Surface Pro? whats your verdict? I am thinking of getting one.

littleclaude

Hello

Surface Pro? whats your verdict? I am thinking of getting one.

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgfzm1g3lv4[/ame]

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZXuijZRDMw[/ame]

Hayden Zammit

Played around with the Surface Pro 1 for a bit. I put Sketchbook pro on there and it was awesome to draw with. The pressure sensitivity and everything worked really well.

Never tried it for 3D work.

EarthQuake

My take on the surface (used a surface 2 for a bit) and other similar devices:

Its a nice tablet. Thats it.
Its not a laptop replacement, at least not a laptop you actually do work on. The keyboard is ok for a tablet but terrible for a laptop. The keyboard is not physically attached to the monitor so you can't put it on your lap and prop it up the same way you do with a laptop, it has an annoying stand thing that makes it difficult to position. This might sound like sort of a minor quibble, but in reality it totally breaks the whole laptop replacement concept for me.

If you don't mind working on a tablet, and just want a super-beefcake touch based keyboard-less device, and want to occasionally attach a mediocre keyboard, it works well.

If you want to do serious work on it, I would pass. Get a quality laptop instead.

Also, Win 8 makes me want to tear my eyes out.

Justin Meisse

Earthquake: how do you handle the clumsiness of using a laptop + wacom tablet?

EarthQuake

I don't, my wacom is hooked up to my workstation. PC master race etc.

I use my laptop for lots of photo editing, most of which doesn't require a wacom. 3d work I do on my desktop because anything less than a full ergo keyboard and an MX518 gives me RSI, not to mention working on a 11-13" screen is terrible.

I really do love the *idea* of the Surface, it just wasn't there for me in actual use. Though again this was a Surface 2, I haven't tried the 3.

Justin Meisse

I've been looking to get one, I'd primarily just use it for painting and illustration work, it's a big price ticket though. A nostromo or other gamepad would be a good alternative to a keyboard.

Computron

Also interested in getting one for art/programming/math.

I would love to hear about polycounters experience with it for 3d art.

Zack Maxwell

I still own a first generation. It can run ZBrush relatively fine because of how it handles geometry, but for anything conventional like Maya/Max/Modo/Blender, it's not so great.
It will handle lowpoly models, but cannot handle highpoly AT ALL. It also doesn't render so great.
And even with ZBrush, it still takes a while to load certain functions, like retopology. Dynamesh for example is a total no-go because of that.
It doesn't work well with Photoshop either, simply because of the screen size. Even my 24" desktop monitor has small buttons with goddamn Photoshop.
Sketchbook is great though.

I don't know how much of an improvement the third gen is, but the only thing I would personally recommend it for is sketching.
It's great for at least being able to concept stuff out.

Oh, and it doesn't run game engines well either. Unity is just kinda bad, but UE4 is basically unusable.

Jeff Parrott

I priced out a Surface Pro 3 and a Cintiq Companion. The Companion was $100 after getting a better pen for the Pro 3 and a cover (i5 or i7). So I opted for that. I wanted something I could just use to paint around the house or on a trip. For portability the iPad and a small sketchbook is the best.

I would say go to a Microsoft Store and test it out. I went and did that. The pen and glossy screen didn't work for me. So make sure to test it out.

Wacom is announcing a new iPad pen (or something) on Sept 4 so I would hold off for a few days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78EJdC260Wk&feature=youtu.be

moose

I'm probably going to sell my Surface Pro 1, not getting much use out of it, and don't use it as much as I should/want to. It can't play a full movie without stuttering or overheating (not plugged in, airplane travel), but other than that is ok. Did use it to play about 15 min of borderlands 2 on battery before it died. Would think the newer models are much better.

iadagraca

I've played with them a lot but i only own a little vivotab note 8 that i have for sketching.

I love that little thing so i'm planning on getting Surface pro 2/3. I would think it would be ok for some 3d work.

It would need something like nostromo to be effective, which i plan on buying for my desktop anyway.

