ****ty tablets out there but you won’t go wrong with Wacom. The Wacom intuos are better though if your really straped you could probablly get away with a Wacom Graphire. I think the major difference is 512 levels of sensitivity vs. 1024 (I’ve never used a Grahpire but have seen people use them in zbush). The thing about wacom is that they are THE tablet that everyone uses and thus have the best support (for worked in features) buy every graphics program that uses pressure sensitivity.
As far as size I would go 6X9 but no larger. The smaler version is alright but is a bit cramped. The larger sizes are a workout because you have to move your arm a foot just to pick a new tool.

http://www.wacom.com/

#3

I highly recommend the Intuous 3… I cant imagine using anything else

#4

Hello wckedsunny, how are you? I hope you remember me, maybe not though, I was a bit of a lurker and only around for a short while last year.

I read your other post regarding your accident, and I’m pleased your on the mend mate, I’m sure the time in bed forced you to reflect on a lot of things. Serious misshaps and tragedy’s tend to do that don’t they mate? :smiley:

Anyways, your question is an interesting one, and not as straight forward as it seems! Everyone will simply say, buy a WACOM, almost any WACOM and you’ll be sorted. Not quite unfortunately! :confused:

I recently bought several tablets, after enduring the Wacom Volito 2 for over a year. I say this because, quite frankly, the Volito 2 is a shoddy piece of technology, especially the cheap feeling pen. In twelve months I went through two of them, and when I eventually settled on an Intuos, only then did I realise how bad the Volito 2 was. The pen of the Volito 2 was like a big fat crayon also, and just as clumsy to use, so seriously mate, the Volito 2 model is best avoided in my opinion.

Volito 2 is poo!

I briefly owned and used an Aiptek HyperPen 8000U, and even though people snobbishly say these are crap compared to Wacoms, it wasn’t half bad. It was EASILY better than the Volito 2 that’s for sure and at a fraction of the price and it has a mouse. The pen is a little bulky, as it houses a single AAA battery, but no more so than the Volito 2. I gave it o my brother after settling on the tablet I have now.

This is the exact model I owned:

I then bought an Intuos 3, and quite frankly, considering the hight price, I was not overwhelmed, in fact some aspects bugged me. The pen is a little chunky near the nib where you hold it, and the buttons either side, or rather on the side you hold the pen in, are constantly being nudged by your hand accidently and activating things! The rsponsiveness is great though, I cannot fault that.

Intuos 3 to dear for me!

I briefly tried an Intuos 2, and basically, the tablet is great! I cannot fault anything about it, and I’m currently watching several for sale on ebay.

The Intuos 2 is for you!

The tablet, I currently use, and I find equally as good as the Intuos 2, is the Intuos 1. The pen is perfectly proportioned, and the tablet is nicely styled and feels solid. I managed to get it on ebay for… and this WILL shock you…A ‘buy it now’ price of £5.00!! +£1.00 postage and packing!! In fact the actual postage ended up being £6.00 when i looked at the package when it came, so god knows what the poor bloke was doing who sold it!? I’m not complaining though! I also had to buy a serial-to-usb dongle thingy, but it works 100%. I sold my Intuos 3 after buying this. Luckily Wacom tablets can easily make the same money back if bought second hand :slight_smile:

This is the same model Intuos 1, only mine is a the serial version:

I tried a Graphire4 for literally 2 minutes in a PC shop, and I was not impressed at all! Felt just like the Volito 2, only it had a mouse, which almost totally filled the actual pressure sinsitve area!

I just bought a Graphire3 for a mere £20 quid on ebay just tonight. I hope it’s better than the newer model I tried. The one I bought is bigger at least.

This is the exact same model I bought:

If I were you Sunny, I’d buy an Aiptek hyperpen tablet as cheaply as you possibly can, then save for as long as possible and look out for a cheap deal on ebay for an Intuos 1 or 2.

Hope my meagre knowledge helps a little bit :wink:

#5

I just deleted a long post. Go Wacom. Which one is personal taste. There are many threads on this question. For every opinion there is a counter opinion. One that is mostly universal is buy a Wacom Intuos if you can. If that is out of range a Graphire works just fine for modeling but is not a good choice for painting. Even so a Graphire is far better than a mouse.

Size matters. I keep both a large and small tablet. I never use the large one except when masking tiny details in a photo or using it to trace something. I use the small one 99% of the time. The large one is just to cumbersome and eats up to much real estate forcing me to have the keyboard too far away from my hand.

Continue to get well and welcome back :+1: Just in time for 3.1;)

#6

Hey Blaine, sorry I jumped in with my post first, It bugs when you spend a good 15 - 20 mins or so putting together a decent reply. Have you ever tried the Volito 2? I’m curious to know if my negative experience of the Volito 2 is in the monority?

I actually complained about it to Wacom, and after several emails they actualy rang me personally to enquire what was exactly the problem with the 2 faulty Volito 2’s I’d had. In a round about way, even she said the Volito was crap! The woman i spoke to said you could not expect to much from a budget priced tablet, as if there disigned NOT to last!?

They did apologise and I got a full refund, including postage costs, so I can’t complain. I won’t ever buy one again though.

