Has anyone here really looked into using a tablet such as the acer iconia or anything to run animation software? Laptops annoy me, and I’m so confused as to why others aren’t looking into this. I use tons of Blender and ZBrush and I’ve been thinking that the uses of this tablet would be phenomenol. They seem to have just enough power to do everything you really need. Has anyone else looked into this?
I suggest you go buy one, put a non Android operating system on it (if Windows for ZBrush, assuming you can get a build from MS to run on ARM processors) and feed back your review. Having a tablet device myself, I can only believe it would be a horrible experience.
Ya, I tried to do 3D stuff (specifically, Strata) on a touchscreen (specifically, a TransNote) some years ago and didn’t enjoy the experience. Problem is, right-clicking is a pain – and it appears in the case of the Acer Iconia that you will need to jump through hoops to emulate a middle-click.
There might be some issues that need to be resolved first before you can have an app. that only uses touch input.
Take Blender for instance, it uses perhaps over a hundred different hotkey and mouse input combinations to access all of the tools, how do you create a quick way to access tools like that with a touchscreen instead of making everyone ‘click’ through the menus and icons to run most of the tools as a result of not enough ways to use gestures to create the number of shortcuts a 3D app. demands.
Basically the thing then would be that you would have to redo large portions of the user interface and workflow because you do not have all the different input options provided by a keyboard with a mouse.
A tablet with N-Trig tech, simultaneous touch and stylus input would intrigue me, as an input device. Also for camera viz with GPS and accelerometers, combined with Kinect type input. Use your hands to grip, bend, flatten and look at the model from all sides with the tablet would be tres strange way to interact with Blender.
I saw one in a shop the other day. I walked past and got the renewal for my XBOX live instead 
- porting from click based events to touch based events is a pain in the ass developer wise ;)!
If we could use the tablet as an input device while working on the desktop computer that would be nice. Imagine having your monitor have the 3d window in full screen while your controls and settings are shown in the tablet instead.