But considering my great experience with painting on my galaxy note 3, the cintiq companion hybrid seems like a really good option cause i can still use it with my desktop which is more powerful. Cause i honestly don't think i'll want to do anything more than sketching and preliminary work on the go. So this is more bang for the buck imo.

javi

Here's a video by Noah Bradley, who is a 2D artist. He talks about the Wacom Companion, and the Surface 2 Pro. A pretty good watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an9Rzgrzwtk

EarthQuake

Justin Meisse wrote: »

I've been looking to get one, I'd primarily just use it for painting and illustration work, it's a big price ticket though. A nostromo or other gamepad would be a good alternative to a keyboard.

I think if you don't need a real fast cpu for doing advanced 3d stuff, you can probably find a variety of decent tablets for 2d work for a lot less money.

j_bradford

I have a Surface Pro 2, which I got for the intention of doing 3d sketching. I think the biggest draw is the Zbrush just isn't optimized for tablets yet, or Photoshop for that matter. By optimized I mean touch friendly interfaces, larger buttons, marking menus for the pen, that sort of thing.

After about 6 months with it, though, I did pick up sketchbook pro and that's been a godsend of a tool, since it has the tablet friendly interface. So now I use it for sketching, usually anatomy studies. I'll do the windows 8 split screen thing and have reference on one side, sketchbook pro on the other. It like that you can resize to make one side smaller as well. I usually keep a library of all the reference on "onedrive" which syncs perfectly to the tablet, plus onedrive's win8 app lets you swipe between images really nicely. It's really paid for itself now, because I can sit on the sofa and do all the studies without books or anything sitting on my side.

So in my opinion it's really good for that, although maybe a cheaper tablet could perform the same thing.

Andromeda

I have a Surface Pro 2 and it's great for me. Painting/drawing on it is great and I often use it to block out scenes or start modelling in Maya. It seems to handle Mudbox pretty well, especially now that Mudbox has touch controls as well (although they can get super annoying). If you're studying or on the go a lot it's pretty good.

@moose, my SP2 lasts surprisingly well with Borderlands 2 and an xbox controller. It does however mean that I can play sideways in bed. I may never get up again

aesir

I think the problem lies with the operating system. Windows 8 is still too shitty to run a tablet and get actual work done. It feels like I always have to wrangle it to do what I want.

Thermidor

Ive got a surface pro 2, i would say it would fit in nicely for someone that has a powerful main PC or laptop to do real work on, its not a consumer device like an Ipad , but its not really a proper laptop.

I mainly use mine for sketching and watching netflix in bed. I also took it on holiday a few months ago , and it worked well enough as a low power games machine. I used a wireless mouse and keyboard (plugged into a little USB hub i bought for a couple of quid) and plugged the surface into a big TV. It worked well for this.

Its certainly not somthing i would want to do 3D work on.
It fills in for doing the job of a tablet very well, and the job of a mobile laptop pretty well too.

Neox

just ordered a surface pro 3, after my samsung slate fell down and the display shattered a few weeks back. i like sculpting on a tablet its a lot of fun, i hope the N-Trig stuff is good on it. And that zbrush runs well in Windows 8. If those work i'll be more than happy with that toy.

cptSwing

--> http://surfaceproartist.com/

JohnnyTheKid

I got my Surface Pro 3 last weekend but didnt have that much time to play with it yet.
Its supposed to be my mobile sculpting/drawing sketchbook.

As soon as I extensively tested it, I may write a short review here.
If anybody is interested in a certain aspect of it, just ask me here

In general I really like it so far.
but here are a few disadvantages I already noticed:

- It gets damn hot! And I mean really hot.
- by now, it seems like its not possible to edit the function of the pen buttons, so no ctrl+z on your pen

- the intel hd driver occasionally crashes when using Photoshop CS6 (restarting the surface fixed it for me)

- Artdock doesnt work with it (yet). the problem seems to be the N-trig technology

- there is no wireless adapter for the typecover available. Microsoft just stopped producing them..

beside these facts, I really like it. more infos soon.

Neox

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/software/63014-toolbar-creator-13.html
did you try this instead of artdock? damn if i don't have a dock it becoms unusable for me

Clos3d

My Wife has one.... and she is always using my computer. It is a very good comparison to a hybrid bike. You can't use it as a tablet because is heavy, and you can't use as a computer, because is so small.


I know it sound the glass is half empty, but it is exactly it....

