Mouse or Pen Tabs?

[JDex]

Preference... pen or pencil.

Enveloping, painting weights or sketching particles are the only thing that I would consider using a tablet for in XSI... but my preference is to be a mouse wrangler.

[toonafish]

I prefer to use a tablet. I only use a mouse for gaming and sometimes in XSI.

Because the sad thing is that tablet support for XSI is not very good, hardly any interactivity with the render region when you have auto refresh activated, and very slow response with animation playback. In any other 3d program I know of you can rotate the perspective view while you're playing back the animation, you can't with XSI. When you have more then a sphere and 2 cubes in your scene XSI does no longer respond to the tablet properly. Also stopping playback after you hit play can become a challange with a tablet.

[oktawu]

toona's right
xsi has a sh*load of problems with tablets.
and ill never ever understand why for the love of god didnt they assign a button
like ESC for stopping playback or sims
god that can be unf*inbelievably annoying, doing samurai gestures with the pen
hoping for xsi to stop. :(

[oktawu]

double post...

[SheepFactory]

Havent had any problem using xsi with a tablet. I havent touched a mouse in close to 4 years now and I cant imagine using that clunky pos for anything.

[oktawu]

ali, what kinda tablet u got? i bet wacom
i havent touched a mouse in soo many years either, i even got used to playing shooters with my pen (oh thats a bit weird).
but try to simulate something heavy in xsi, like using cloth and hair on heavy characters and then try to stop that with the tablet. or anything heavy in this case. if u can , in a simple way just let me know the secret miracle! :)

[visualboo]

Any of you tablet guys wanna play some counter strike later? lol... your mouse skills are gonna be WEEEAAKK hehe

Personally I use a mouse for almost everything and a tablet for texture work/weight painting/sculpting. I am however faster with a tablet. There is just something about using it for normal crap that bugs me.


... why is this even a thread btw?

[mocaw]

Tablet for 85% of my "2D work" (PS, Illustrator, Painter, Flash etc.) and ZB. For most other applications it's Mouse all the way!

[pete]

I am totally sold on the tablet for everything now, the mouse just seems clunky.
I really hope they fix the tablet issues with XSI though. I have to switch to the mouse for playback and render region stuff and it sucks...

I use the 6 x 11 btw which is awesome for widescreens and dual monitors!

[visualboo]

I really hope they fix the tablet issues with XSI though. I have to switch to the mouse for playback and render region stuff and it sucks...

Why? I've used the render region with tablets before and it was fine. What does it do?

[pete]

I get this issue with the render region but mostly with playback where it freezes up untill you lift the pen right of the tablet.

I started noticing it when i'd press play and not be able to stop it from playing back until i'd give up and put the tablet down and i would start working again. Same thing happens with the render region where if it is rendering i wont be able to tweak things untill i lift the pen off.

So unfortunatly now whenever I want to do either of those things I use the mouse. It is anoying though.

[Magallanes]

Tablet works fine with 2d and for some 3d works (animating-rigging?) but not for every 3d works, vertex modelling using a pen is "too funny" that play quake3 Area using a stylus.


And related with this thread, i found that some inexpensive mouse are WAY better that expensive ones, precision is just a burden (or more a marketing bluff), bulky mouse (yes, i'm talking about logitech) will trend to cause problems in the hand and more that 5 buttons in a mouse is innecesary, in fact 3 (plus a scroll) can be fine for 99.999999999% of the task.

[mocaw]

I think that it should also be in everyones interest to use multiple input devices when they can. That includes copious use of the keyboard, not just tablets and mice. I've know people to get wrist/hand/back issues using pen tablets alone or mice. This of coarse doesn't take into other parts of their lifestyle (lack of certain exercise/over all posture/diet/workstation setup etc.), but still, if you plan on doing this stuff for any length of time then these are serious things to respect and deal with ahead of time.

Mix it up!

In terms of mice I use a Evoluent mouse ( http://www.evoluent.com/vm3.html ). Very steady and precise IMHO due to the position it puts your hand in. I also like how the additional buttons (which I never use!) don't get in my way.

[NRG-Alpha]

Just out of curiosity,

When working with 3d, do you prefer to use pentabs or the mouse? Why?

I've recently seen the pics of the Ubisoft office:
http://xsiarabia.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1353#post1353

And noticed a lot of artists using pentabs. And it got me thinking, since I've been used to using only a mouse. Is it essential to learn to work with the pentab? Or is this Just a matter of preference?

Your thoughts please :)

Being an ex-employee of Ubisoft Montreal, I can tell you that most artists there use the tablet for tasks such as doing textures in photoshop or doing detailed 3d sculpting for nomal maps via apps like ZBrush. While there may be some artists who use the tablet exclusively for everything, this is not the case as a rule. I myself have found using the tablet for any 3d app (be it XSI or 3DS Max) was not as good as using a mouse. But when it comes time to open Photoshop or Zbrush, you can bet the mouse is on the back burner and I pick up the tablet pen (much like most of my peers).

Cheers,

NRG

[Alpha-Leader]

I have tried using tablets in my 3d apps but I didnt like it. I love my Wacom when I am surfing the web or doing 2d work. I cannot imagine not having my tablet, but I think it is just to clunky to model or animate with.

[tuna]

I have tried using tablets in my 3d apps but I didnt like it. I love my Wacom when I am surfing the web or doing 2d work. I cannot imagine not having my tablet, but I think it is just to clunky to model or animate with.

I'm the same as this. I quite enjoy using my Wacom to browse with, and obviously any drawing/painting will need it. But as soon as it comes to 3D, any modeling or animating, I find it much easier to use the mouse. The Wacom seems to jump between pixels a lot when you're trying to select or move precisely. The mouse is just a hell of a lot steadier and quicker for me to get what I want in 3D. I wish I could use it for 3D though, because it would be nice not to have to switch over between them ever.

[ThE_JacO]

If I remember well there was at some point a bug with playback and tablets, triggered by starting playback with a pen click basically. That accounted for a lot of the bad rep, it was solved a while ago though, and to be honest to say that "xsi has a shitload of problems with tablets" and that it can't orbit a camera while playing it are both pretty much false statements these days.

As for me, I'd probably wrap my face in tin foil and put it in a microwave before I'd model or animate or rig with a tablet, I wouldn't even bother starting any matte painting or texturing or sculpting work without one though.

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