Bamboo multitouch pen tablet?

Thegodzero

I don't even know what to think about this. Do i still get to use a pen?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/15/wacom-bamboo-multitouch-pen-tablet-spotted-by-mr-blurrycam/

Axios

Fingerpainting, wave of the future

EmAr

If that combines fingers with the pen, that could be awesome. Rotating/zooming with your fingers and painting with the pen... Could that be why there are 4 keys on the thing?

Seaseme

Wow. That is AWESOME. I'm glad I waited on buying an Intuos 4 - This might be worth the wait.. Gotta wait for some reviews I s'pose.

Vito

Isn't Bamboo their "business" or "value" line? 256 levels of sensitivity instead of 1024, that sort of thing?

dolemite

Vito wrote: »

Isn't Bamboo their "business" or "value" line? 256 levels of sensitivity instead of 1024, that sort of thing?

ya.


what is this thing? Is it just a big touch pad?

Marine

make it wireless and it would be perfect for a htpc

carlo_c

Oh cool, would like to read a review to see how it performs but I could see some finger gesture stuff being really useful.

From one of the readers comments at engadget:

"On shelves at staples. Put the display out last night lol 69 for the touch, 99 for the touch and pen and 199 for the bigger one with the touch and pen"

pior

Cool, I love the idea of a big multitouch track pad to select brushes, pan around an so on. Wonder if its as good at tapping as an ipod touch.

Can't wait!!! An instant buy for sure!

Seaseme

Honestly - I can't help but wish that Wacoms were wireless. That would be AWESOME. My wacom's wires drive me insane.

Frump

Just what I need, more peripherals!:)

If it is truly only 69$ then why not buy it? I just hope it is pressure sensitive rather than heat sensitive. Like DS vs iPhone, I much prefer the pressure sensing screens on DS to the inaccurate and unwieldy heat sensitive iPone ones. Though, maybe your fingers would get tired from pressing all of the time.

Unleashed

just bought it, it is essentially a larger touch pad like those found on a laptop. its fancier though, might be comparable to those new macbook ones.

thoughts after messing around for 5 minutes: i can see it being quite cool as an auxiliary tool to change brush size/intensity in zbrush, maybe change colours or opacity for painting. at the moment its a little pricey considering what it does but it does have potential if people are able to change its functions. if not its not worth it at all for artists here, it certainly isnt replacing my intuos4 any time, for art id rather use an intuos1 or mouse if it came down to this or that.

fyi it doesnt seem to be heat sensitive, i can move the mouse with pieces of paper. also I bought it at best buy.

t4paN

Vito wrote: »

Isn't Bamboo their "business" or "value" line? 256 levels of sensitivity instead of 1024, that sort of thing?

512 actually, I'm using one and on slow sensitivity it isn't all bad. I can only imagine how much better an intuos must feel though.

Michael Knubben

512, yeah. My home tablet is a bamboo, and they're decent tablets. Much better than any of the cheap ones I've tried from competitors.

EmAr

Thanks for the info Unleashed. That sounds like it could be a good additional tool for graphire owners who can't afford an intuos(like myself).

pior

Okay one question. is it all relative, like a laptop trackpad (pushing the cursor progressively) or is it absolute like an iphone touchpad? More specifically : could one tape some kind of transparent or opaque grid/layout on it, and tap certain areas to activate certain tools or shortcuts?

(imagine if the icons in the iphone main menu where shortcut placed absolutely. I hit the first one, its B for brush, the one next to it, it's E for eraser. Could you do that with that bamboo stuff?)

Unleashed

its like a laptop trackpad, the mapping isnt like a tablet. and no you cant (at least with the current software) tap certain areas to activate specific programs or functions (at least on first glance)

Illusions

New Bamboo is out...check it out at your local Wacom site if you want to compare prices. Pressure sensitivity has been upgraded to 1024!

System

Got a bamboo here too and it's great but not sure about this new one. It certainly looks cool but duplicated functions? Seems like buying an ipod with a remote control

Thegodzero

I want to know if the touch ability's would be good enough to replace the need for the buttons. I keep looking at the bamboo fun ($200) and the Intuos4 med ($350). I'm unsure what to get for home...

Correction the bamboo still has 4 user defined buttons. I think i'll give the bamboo fun a go.

ZacD

I love my intuos4 large, but I never used the bamboo...

Thegodzero

Ok as the bamboo doesn't have tilt, and i never pay much attention to what all my tablet at work is picking up. What all in PS uses tilt? What does tilt control on a brush? Pressure yeah i see that greatly in action but tilt i'm not even sure i take advantage of that.

pior

TGZ, I know that the Steambot guys use tilt quite a bit on their 'palette knife' brushes. It creates a nice wiggly, smoke-like effect. I believe you can also see it in action on some of the recent PoPersia concept art.

You might find twist more useful than tilt tho (give you the broad alcool 'marker' look easily)

achillesian

EmAr wrote: »

Could that be why there are 4 keys on the thing?

for the record my bamboo also only has 4 buttons, and a weird wheely thing

mLichy

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srcARk0Lt84[/ame]

rooster

wonder what it's like for games

sprunghunt

I wonder what it's like for zbrush! or photoshop?

moose

sooooo, you can buy something to make your desktop computer as frustrating to use as a mouse-less laptop?

