I’m thinking of getting a tablet, because it would really improve my texture painting. I can’t spend too much money, so does anybody have any reccomedations? I get the impression that a lot of people here have them. Any information would be useful – Company, Model, etc. Thanks.
Trust…trust me 
ive got a tablet from Trust, its an A4 and its really nice.
Its goo in PS, Illustrator, Zbrush, Mudbox and blenders sculpt tool, i havent had any trouble at all with it, apart from FPS and some other games, which dont work well with tablets.
anway i picked my tablet up for £50 a few months back
*the company website
http://www.trust.com/products/product.aspx?artnr=14070
*where i bought it from
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/85551 its only £39
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people will probably tell you to get a wacom, but fors your first tablet i dont think its a very good idea to go out and spend a few hundred dollars/ pounds on a product that does exactly the same thing.
or get a graphire 4, its a cutdown wacom intuos, but much cheaper.
http://www.wacom.com/graphire/6x8.cfm
the problems is that ideally you want a pressure sensitive, battery free, eraser tipped pen, and wacom own the patents on all 3 technologies (and a few more). i don’t like wacom for that monopoly, and the rediculous markup they charge for their intuos range, but other tablets just aren’t up to standard.
okay, let me tell you completely truthfully.
wacom. wacom. wacom. the end.
Your choice comes down to which size of wacom you want to get. wacom is the well known leader of the industry. All the pros use wacoms. both graphires and intuos are good. bigger the better.
Sam
I wouldnt say bigger is better; I’ve had about 3 tablets now and i prefer the smallers ones than the biggers ones. I also prefer A4 paper over A3… down to personal preference basically.
Out of my 3 tablets, 1 was a wacom and to be honest, it wasnt anything better than my other two… The only thing decent about them is the battery-less pens… And the pens are quite nice on their more expencive models… At any rate, ive not gained anything by buying a wacom based tablet compared to my other two other than a a pen that doesnt require a battery, and this one is a bit more chunky that one i had before so… meh.
Got one for christmas Aiptek from Geeks.com Nice like having a tablet better than I thought. Works great for me. Went with the 8.5 11 around the that size. Like having the big size but really dont need that big. Love it for sculpting and painting. Need to do more texture painting. My pen is wilting down. And I expect that tilt will soon be in blender… So if you have the money I guess go with wacom.
Get a Wacom Intuos3. If anybody says 4x5 is too small, don’t listen. I have mine set up be something like 5x2 for my dual screens, and it’s still completely accurate. And if you go through someone like techforless.com, it’s really cheaper.
Thanks for the quick replies.
@ Daniel8488 - thanks for the info. I’m kind of a noob about tablets; I didn’t know about that company.
@matte - that one looks pretty good…
@SamAdam – :eek: You’re saying there’s absolutely nothing as good as wacom? Anywhere? In the world?
@lukus - well, I don’t really mind the pens with batteries… I can just recharge 'em. But who made your two tablets that weren’t wacom?
@ibkanat - I need to do more texture painting too… but I"ve never actually tried a tablet:o . I hope it will improve my textures.
@Saxofoner - aha! I was wondering if I could get a wacom not through wacom. If that makes sense. What about ebay? Or is that a huge mistake for this kind of thing…?
One was a trust tablet (One of the large ones, I didnt like it because it was too big and required use of my arm rather than juut my wrist movement to get from one side of the screen to the other… it was a 12X somthing size.
It also didnt work properly on linux (couldnt get the pen to work relative to the screen, so it acted like a mouse and didnt care where the pen was on the tablet, it just continued from where the cursor was last left rather than top left corenr of table = top left corner on screen)
My other one was a genius and is like my current wacom tablet. The only let down was the poor construction of the pen (it took batteries, but since the pen popped off into two parts to take batteries rather than being screwed in etc… the end kept popping off too easily /seporating) But as to the size of the pen, it was thinner than my current wacom’s pen and actually nicer to hold… its just a shame it couldnt hold itself together…
Well I had the same problem some time ago, but after some searching i bought a wacom volito2. I fought tahat “bigger means better” but it’s not true. It’s hard to get used to big (A4 for example) tablet. As lukus wrote biger tablet means a more of arm using. My wacom is reather small but works fatastic. I almost forgot how to use a mouse. There is one thing I miss: there is no roller in pen .
you can get the airbrush pen for the wacom tablets, has a wheel. not sure how useful it’d be:
So if smaller is better and easier on the wrist, etc, why do they make huge ones that are more expensive?:no:
honestly->if you are PRO, you will make great works on trust, wacom and others… if you are noob, nothing will help you, even super-tablet! if you still learn, i suggest you to buy trust. because it costs not so much and it gives you normal options.
Smaller isn’t necessarily better. Too small, and it becomes difficult to be accurate. Too big and you’ll have to move your hand over long stretches. Personally, I find the A5 (8 x 6) size nice.
@ blenditall : Large tablets are probably preferred by people who come to CG from traditional art backgrounds - i.e. people who know the proper technique for drawing and are used to doing it that way .
I want to art school and on my first day I went into my drawing class and the first thing the professor said after chewing everyone for coming to class with no materials and making us get the supplies was : “your are is a compass, your hand a protractor” making us all laugh a little then he proceeded to make us draw circles in newsprint for the remaining hour .
It sounds silly but it is the proper way of drawing - i.e. you should lock your wrist and draw with your whole arm if possible if not at least with your elbow . I do this with my mouse by the way when ever possible to reduce stress on the wrist . Getting carpal tunnel problems from over stressing your wrist by drawing with your wrist is not a funny thing .
My brother got me a small Wacom tablet and I can’t use it very well to draw - the surface area is too small for the way I draw and I 'd rather save and get an A4 size tablet (or bigger) then get carpal tunnel syndrome trying to draw with my wrist (yes I’m sure for those of you who work this way now don’t have any problems but give it about a decade).
And a question for Trust tablet owners : can you get that in the US ? When I went to their site they didn’t seem to have any distributors in the US only mostly in Europe …
From what I understand, Trust & Medion are the exact same tablets, only with a different badge. I’ve got my Medion 12 x 9 here in the states for $30 on sale, they usually sell them at Aldi. Personally I’ve used the smaller Wacom tablets, and didn’t like them. Like you I prefer a larger work area to draw on. But I come from a more traditional art background so I am used to drawing large pictures.
Edit: oh, and Aiptek also. Trust, Medion, & Aiptek all use the same drivers.