ZBrushCentral

asus EP121

Community
#1

Hi all
I have been drooling over the potential of this piece of kit for the last couple of days. I have done a bit of a search, seems like its running photoshop and light room well, but I cannot find if anyone has used zbrush with it, It only supports 4 gig of ram, but I am from the vintage school of zbush so i am not too concerned about that, also seeing 8+ gig in a slate is a bit of wishful thinking at the moment in my opinion. So I was wondering If anyone had had a chance to have a look at this yet, played with zbrush on it or have any opinions on it? on paper it seems like it was made for z brush, sculptris and I really would like an excuse to blow my savings on it.

link here if you don’t know what i’m talking about
Asus Ep121

thanks All

Hitch

#2

Looks like it has potential. I’m anxious to hear if anyone has tried it with Zbrush also.

#3

no bezel buttons that I can tell…

that would make things difficult to say the least. also $1k+ for a slate?? thats a bit on the pricey side for my taste

#4

Hey I have the ep 121 and tested Zbrush and it’s absolutely great. I don’t want to speak too soon because it may slow down under different conditions, like more texturing etc. But manipulation was great even when subdividing 6 times. I’ll post more results as I go along. Again, very good feedback, no delay beyond pen delay. After having very poor performance in Sculptris on it was a great surprise.

#5

@ Jabba52

Can you post any videos or give more details as 6 times subdividing doesn’t really say anything. I would like to be able to easily move a few million points around outside in the shade of a tree.

#6

Thanks jabba for the info.

I’m greatly interested too, I’m mostly thinking about sketching in photoshop and using it for the presentation with acrobat and powerpoint with a projector for my sculpting classes.

My stuff

#7

hey jabba thanks for the update, i didn’t realise that anyone had replied to this thread, I just got myne last night, have installed sculptris on it, and i agree there is something not going right at the moment, though i have only played with it for 20 mins, can’t wait to put zb on, have to try to sneak it in at work, will post some dedicated zb stats in the next couple of days

#8

If you do, can you tell us your thoughts on it or post a video. Specifically interested in how many polys you can comfortably push in zbrush per subtool, how does it handle directX shaders, performance in Max or Maya. I think a lot of people would be excited to pick one of these up if there was bit more info on perfromance related to 3d apps.

Thank you for your help!

#9

you guys should check out this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfB8_fL9mIc

it shows zbrush working at 8 mill polys, and a little of maya in there too.
I dont expect maya to work tooo great on anything past a game model, or a few, but it should be fine for basic stuff.

better yet…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeUq3rFfnxg

it works outside :smiley: ( Excited for mine to arrive :slight_smile: )

and another video on the glass element. looks like the glass will withstand a LOT of abuse, and wont crack if its dropped. ( child resistant?! :slight_smile:

http://vimeo.com/8602963

#10

I want that machine so much! I had the ep121 in sight for a while, I think I have been able to track one (hopefully I can get my hands on it).

hey Jabba I guess the reason why you experienced slow down on scupltris is probably because it is using the graphic card, zbrush is using the ram and cpu but I think it doesn’t use the graphic card.

Is the fan noisy? I was checking some reviews and comparison on youtube and some people were saying that the fan could become quite loud!

#11

EP121 with intel gpu might be okay with Zbrush, but I’ll wait for a “fusion/bulldozer” version. Sculptris uses the GPU.

#12

On my unit the fan is quiet. So far I have only sculpted at 2 mil polys and it’s working smooth. Some people mentioned that a few got unlucky with outdated bios/ firmware settings. Makes sense. My Dell desktop had a similar issue. I updated the bios and the main fan became much quieter.

I found mine online at best buy. Just search Asus on their site and you should be sble to find it there. The store I picked it up from didn’t carry it. They actually have deals with apple to make their tablets, and a few other tools more present than their competition. So yeah. Best buy online had a few when I bought mine yesterday.

#13

awesome! totally getting this thing… can you plug in and use an external wacom tablet on it though, like using the intous on it so you can make use of a tablet with higher levels of pressure sensitivity?