.... awesome.

mLichy

soulstice

moose wrote: »

sooooo, you can buy something to make your desktop computer as frustrating to use as a mouse-less laptop?

.... awesome.

qft

Thegodzero

So it's $315 for the intuos4, $230 for the intous3, and $170 for the bamboo fun on amazon...
That doesn't make it easier to pick one!

Emil Mujanovic

moose wrote: »

sooooo, you can buy something to make your desktop computer as frustrating to use as a mouse-less laptop?

.... awesome.

Yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing.

This is totally wank.

Lamont

rooster wrote: »

wonder what it's like for games

Just like any Wacom for games.. it sucks.

Thegodzero

Ok so today something occured to me, how often does your hand touch the surface of you tablet? I know when I'm using mine at work my hand is half resting on it. So with the touch sesitivity on the bamboo I bet it would be trying to do shit while your drawing. That would suck... So fuck it, sounds like the only real option for me is an intous.

Unleashed

returned it yesterday, btw you can disable touch functions, so I assume you can use the pen only if you wanted(I had the bamboo touch, no pen functions). and yes, terrible in dawn of war

East

You think you could use the Bamboo Touch in combination with an Intuos4? I'd imagine using the Intuos4 to draw with, and then placing the Bamboo Touch next to it, using its multi touch function to zoom, pan, and rotate in progs like Photoshop and Painter.

Or do you imagine the two would conflict somehow?

EzMeow

That's exactly the question I was wondering (even if I got an old intuos 2 u.u).

Slash

i fail to see the usefulness of this thing. A mouse will be better than a laptop touchpad for navigation any day, and on my wacom intuos4 i have 8 programmable buttons, two on the pen and a scroll wheel with 4 programmable functions.. I don't see why i would need anything beyond that.

pior

Well yeah if what east describes actually works, it could be pretty slick ...
Especially with CS4, for panning and rotating.

Anyone tried that thing already ? I'm tempted to 'rent' one from the Apple store or Amazon ... but restocking fees are a pain.

dolemite

this is thuh stupidest fucking device i've ever hear of innit.


zzLOL


How did this thread get resurected? It was so buried.

Slash

pior, the intuos 4 will take care of the panning and rotating for you. Personally i've mapped space to one of the buttons for panning, and rotation is mapped to the fourth scroll wheel function. Having a second device for panning and scrolling would just slow you down.

pior

One could argue that having a hand on a mouse instead of the keyboard, while the other is holing the stylus, would be a slowdown too :P But yeah I see what you're saying .... especially since Adobe managed to completely fuck up the touchpad response on CS4 mac, I wouldnt expect the bamboo touch to be any better ...

Slash

The thing is, you don't really need the mouse or keyboard anymore. At least i don't, i've mapped my most used key combos to 7 of the buttons, with the 8th being the radial menu, which is also completely customizable, holding things like "save, save as, smart sharpen, play porn.avi" etc. So with one hand on the pen and the other resting comfortably in the general hotkey area i can work with very little interruption by the mouse or keyboard. The touch ring holds zoom, brush size, brush softness and rotate as its four functions. (or at least thats what it did before my windows crashed a little while ago, i haven't set up my tablet completely like i want it yet.)

//edit: And i might be 14 years old mentally, because i laugh every time i see my flip canvas horizontal button, which is labelled "boobies" on the oled display. I love what technology allows us to do! :P

//edit: PS: earlier when i said "scroll wheel" i meant the touch ring of the intuos 4.

Xoliul

I have one, got one from work since they had a few lying around. It's cool for how easy the finger stuff works, but there's a few flaws that really bother me:

-To zoom out when I'm doing 3D, I need to switch from resting my pen hand on the tablet, to doing the scale movement with 2 fingers. That means lifting right hand from tablet, dropping pen, do scale/zoom gesture and picking pen back up. That's just ridiculous.

-Drivers have problems with Photoshop CS4: I'm not the only one, several students at school have this too: When using Photoshop, it switches to using only half of the width of the tablet, making horizontal movements twice as sensitive. It's only in Photoshop, and there are no per-program settings.

So it's annoying and hampering to my workflow in Max, and it pretty much doesn't work in Photoshop, which results in me barely using it as it's only good for browsing the web a bit.

Firecracker197

moose wrote: »

sooooo, you can buy something to make your desktop computer as frustrating to use as a mouse-less laptop?

.... awesome.

I know right! Why would I buy this when I have a wireless mouse so I don't have to use that stupid laptop mouse.

I say if you have the money to spend on an intuos then do it, if not get a bamboo but its always going to be less functional in some way, and this touch thing seems like a pointless gimmick to me.

East

So by the sound of things the drivers aren't quite mature enough to do what I want it to do. I'd use the buttons on my Intuos4 for some of the functionality, but they aren't that well placed for me. There's been some interest in the studio for this thing among a few of the artists as it could be used nicely alongside a tablet for some quick sketching, if this is even possible.

Might just have to expense one to see if we can do anything about the drivers..

dolemite wrote: »

How did this thread get resurected? It was so buried.

Because I unburied it. Is this a problem? I could have made a new post about it, but then I'd probably have someone else go "lulzwutz there's already a thread about this thing use the search b4 posting lulznubz .." :P

Michael Knubben

East: Pro-tip. If someones post consists for more than 50% of things that look like this:
"this is thuh stupidest fucking device i've ever hear of innit.


zzLOL"

Then you're free to ignore anything they say.