Tablets: lots of questions
polycounter lvl 14
EDIT 12.23.2010:
There are some new questions down there http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1260137&postcount=16
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I got this 140€ Aiptek/Genius/noname "Media Tablet 14000U" since approx 2 years now. The active area measures 12" x 7 1/4" an I bought it with the intension of "bigger is better".
Now lately these 2 other Tablet threads were starded here and some told that it is a matter of prefearance if one ues a small or a big tablet. It got something to do with drawing from the wrist or the whole arm. I can't realy tell what I do, my huge tablet foced me to draw with the arm, yet I feel more comftable when drawing from the wrist when I do it on paper (and I rotate the paper alot).
What I can definately tell is that, the first monent I used my tablet I could not handle this "looking at the screen and drawing below your nose". I can't get a decent circle when not looking at my pens tip and see it moving. So I thought about gettign myself a Tablet with display. Now there are these two Wacom Cintiq Tablets with 1000$ and 2000$, defiantely nothing for a hobby artist like me. I tried googling for "display tablet", "screen tablet", "tablet monitor", "wacom cintiq alternative" etc., additionaly I am NOT a online shopper at all, thus got not much "experiance" with finding products online. I stubled over some weird Terminal PCs, I-pads, and tablet notebooks mainly at amazon.de.
So some questions appear to me, that I would like to ask you professionals and experianced people:
That about covers it for now ;P
There are some new questions down there http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1260137&postcount=16
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I got this 140€ Aiptek/Genius/noname "Media Tablet 14000U" since approx 2 years now. The active area measures 12" x 7 1/4" an I bought it with the intension of "bigger is better".
Now lately these 2 other Tablet threads were starded here and some told that it is a matter of prefearance if one ues a small or a big tablet. It got something to do with drawing from the wrist or the whole arm. I can't realy tell what I do, my huge tablet foced me to draw with the arm, yet I feel more comftable when drawing from the wrist when I do it on paper (and I rotate the paper alot).
What I can definately tell is that, the first monent I used my tablet I could not handle this "looking at the screen and drawing below your nose". I can't get a decent circle when not looking at my pens tip and see it moving. So I thought about gettign myself a Tablet with display. Now there are these two Wacom Cintiq Tablets with 1000$ and 2000$, defiantely nothing for a hobby artist like me. I tried googling for "display tablet", "screen tablet", "tablet monitor", "wacom cintiq alternative" etc., additionaly I am NOT a online shopper at all, thus got not much "experiance" with finding products online. I stubled over some weird Terminal PCs, I-pads, and tablet notebooks mainly at amazon.de.
So some questions appear to me, that I would like to ask you professionals and experianced people:
- Are there any cheap (below 300€) alterantives to the wacom cintiq?
- Would a tablet notebook do the job too, meaning is it as precise as a real tablet? I think about getting myslef a laptop aswell, so that would be a opporunity.
- I do not have the opporunity to test small VS big tablets, there ain't any electronic shops in my town that offer any tablets. Is it realy a difference? Can't you just zoom out in your app and draw from the wrist then?
- Do you have any problems to draw on a surface you do not directly look at, is that a matter of training? Is it a good idea for a realtively unexperianced beginner to buy a tablet with screen or ,like stated above, should I train more? What expericance did you make when you started with tablets?
That about covers it for now ;P
Replies
I've got a Toshiba m200 which runs at a 1400 x 1050 resolution so it's not too bad although it's a horrible tn panel lcd screen which means the colors and contrast change when viewing the screen from different angles.
The only other drawback of tablet pcs is finding the right pen, most only have a left and right click. You need to get a wacom duo switch pen or one of the older cintiq pens to get a middle mouse button, those pens seem to be pretty rare these days.
How long have you used your tablet? It takes time to get used to them.
When I draw my hand rests on the tablet, wouldn't that make me draw with the ball of the hand instead of the pen or at least cause some funky lines?
My current Pen also just got 2 Buttons the Scroll wheel is on the tablet itself.
I got my tablet since 2 years, but do not use it on a regular basis.
Mostly for concepting models or to practice anatomy, I do not sculpt much. I think I do not use it often since i feel somewhat uncoftable with it.
And I use SketchBook Pro for drawing, if that matters.
So far as size goes were taught in college to draw from the shoulder. Personally i found my line quality and general flow/confidence really increase when i got used to drawing with my whole arm. Have you tried working a little bigger on paper? Using your arm can often give your line better flow and confidence
Mostly I draw on paper just because my Tablet is not at hand.
