Im pretty new to Blender and was wondering what benefits a tablet would have.
Thanks for the advice.
Im pretty new to Blender and was wondering what benefits a tablet would have.
Thanks for the advice.
It won’t make you better at drawing automatically. You need to train a lot and a bit more.
It may allow a more intuitive way of drawing on computer instead of using a mouse.
It’s definitely worth a purchase in case you are going to work on graphics much.
I don’t think a tablet will be of much use in blender but it’s probably great to use for photoshop, gimp and other art programs
Tablets are great for sculpt mode, and as texture paint improves I can only see their utility in blender growing.
i personally think “tablets” themselves are useless, but tablet PC’s may be a good investment…
I don’t think a tablet will be of much use in blender but it’s probably great to use for photoshop, gimp and other art programs
2.5 is expected to have much better support for all input devices, so a tablet should be useful enough in blender, especially with texture painting and sculpting (it already is to some extent).
my intuos (wacom tablet) saved my wrist and hand. i find it much more ergonomic and intuitiv to work with a pen than to click the mousebuttons all the time. you can work very quickly in blender with tablet even if you don’t do sculpting - though THAT rocks with a tablet!
There was just a thread about this in the Modeling forum recently:
I think thats just flat out silly.
BlueSteel: No kidding. I wonder which planet this guy is orbiting around.
Vitaliy: You ever used a tablet much, buddy?
i have actually bought a tablet with my laptop (3 months ago) and used it for about a week…then put it back in the box and returned it to best buy… and on the other hand i used a tablet pc, it rocks
jsut for the record i had wacom intuos 9x12
It certainly is useful for illustrators like me (can’t live without it!). Don’t find it much use in blender though, although I haven’t touched blender’s sculpt tool yet.
And yes, it does have quite a steep learning curve especially for those who are aren’t “accustomed” to drawing on paper in the first place. But persevere, and you won’t need to return it to the best buy!
@vitaliy: A week?! C’mon, be fair… you shoulda give it more time! I struggled with mine for a month or so before it finally became second nature
edit:
I realise now you might have not meant that you struggled with the tablet for a week. Oh well, still…
i personally think "tablets" themselves are useless, but tablet PC's may be a good investment.....
you are of course entitled to your opinion, however groundless.
i use a tablet a minimum of 8 hours per day, 5 to 7 days a week, and couldn’t imagine any other way of working (yes, even in blender).
Edited for stupidity. Suffice it to say I think that the quote above pretty much sums it all up.
Haha i’m glad I made someones day
I probally should have made a yes or no poll
lol
I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at Vitaliy’s post.
go ahead and laugh, i expressed my personal opinion, and they expressed theirs, its not like i told people “no you shouldn’t buy it, its a bad decision”, this is a discussion forum now isn’t it?
i also pointed out that tablets aren’t a bad idea if they are in the form of a touch screen monitor that is pressure sensitive… i just don’t like the whole idea of drawing on something thats 9x12 (which is big and kinda expensive, some people have it even smaller) in comparison to my 21 inch display, or the 17 inch wide screen on my laptop… if its mounted to the screen…much easier to use… plus i like those lil pen tools that the creators of Elephants Dream used… (lil extending arm thinga magigy…those i liky)
ehh, but thats just me…
If I’m imagining what you’re talking about correctly, no we didn’t use those.
Mate, he expressed a personal opinion, there’s no need to act like a prick about it.
Must every thread around here these days degrade from potentially useful into personal jibes? sigh
Eh, you’re probably right.
EDIT: Edited the picture out. Sorry about spamming up the forums with retardedness. I can be rational, too, you know. /
Suffice it to say, though, I think that trying it for one week, then getting rid of it deciding that tablets are, as a whole, useless is a bit… I dunno, arrogant, at best? That’s what I was laughing at, not the fact that he doesn’t like them. If he doesn’t like them, that’s fine, but his way of assessing them just struck me as really funny at the time, especially in the face of something like http://www.metalandmagic.com/, for example. This artist uses natural media, but she uses a tablet a lot, too. a Wacom 4x5. An itty bitty Wacom 4x5. A broad generalization like ‘tablets are useless’ just seems so… I dunno. Silly? Anyway, sorry about the stupid picture, but I stand by my point.
If you don’t want to trawl through the website, then this fine picture on it was made digitally.
OTHER EDIT: I’m also fully aware of my tendency towards being a butt. Give me a prod if I start slipping again, will you?
Right, let’s get back to the usefulness part.
@vitaliy: You can actually scale down the active area of your tablet through its settings in the control panel so you don’t have to use the whole area.
I use an old graphire3 4x5, it has a low resolution of course. Illustration-wise, while drawing it’s pretty hard to accurately detail something while zoomed out. Zooming in to draw in the details is somewhat like a bad habit because you lose sight of the overall picture and tend to overcomplicate the details. Using a larger res tablet makes it easier for me to draw in the details without zooming in as now the surface area of the tablet is closer to the size of the screen itself. As for being able to draw on a touch screen tablet PC instead… well, once you get used to drawing with a graphic tablet it doesn’t really matter much as long as you can see the cursor on the screen.
Both tablets and tablet pcs have their pros and cons of course, etc, etc. However, if I had to choose either one I’d still rather opt for a large wacom intuous for being immensely cheaper and more durable, the ability to draw right on the screen is a minor advantage in my opinion especially since touch screens are prone to damage.
As for its application in blender? I reckon a small 4x5 suffices, 'cos you’re not actually painting by pixels so a high res tablet isn’t necessary. Me, I prefer working with the mouse while in blender.