JohnnyTheKid

@neox
I didn't try the toolbar creator yet but will do so in the evening..
Another problem that crossed my mind: it might be problematic to get keys like the shift key working in Zbrush. Due to the palm rejection, the surface doesn't respond to your fingers as long as the pen touches the screen...so using the smoothing function in Zbrush for example might be impossible the usual way..

will test that later!

iadagraca

JohnnyTheKid wrote: »

@neox
I didn't try the toolbar creator yet but will do so in the evening..
Another problem that crossed my mind: it might be problematic to get keys like the shift key working in Zbrush. Due to the palm rejection, the surface doesn't respond to your fingers as long as the pen touches the screen...so using the smoothing function in Zbrush for example might be impossible the usual way..

will test that later!

Sounds like you need a nostromo :P

But there's plenty of options, for instance you can use your phone as a hotkey pad for your tablet. roccat powergrid can be useful for this.

Or there's plenty of hotkey apps for your tablet as well i think.

Neox

iadagraca wrote: »

Sounds like you need a nostromo :P

But there's plenty of options, for instance you can use your phone as a hotkey pad for your tablet. roccat powergrid can be useful for this.

Or there's plenty of hotkey apps for your tablet as well i think.

any external hardware for extra keys makes the whole tablet thing entirely useless, then you can just use a laptop and a wacom tablet, really.
the idea is to hold the tablet in one hand while drawing with the other. I have no idea how i would hold another hardware while trying to sculpt from life.

Swizzle

I picked up a Surface Pro 3 a couple months ago. There are a few minor things that bug me about it, but so far it's been a fucking magical experience.

First, the stuff that bugs me:

• There's a tiny bit of lag when using the stylus. However, this has the added benefit of smoothing out lines when painting in Photoshop. Overall, not a dealbreaker as it isn't extreme enough to get on my nerves.
• The button on the front used for calling up the start menu interface thingy is a bit easy to press by accident. It's essentially like accidentally alt-tabbing, though, so it's not horrendous when it does happen.
• It uses Windows 8, and that means the interface isn't 100% as good as it could be. It's dramatically less awful than using standard Windows on a tablet or tablet Windows on a normal PC, though.
• It can be difficult to use on your lap because of how it's made. It works great if you plonk it on top of a backpack or satchel, though.
• The touchpad could be better, but I hardly use it because of how I normally work.

The stuff I like:

• The overall size and shape is fantastic. It's super thin, there's just the right amount of bezel, and the kickstand has a huge range of motion.
• The screen is super high-res and has gorgeous color. The wide aspect ratio is also excellent.
• The battery life is amazing. I've sculpted multi-million poly meshes in Zbrush for hours at a time with medium screen brightness, and still had over five hours left on the battery after I was done.
• The goofy little keyboard is actually very comfortable to use compared to some laptop keyboards I've run across. You can also detach it or flip it around to pad the back of the thing.
• It has plenty of horsepower for such a small package, and spending extra for more RAM was certainly worth it.
• It comes with Sudoku pre-loaded. :poly121:

Things I've heard people complain about, but that haven't been issues:

• The digitizer being N-Trig instead of Wacom has not affected me in the least. Strokes in Photoshop are smooth and consistent, and the pressure sensitivity is actually more comfortable out of the box than standard Cintiq sensitivity.
• It gets pretty warm, but no warmer than any other laptop or tablet I've used. The ventilation seems pretty good, and the kickstand keeps hot parts from touching you.
• Aside from the interface being not 100% consistent, Windows 8 hasn't presented many problems. It's stable, responsive, and I can install whatever the hell I want on it with ease.
• It only has one USB port. This hasn't affected me once so far. The most I ever have plugged in is a mouse or flash drive, and you could get a Bluetooth mouse to be able to use both at the same time.

Overall, I love the damn thing. It's already paid for itself twice. I've successfully done freelance 3D work on it including sculpting, modeling, and baking. I've used it to work on multi-million poly models that required baking a couple dozen 4k textures down to packed 2k texture sheets, and I did that while riding in a car and using battery power.

Justin Meisse

Swizzle: what specs did you go with?

aesir

Question: Is there a way to turn off all the touch input except for input from the pen in windows 8?

Justin Meisse

This microsoft patent might be promising for artists - I just hope they design something a little more functional than a cut in half xbox controller.