Also, I am not that good at drawing in general.
Thats my last drawing so it schould somewhat reflect my current skill level.
Personaly I think I need a lot more practice, good thing that summer vacation starts tomorrow
So it's not that a tablet with display needs less training to draw on?
Tablet pcs are really easy to draw on, but their screen size is fairly small. Like drawing on a piece of printer paper. The m200s screen is great for drawing but not so good for texturing because of the color/contrast issue. I think the Motion tablets have much better screens, something like 180° viewing angle so I'm thinking they would be better for color work.
I don't draw too much lately but I do use my wacom 9x12 for just about everything, if only I could get the pen to work well with UDK... I switched from using a mouse mostly to reduce the chance of developing carpal tunnel.
Thanks for these suggestions so far!
You know of any other manufacturers that produce Screen Tablets like Wacom?
So no Tablet PC just a tablet that needs a PC to work.
I concider buying a laptop or tablet PC but I would prefear a plain tablet.
Found this pic on the somewhere though I don't remember where.... Anyway it's showing which pens should work with Tablet PCs and which won't.
There was a post a while back about how to put together cintiq like thing from a salvaged laptop screen and a big wacom but I think the problem with that was the real cost ended up being near enough to a small wacom cintiq that it made it not worthwhile considering the chance of successfully putting it together seemed rather low at best.
EDIT:
Well here's the *product* I dunno... buyer beware I guess. The page that linked to that product page.
I can't say wether my aiptek I got here is worse than a wacom, but the preasure sensety feels a bit strange and the whole hotkey mamager stuff feels kinda cheap. I suppose wacom solved all this way better.
As a pure hoby artis I feel hapy with my tools though and getting another "noname" tablet with screen for arround 300 would make me even more happy
But as r_fletch_r said, I probably just need some more practice and not necesarily a screen-tablet. But if there is a ceap manufacturer out there I would give it a try neverless.
Ben Apuna:
That tablet modding isn't realy suitable for me. I wonder why aiptec got no such screen tablets :S
the link! http://www.wacom-components.com/english/partner/index.html
There is some tablets pc, that have a touchscreen with preasure sens uses wacom technology.
I've just looking some of these for myself.. soo.. maybe helpfull
If someone use some of this for drawing/sculpting, rendering?), so please tell your opinion
So I am still sitting here with my Aiptek tablet and it still did not give up on me.
I don't have the pssibility to test a wacom tablet my self, so I can't realy compare it with my current one. There are several threads here on PC thats point is simply "get a wacom, it's worth it".
No if I would get myself a wacom, the only thign to consider is whether one draws from shoulder or wrist, since that would determien the size I need.
I think I draw from the wrist, but the tiem with my 305x185 active area forced me to draw a little more from the shoulder, so I feel somewhat in between. The Bamboo seems to be the prefeare tablet for beginners, but since I already use mien for quite some time, I am not shure if a bamboo would take me a step back quality whise.
Thats why I consider buying a Intuos4 M. M because it's a little smaller than my current one so that might go better with my dominating wrist drawing. I think a S might be to small, but then aggain I am realy not shure. This is what I am refering to atm http://www.wacom.com/intuos/compare.php.
Now before I eve ncontinue telling never-ending sorries about my "problems" I go ahead and ask some questions if it's even woth gettign a new tablet when my old oen still does it's job, so here we go:
I know the best sollution to all this questions would be to test it myself. One of my friends onws a Bamboo (pen & touch?), but I was currently looking out for a Intuos.
We have a few concept artists here who use a tablet constantly, some of them got a oversized one at first but they all reverted to the medium size because its the perfect size. Anyway do a Google search because like said this stuff has been discussed to death.
I realy try not to start useless conversations here on PC.
Thats one of the reasons I used this old existing thread and did not start a new one (maybe you just dindn't notice that this is a old one). I also checked most of the treads that turend up when searching for "Wacom tablet" and these answered some questions, yet the five above still remain.
So as I said, I googled but found controverse information about the pen roatation, I don't trust random google search results as much as answers dircetly from professionals. I just recently figured out that you need a special pen, the Intuos 4 Art Pen to get rotation sensitivity.
But honestly, is it realy that wrong to ask professionals bevore I spend hundrets of dollars? There is a reason why these threads pop up frequently.
For the wacom vs non-wacom stuff, I got a friend at IT dept store who sells tablet (from many brands) and what he said was that the consumer who bought wacom never come back with complain about it, but the non-wacom consumer lots of them come back and complain with the products after few months/years. So yea you get the idea, wacom can save you money in the future cus you can use it for 5-10 years from now.