I still do want to know what the pressure sensitivity levels are touch-screen wise with the pen sculpting in zbrush and painting in ps.

#14

this is one of the best zbrush tools i have ever come across,I am not usually a fan-boy of products but this thing rocks, I can easily sculpt with over a million polys.What I have been using it for is to get the basic idea of the sculpt down, all the forms and relationships,

Performance

here is a quick snapshot, I have been working on it with nearly 2 million polys with no slowdown at all can work with all the sub tools visible. In the snapshot I divided the head again and did some detailing to show that it can run with a lot more polys, when I put the scales and the stitch marks there was still very little slow down. didn’t like undo very much but that was still only a couple of seconds lag.

preview.jpg
preview.jpg1245×737 142 KB

Battery,

Its no Ipad but it still does ok. Here is an example of zbrushing stats over a 1 hour period, this was just a solo test, will post more if I can get some time. This was modelling for the whole time.

Brightness 5, btooth on wifi off

Balanced perfomance power setting

sing the model in the snapshot

start batt % 90

finish batt % 59

I have a 2 hour train ride home, and i will usually model a bit, play in max or maya a bit, look at some magazines, sketch a bit in artrage, which is free with it and is awesome, and maybe watch a little video and I never flatten the battery.

Cons
The screen is tough gorilla glass but is glossy, very glossy and slippery, so I have to use a felt tip in the pen and I can run through one of those in less than a week, that could just be me though.
I am also having a little bit of colour bleeding on the right hand side, don’t know if i am going to get that seen or not yet.
Running zbrush without a keyboard takes a bit of getting used to and changing your workflow a bit, the supplied bluetooth keyboard is awesome but you get a little cramped using it in a confied space like a train or plane.
The pen provided doesn’t have the extra 2 buttons which are essential for zb but you can pick one up for around 30 dollars.
Battery is not removable, real pain.

will post more stuff about it soon

@KonginChains
I have seen people mod it to do that, have not done it myself, will try to find the link
@ambient-whisper
wacom have updated the firmware, you can dl from the site, shouldn’t do it anymore, i have been having the issue but am too lazy to fix it atm, doesn’t really bother me much.
@lil sister
Like i said, I am becoming a bit of a fanboy of this thing now, you do have to change your workflow a bit but it is well worth it

#15

Does anyone know how to get the pen pressure working for this thing? I made a thread about it earlier? I got the latest Wacom driver and finally PS works no problems although now, art rage doesnt work. I still cant get pen pressure in Zbrush, any ideas?

#16

i hope you don’t mean the pressure sensitivity. check this guy out sculpting in zbrush with a bit of pressure, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfB8_fL9mIc&feature=share

What is that link you’re trying to find to show about?

#17

I’m also considering purchasing one of these, and I’d be interested to know from any users how you get around not having access to the Shift, Alt and Ctrl keys when a penabled wacom stylus only has two buttons?

Your feedback would be appreciated

#18

the slate comes with a bluetooth enabled mini keyboard, apart from this you can also use a keypad like the nostromo

#19

Thanks for getting back to me KonginChains but I’m thinking of buying the tablet to use on my commute, and both the bluetooth keyboard and nostromo keypad would be too cumbersome and impractical. I’m wondering what the solution is if you want to use only the tablet. I guess you could bind the Shift key to one of the stylus buttons and just not do any masking!

Any other ideas or suggestions?

#20

look for solutions like these.

http://docbug.com/blog/archives/000241.html

or… if you want to get your feet involved. this could work. on the train I could see this working ok if its not too busy, and you got leg room.

http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/fs-savant-elite.htm

and this

http://www.fentek-ind.com/gen_keypads.htm#kpp6u

http://theperegrine.com/

you could just get a regular numerical pad and reconfigure those keys?! or the smaller nostromos?

I know that I would like an answer to this as well, and theres a ton of options, but nothing that I could see myself using.