If you are on a budget, i can recommend to you the Hanvon tablets. I own both Wacom and Hanvon tablets and i have to say they work the same, if not better in some cases. They are practically the same as Wacom (no battery, very accurate), if you don’t mind chinese brands.
This is the Hanvon equivalent to a 8x6 inch Intuos 3, except that it comes with two pens, so you dont have to worry about losing it (replacement pens are expensive). There are also cheaper/smaller models for under 100$
It is adequate, 8x5 is about 60% of an A4 sheet of paper.
The screen in the video is the standard inaccurate touchscreen for fingers. Don’t be fooled by him using a pen - that’s just a plastic stick with an electrically conductive tip that acts as a very thin finger. There is no pressure sensitivity or anything like that.
I too am hoping to get a tablet sooner than later. I’ve used an Intuos in the past, and know I can’t go lesser than that. I didn’t realize the Graphire has tilt sensitivity? I know you can get a pen for Intuos that supports rotation as well. is that also the case for Graphire?
Might wanna check out eBay as well, that’s the route I’m lookin. Looks like one can find an Intuos 2 or 3 at a reasonable price, under 100 bucks. The one I used to use at work was an Intuos 2, and that was just fine. I’m sure the side buttons on the 3 and 4 are very useful tho … and I’m not sure about extra pen compatibility.
If you are on a budget the Bamboo Fun pen and touch is nice tablet to get. I was on a Genius 8 x 6 before and the difference between that and the Wacom is like night and day for me. Every body always goes on about 1024 or 2048 pressure but that is the completely wrong thing to focus on. The feel of the drawing surface is way more important as it affects how easily you can move your stylus about. Pen Pressure usually just affects how easy it is to do on-screen blending of your colours, the rendering part of painting.
I will absolutely not a get a Genius again because it had such a slippery surface it took me months before I could adjust to it but the Bamboo, beautiful surface so controlling the stylus a dream.
I have had it since January this year and the only thing I have found negative about this tablet is that the stylus seems to wear out quick. I got about three replacement nibs but I will probably be forced to buy more at the end of the year.
If and when my art level evolves beyond been just a hobby than I will switch to an Inutso. I am sold on Wacom products I heard plenty good things about them before and this time the hype matched my reality.
I have a Wacom Bamboo Fun Pen and Touch. The touch pad can sometimes be unpredictable (seems they have not perfected it yet). But as a graphic tablet it’s great.
here is a different one Hanvon similar to the one Pesho posted…
but 9"x6" and this on has 2048 pressure levels. $185(not sure what they charge for shipping)
I’ve owned an Intuos 3 for a long time and I’ve never actually used the tilt/rotation functionally for anything, ever. (Not counting playing around to see if it works). The only package that actually makes extensive use of this is Corel Painter. Photoshop also has some support I guess, but I’ve never seen anybody use it. Oh yeah, MyPaint has some support too, but seemed a little wonky and hard to control last I checked.
Yeah, the ArtMaster 3 series are supposed compete with Wacom’s Intuos4 line and support tilt etc. But they’re also more expensive than the ArtMaster1 series which are just as good. I guess it depends on whether your monitor is 16:9 or 4:3, as the ArtMaster3 is proportioned as 16:9.
I got a Hanvon GraphicPal 8x6 with tilt last year for 75$ with shipping on eBay, but they’ve been sold out since then. The tilt thing is only useful if you’re into digital painting and want your paintings to look like they’ve been done with traditional media.
Is it easy to zoom in and out with tablets, and normal mouse functions?
I guess another question is do you use a mouse with a tablet, or does the tablet take over the mouse?
Seems like id want my mouse to do normal computet controls like jumping over to a webpage, and then jump back to Photoshop and use the tablet with no fuss or waiting. How does that work?
You can have a tablet and a mouse plugged in at the same time and have both work if that is what you mean. The tablets actually come with a mouse that works off the tablet, but they’re kind of crappy.
I usually draw with my left hand on the keyboard - right hand on the tablet. Then I can just hit keyboard shortcuts with my left hand while drawing in my right. You can set the buttons on the tablet itself to do those things, but I usually don’t.
Edit : For reference I have an Intuos 4 Medium - the larger models it would be a bit more impractical to use the keyboard, so you probably would use the actual tablet hotkeys.
I own a Cintiq 12w and I must say I am not very happy with it.
The screen for the price is way to small and the amount of cables that come with it is pathetic.
Few of my students used tablet PCs which in contrast to what some say here had Wacom displays build in.
They are a bit heavy weight wise but without the cable garbage you can flip them quite nicely like a piece of paper when sketching.
The amount of pressure steps was also more than enough for good work.
The only problem with those as with the Cintiq 12w is ergonomics as it will strain your neck - you will look down a lot.
Maybe an old fashioned tabled without a build in display is not a bad idea after all because you will look more onto a screen 10 degree below your eyes instead of nearly 70 degree down onto the table infront of you.
BTW Blender is really bad when it comes to touch pads and moving rotation and zoom when using gestures. All this stuff works great in 2D apps.
I totally agree with you there. A TabletPC is much more versatile because although a bit heavier, it offers complete portability for a significantly lower price. Wacom is the biggest manufacturer of digitizer boards for TabletPC’s, but they can afford to keep the prices of Cintiqs high as long as their customers are buying them. All you really have to do is stick an LCD module ontop of a tablet - i initially did this with my Hanvon and an old laptop LCD screen, but the cables were too cumbersome and there were some software issues, so i ended up getting a second hand tablet PC.
I guess another question is do you use a mouse with a tablet, or does the tablet take over the mouse?
Both are plugged in, but you can’t use both at once because they will fight for the mouse cursor. You can make some funny zigzag lines by doing that, because the mouse and tablet are trying to get the mouse to be in two places at once
I prefer the regular tablets over Cintiq for that reason (and just general portability), but even after 10 years of using them I still can’t hit consistent clean ellipses with a tablet like I can on paper/Cintiq. I’m sure a future iPad or something will come out that solves most of my current gripes with the Cintiq though.
I found this as well but I am sure if you messed about a bit with the settings it could be resolved, my Genius worked far better in terms of navigation in Blender than my Wacom. But I suspect if you changed the settings from three button mouse to two perhaps it could work better.
But I wouldn’t mind rotating my sculpt like you can do in sculptris