_Revel
Thanks for the info! You say you use a Inuos at work, can you tell me about these macro keys it got? My aiptek got 36 of them and I can assing Keyboard shortcuts and .exe files to them. They are activated by tipping with my pen on them, not by hand. The wacom buttons are pressed by hand, only 8 of exist and it got this "touch-ring", does it also have this active area buttons? It certainly does not seem like, but I'd like to ask anyways
Edit:
I cut out the sizes of the active areas now, M seemed qutie small at first, but on the L there is a lot of useless space when drawing. Yes I think M will do just right. Thanks for the suggestion Revel
i just wanted to throw in juist a little bit of my experience:
i got myself a big DinA4 tablet back when i started...
now, a little over 2 or 3 years later i got one at office, being DinA5.
now reverting back from the smaller one to the bigger one feels really awkward, a smaller tablet is definatly much handier (though that is my own experience, you may find it being differently...
Honestly I'm not really care about the button they have on the tablet since the keyboard still in reachable area with my hand and I don't see a point going through assigning all the shortcut keys to that button, also my hands are used to reach keyboard instead of button in intuos
The only thing that I set with the wacom is the button on the pen instead of double click (by default) to middle click heheh..
_Revel
There, as you see the "K-Buttons" are no actual butons, they are inside the active area of my tablet and get activated when I "paint" on them. So with my tablet I can't assign i.e. Ctrl to a button and hold it while drawing, since I need the pen to hold it. I prefear "real buttons" since they allow me what I just described. I was jsut curious if the wacom tablets have this too. I don't find anything about this, so I doubt that. I normaly got my keyboard in reach too, but beeing able to sit back (I got a couch next to my PC) and just use the Intuos, shure will be a nice experiance.
xXm0RpH3usXx:
Seems like bigger is not necessarily better in this case
If I don't force myself to draw from the shoulder I don't do it and for wrist drawing M does just fine (from what I can tell with Revel's paper test).
One more question about the Intuos4 touch ring: Does the button in the middle just toggle the rings behaviour or can you cnage it to also toggle sets of Hotkeys?
_Revel
I don't want one because people say it's better, thats why I inform myslef here. It seems like it offers some features and especialy more (community) support than my one, like the abbility to adjust the preasure curve, I have been struggeling with the preasure sensity of my tablet since ever. It's like you would need exponentially more preasure towards the higher levels and I would realy love rotation sensity, but yeh, that requires me to spend another 100$ for that special pen
I shure will not buy somethign that expensive slightly, but I consider it, since it turns out worth the money more and more. If I get one that will be earliest March anyways, after my exams
Good point neverless, thanks. Will see if Mudbox got a use for it aswell.
Also by default, the recent Wacom drivers are kinda crappy. Theres a 3rd party utility one can install to get a better response curve.
Rotation sensitivity is only used in Painter and Photoshop. Maybe ArtRage too. But I am pretty sure you need the 6D pen to make it actually work. (in short : the intuos tablet all support rotation/twist, but only special styluses trigger it. Yeah, thats basically a scam)
Also I think that some apps use their very own proprietary tablet driver engine - like Alias sketchbook, OpenCanvas and SAI. Those usually feel much better than Photoshop (if I understand correctly it relies fully on the Wacom drivers)
But yeah just keep using yours until it breaks or until you got the cash for a Wacom. You dont even need pressure sensitivity to make good illustration anyways - low Flow in Photoshop is totally enough.
How usefull is tilt and rotation then? I imagine you can buld some nice PS brushes in PS, but in the end it's all about training, which I need a lot more of. The smaller Area realy seems to make a difference though.
You guys gave me some valuable information, I think I know what to look for if my tablet breaks someday. Maybe they even drop the prices till then, who knows
That's what I'm waiting too lol...otherwise got no reason buying an intuos 4 replacing my graphire 4 which until now still perform great (i have it for around 4 years now)..
Btw, photoshop tilt function depends on personal needs actually. Like for example me using photoshop for creating some scratches in metal texture or scars or character's skin or laying random color for dirt layer and stuff like that which not really benefit from tilting function. What I really need from wacom tablet is the pressure sensitivity over what mouse can give. Even though now I'm hardly touching the mouse for doing anything because holding the pen is more natural in my hand heheh..
_Revel
6x8 or 6x11 is the perfect size too.