JohnnyTheKid

@swizzle: do you use Zbrush on it without the typecover? if so: are you using some kind of toolbar?
the best toolbar imho I found yet is this one:
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/artists/61676-suit-shortcut-ui-toolbar.html

but you cant resize the buttons, so its pretty tiny and hard to target with my fingers.
also, you can't press an onscreen button and use the pen simulataneously..due to palm rejection. I set the button type in the settings to "maint" so it toggles between pressed/unpressed, which is okay.

Neox

so far the experience is far worse than my samsun slate

i couldn't find a way yet to use a toolbar AND the pen at once

which is really horrible, making the use of say the ALT key in zbrush for pan impossible

need to dig further

i tried putting the typecover in the back, but sadly it gets turned off then

disanski

Hey Neox, I don't own a device I can test this out on but have you tried this? I think it should let you map some of the shortcuts onto buttons. Would love to hear your opinion on the surface pro when you figure it out.
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/artists/61676-suit-shortcut-ui-toolbar.html

leslievdb

received mine yesterday, its great for sketching so far
That Suite toolbar posted works for photoshop but in zbrush it doesnt seem to be pressing the shortcuts i bound to the buttons

Neox

disanski wrote: »

Hey Neox, I don't own a device I can test this out on but have you tried this? I think it should let you map some of the shortcuts onto buttons. Would love to hear your opinion on the surface pro when you figure it out.
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/artists/61676-suit-shortcut-ui-toolbar.html

it seems like you can either press a button there OR draw. making the whole thing useless, for shift, ctrl and alt

lblb

Hi,

I'm the guy from Toolbar Creator here:

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/software/63014-toolbar-creator.html

It was mentioned in this thread but I'm wondering if anyone tried it as it seems to solve many of the problems that have been reported for other toolbars:

- it's fully customizable, basically everything can be customized
- as far as I know it works with all hotkey-accepting program (including ZBrush, but you have to run Toolbar Creator as Admin; Ravenslayer, have you tried maybe running the Suit toolbar as Admin?)
- it's fully resizable
- you can map buttons to any modifier you want, so using Alt in ZBrush shouldn't be a problem
- you can add as many buttons as you want or design a completely new toolbar template
- you can have multiple toolbars for different programs, and switch between them very easily

I'm actually not an artist so I don't use it for art programs but the great majority of users use it for that. It's been especially popular with Surface Pro 3 users.

One thing it won't do is allow you to use both pen and touch at the same time. Unfortunately, only the ArtDock-like scripts allow you to do that and they don't yet work on the SP3. But you can still, for example, hit a button on the toolbar to have Alt pressed down, go draw, then hit the button to release Alt. In the next version, you will also be able to remap the SP3's top pen button, the Windows button and the Volume Up/Down buttons.

Anyway, I'm not trying to sell it (it's not like I make money out of it!), I'm just trying to say that it may offer some viable solutions to some of what has been written here. Don't hesitate to ask questions here or in Toolbar Creator's thread.


@aesir:
Turning Touch off in Win 8/8.1 is not as straightforward as in previous versions of Windows. So anything that worked for Win 7 won't work for Win 8. But my Tray Touch Toggle should probably work:

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/software/56322-apps-tablet-pc.html

Neox

i've got the toolbar creator and it is actually a great thing! really really cool i can easily customize anything. i can imagine it working great on the samsung slate or other wacom powered systems.

The biggest letdown of the surface pro using N-trig right now is the lack of being able to hold a button while drawing. This makes the use of tools such as zBrush completely impossible. While you draw in such tools you press alt, shift or ctrl constantly to alternate the brush function or navigate. Is this a ntrig issue or because of the way your tool works? using those buttons as a toggle is just far from intuitive and fast

Another thing that would be great but not part of your toolkit, would be remapping proper right and middle click onto the pens buttons. the functionality right now is really stupid

leslievdb

yeah remapping those penbuttons was the first thing i wanted to do
btw i cant get any of the tools to react in zbrush, i can click the buttons but it just doesnt perform the action. being able to toggle a ctrl or alt button would already be a good start but even that doesnt seem to work over here

lblb

Hi Neox,

I'm glad you like it. The ability to remap right and middle click is already included in the next version (i.e. you click on a button on Toolbar Creator and your pen now acts like it's rght mouse button.) That was actually a request from someone using it in ZBrush.