I think I better stop harping on about the Volito 2 now, otherwise someone will jump in and defend it like crazy :stuck_out_tongue:

#7

Thanks Randy, Salomon, Angel and Blaine

Angel I dont forget my buddies here on zbc. :wink:

I dont have a budget for Intuos, I could afford a graphire though ( the smallest one) :smiley:

Angel the Aiptek hyperpen will I find it in India?

I am a total noob when it comes to tablets and even if you give me intous, graphire and all the others, I will not be able to note any difference. :cry:

Just think a child is first time holding a pen, which one will you give him a normal fountain pen isnt it? he wont be able to respect a parker.

I will buy intous later, just for the start ( for modeling and texturing) which one will be good for a child like me? :smiley:

#8

I’ll probably post this in its own thread eventually but this seems like a good place too.
i just got an Intuos3 and was trying to set up the express keys as ctrl,alt, shift. but from whati’ve experienced they do not work the same as a regular keyboard, they are not persistant, so doing hiding in zbrush is impossible. If anyone knows a trick to get this to work correctly please let me know.
i really want to just be able to sit here with just my tablet and zbrush away, without having a tablet and keyboard on my lap. (I dont have a computer desk)

Oh and just to give my opinion, i love it more than the crappy aiptek i had, also im’ using a 6x8, but have mapped a smaller region to use cause that was too big, i just layed some electrical tape on the draw surface so i have some edges to butt up on for my custom size.
Also i got mine for super cheap, Amazon seems to have the best price i found so far i think it was only $280

#9

spaceboy: I know what you mean about the key assigning mate. I had the same propblem with the Intuos 3 I had, and the one I currently have. You tap on the express key and it’s as if you’ve just ‘nudged’ the key for the funtion and it cannot be held on.

I never persisted in finding out if you could work around this, so I’d be interested to know also.

Comparing an aiptek to an intuos 3 is a bit unfair mate! If you just judge it on it’s own it’s not all that bad. What was the problem with it?

Sunny :smiley:

I’m glad you remember me mate, I still have your digital comic and your interesting facts book, and just looked at them both the other day as it happens, as i was trawling through some archived stuff on DVDR. I hope you get around to doing others eventually mate :+1:

I’m curious to know. Didn’t you use a tablet and stylus to do the comics? If not, I’m truly shocked, as it must have made creating them so much more difficult and that much more restricted in what you could do.

Are you going to buy brand new or second hand Sunny? If you want, or maybe to put it a better way, if you trust me :D, I can keep an eye out for those ‘buy it now’ bargains on ebay.co.uk and bid for you (since you have to be quick when it comes to Wacom tablets) if you set me your budget. It’s just a thought. It may be cheaper to buy one where you live.

Only really the latest Wacom tablet models are carried by most retailers, so any older model Wacom tablets have to be bought on ebay.

If I had to give a list of models (with an affordable price in mind) I’d say buy one of these three:

Intuos2
Intuos
Graphire3 or below

Whatever model you get, make sure you go for the A5 size (6x8) cos as Randy_Riley said, the larger work area is just to big, unless you need the area for tracing large images etc, and anything smaller is just a little to small.

Do you have a serial connector on your PC, as some older Wacoms have the serial connector. You can get a serial-to-usb dongle/cable, but sometimes they don’t work with the tablet, although as I said, luckily mine worked fine.
The safest bet would be to try and avoid the serial version and try and find a USB one.

The main difference between the Intuos and other models, is that that all Intuos models have a tilt sensitivity, by that I mean, if say for instance, you were using a spray brush, the stroke would react as if the pen had a tiny jet of spraypaint emminating straight from the end, so depending on what angle the pen is held/tilted the painted stroke would change direction slightly, unless the pen was held vertically. It replicates the physics of a ‘real’ pen, spray or brush in other words, and doesn’t have just pressure sinsitivity, making it ideal for 2d work also, such as paint app’s, when you can really see the difference of the Intuos.

Hope I’m still helping you here, and not causing confusion Sunny. You did say you were a little clueless about digital tablets! :laughing:

#10

I’ve had very few problems with the Intuous 3’s button assignments… with my set-up, I rarely have to touch my keyboard while ZBrushing… most of the time I am reclined with my tablet in my lap

I have one key each assigned to alt, ctrl, shift, and ctrl+shift… and then the slide bar I have assigned to [] so I can slide my brush size up and down with hardly a thought… and then I have one of the buttons on my pen for ctrl+z and that’s about all I need while I’m working… I could probably do even more if I tried messing with the buttons on the right side (rgb/z-intensity with the other slider?), but that would involve distracting my pen hand

just some more info to weigh your decision… I can kinda see what Angelstein said about the pen buttons being a little clumsy… I often find that the pen rotates as I’m working so that I have to turn the pen in my hand to use the button, which is a distraction… but I consider it a tiny, occassional nag in exchange for all the added convenience and speed those buttons offer

btw, I’ve been using my Intuous 3 for about 2 years now and have only ever had a couple instances where the tablet buttons unassigned themselves, and they’ve always been responsive otherwise… so I cant relate to the issues people have claimed regarding those… it could be a driver issue

#11

From what i’ve experienced is this, each key is persistant by itself, but if you do a combo, say Ctrl+ALt, it now will read that action but continue to only read the second key as persistant, so if you let off of ALT while still holding CTRL it doesnt see that you’re still holding CTRL.