I completely understand what you mean about no being able to press a button with your finger while drawing. I was in fact one of the most active in the use of ArtDock-like scripts, which allow you to do just that. But it doesn't seem to work for the Surface Pro 3 (although there has been some not fully successful progress here:
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/artists/63005-chomp-toolbar-sony-vaio-duo-13-other-tablets.html)

In the absence of this possibility, maybe you ca try using Toolbar Creator with toggles like i described in the previous post (i.e. toggling modifiers like Alt on/off). Again, I'm not an artist but that seems to be what many of them end up using in programs like ZBrush.

Alternatively, you could potentially try to remap your Volume Up/Down buttons to Alt. I haven't done it (I don't have a SP3), but I can show you things you could try.

lblb

Hey Ravenslayer,

Are you running Toolbar Creator as Admin?

leslievdb

that did the trick! great tool btw

lblb

Hi Ravenslayer,

Cool. I'm glad it works.

As an example, here are screenshots of what users have been able to do when they design their own toolbar template and get rid of all the ugly low-res icons that I've included:

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/software/63014-toolbar-creator-9.html#post407731

If you really need the functionality, I haven't yet included the right and middle mouse button remaps in the version of Toolbar Creator that you have but I can send you the fully functional test program that I used to implement these functions (and actually, the guy from the screenshots is one of the users who used this test program and confirmed that the mouse button mappings works on the SP3.)

leslievdb

i`m up for testing that! i could map my alt and shift to those buttons then perhaps

lblb

Hi Ravenslayer,

You can download a zip file containing the test program from MediaFire.com:

This is just a small toolbar (completely independent of Toolbar Creator) that I developed to test strategies to use mouse buttons. You can launch it by double-clicking the exe file (and stop it by right-clicking on the tray icon). It includes both right- and middle-mouse buttons (when you press these, the stylus should now act as right- or middle-mouse buttons) and toggles for the common modifiers. The button on the right is used to move the toolbar and you can right-click on it (which works when you’ve remapped the pen to right mouse button) to release all the modfiers. (You can also press Esc to quit the program.)

Does it work like it should?

leslievdb

oh i think i misunderstood , i thought you had a tool that remapped the buttoninputs of the pen so when i pressed the actual left mmb on my pen i could have it call ALT or shift or anyother shortcut at that moment

lblb

Hey Ravenslayer,

Yeah, this is used if you need right- and middle-mouse functionality when drawing. It's not used for remapping the pen button. Since both Microsoft and N-Trig mentioned that they would eventually (when?) put out a tool to reassign pen buttons, and since I don't have a SP3 to troubleshoot, I don't really intend on trying to develop something to remap the pen button.

But for its purpose (i.e. letting you have access to right- and middle-mouse action without a mouse), this little program seems like it may be one of the only solutions out there (I may be wrong).

Neox

Man this device... i`m sitting in the park, and really have no idea how to comfortably hold it for sculpting, the need for the keyboard takes so much space, i can barfely hav it on my lap. It's really sad to see that issues that have been solved on older hardware seem to be unfixable here. if only i could turn on touch on a part of the screen while the pen can have the rest of the screen. this would be really good. the hardware itself is great, sculpting feels really good. but i'm constantly shifting positions trying to find a more comfortable one, while the optimal position is something i already had on my samsung slate

Neox

lblb wrote: »

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/artists/63005-chomp-toolbar-sony-vaio-duo-13-other-tablets.html).

thanks for this link! this works in some of the apps, yay touch and pen at once. kickass! now zbrush support would definitely be handy

Neox

okay i got chomp to work for me as the artdock worked, awesome! it needs some finetuning, but it is usable now

lblb

Cool Neox! I'm glad you've found something that works for you. If you end up modifying Chomp to make it work better, don't hesitate to share your findings. Getting ArtDock-like scripts to work on the SP3 is really sought after!

Neox

okay here it is

http://steffenunger.com/zbrushtest.zip

has the most crucial funtionality for zbrush built in.

claydough

Now that surface pro has switched to N-trig over Wacom has anyone noticed significant change good or bad comparatively?

N-Trig and wintab drivers cover all the apps now?

If N-trig anyway...

why not go for more screen real estate like 15" sony flip with the i7 option?