Salmongod, please explain exactly the actions it takes you to do a negative hide in zbrush(the red window) cause even with one button as ctrl shift it doesnt seem to work exactlly as a normal keyboard.

#12

1 Open your Wacom Tablet Properties application
2 Go to the Function keys set-up
3 Click the drop down menu next to the key you want to change, and pick Modifier
4 In the pop-up menu, check ctrl and shift

now, anytime you hold down this function key and click your mouse, the key will add ctrl+shift as a modifier to your keystroke

now that I’m looking at it, I bet you tried to set it up as a keystroke instead of a modifier

#13

Yes Angel

The comic was made with a mouse, all my works were made by mouse. From the time I am using illustrator and photoshop( last 5 yrs), I have used only mouse :wink:

Thats why I am a bit reluctant to use pen tablet as I have no experience.

Ebay is not a problem Angel, the problem is that I want to buy it from a shop nearby so that I can get it fixed if ever theres any technical problem with it, obviously it cannot be replaced everytime like a mouse. :smiley:

and there are not many people in India who use tablets, so finding a shop which can fix wacom tablets is a bigger problem then buying the tablet.

So I prefer buying from a city shop so that I can catch them to repair when the tablet gets screwed.

Though you can keep an eye out on ebay, if theres a good bargain I can always reconsider.

#14

salmongod of course i’ve already tried what you have said, and your method will get you the selection window green but then how do you get the red window?
also for masking its a problem.
EDIT
okay for the sake of it all i tried it again, and it works, it just doesnt work the same as the keyboard strokes, what i mean are the actions are different, it’s just going to take me some time to adapt to them.

#15

I see what you’re saying… off the top of my head, I think I’ve always just worked with the green box and then ctrl-shift-clicked outside the model to invert

but it’s one of those things where I’d have to actually do it to see what I do, and I’m not free to get out my tablet at the moment :confused:

#16

Your post now seems to have been completely hijacked Sunny. Best switch the Wacom technical issues discussion to another post lads, as it’s not relevent to Sunny, no offence! :smiley: :wink:

As far as no experiance with a tablet and stylus sunny, that’s not entirely accurate, as you’ve used a ‘real’ pen for writing and drawing, and the switch over to tablet is just a MASSIVE extension of that. Really, it’s like doing something you do every day, but with much less time and effort and infinitely more possibilities. Once you get one, you’ll never look back mate, I promise you.

It sounds like your planning on buying from new then. Which is probably best if you want a warranty, which in the case of Wacom, lasts for two whole years, which is great.

There was a Tablet manufacturer I didn’t mention, mainly because i’ve never used them, buy I hear they make superb hardware, industry standard in fact.
CalComp make the Drawing Board III, which I’ve seen (and bid for) on ebay occasionally, and they go for less than the Wacoms, even though they are supposed to be better. Maybe because most people know the Wacom better and automatically go for one of them instead of looking for other manufacturers.

Does anyone here own or has use a CalComp tablet? I’d really like to know how well they perform. I heard they have a backlight, which would be ideal for transfering hand drawn animation cells/frames!

#17

Intuos 1, A6 size, serial connector, on ebay right now for £40.00!

‘Buy it now’ so I bet it won’t be up for long!

EDIT: SOLD!! I knew it woildn’t last long.

#18

The Graphire 3 I bought on ebay arrived this morning Sunny. Apart from being disgustingly filthy beyond belief (some people have no shame for pitys sake!) it works great, both mouse and pen have alot of worn area’s of paint, as happens with things like that that have been sprayed a different colour to the actual material underneath. But it works great, and I’d recommend one for you Sunny. Obviously, it still isn’t quite up to the feel of even the Intuos 1, but not not bad, especially for £20!

With you being restricted with your leg Sunny, are you able to get around the shops to track one down?

#19

Yes angel I can walk around.

I travel 10 kms everyday from my bros house to my house and back again just to work on zbrush. :smiley:

I have found out that a graphire 4 will cost me about 5.5 k. I think I will go with that, but I am still a month away from buying it.

anyhow you have meats tutorials on zbrush 3? is that better then digital tutorials- intro to zbrush 3 and the sculpting tutorial?

#20

10k a day for a dose of Zbrush, that’s dedication mate :wink:

5.5k Rupees is just under £70, so that’s a little cheaper than in the UK, even for the very smallest A6 version. I’m looking forward to hearing how you like it. I know you’ll be desperate to talk about it, especially with it being your first tablet! :smiley:

Sunny, please believe me when I say, don’t waste your money on the Digital Tutors ‘Introduction to Zbrush 3’ it’s bloody awful if you ask me. Meats Intro to ZB3 is worth getting, definitely. Digital Tutors ‘Sculpting Techniques in ZB3’ is very good though, maybe because they used a different tutor than the bloke who did the first.

A month to wait then eh? The wait would kill me!
:evil: :evil: :smiley: