LCD Drawing Tablets with Alibre

[skeller]

Has anyone used an LCD drawing tablet, like a Wacom ONE or HUION Kamvas with Alibre?

I am considering one to play around with 3d sculpting but not sure I want to spend the money just to experiment.

BUT if it worked well with Alibre I could justify it as a "business express" and not feel so guilty.


Thanks

 

[jfleming]

Not sure about alibre, but I wouls also check out the XP-PEN brand

 

[Garrit]

This is something I have experience with. I primarily use Alibre for hard surface work to complement ZBrush and I use a Wacom Cintiq. I suggest you use a mouse. Navigation in Alibre
Isn't suitable for use with a pen. You must use the left and right mouse buttons to orbit your object. It is the tip of the pen that functions as the LMB on the Wacom tablet, but if you press another MB, on the pen, it overrides the LMB and gives you that button instead. Sure, you can change this in Alibre, but I found that changing the default behavior always causes a little lag. Try it out for yourself, go into Settings->All Workspaces->Mouse Interaction. Change the rotate to something like MMB and Pan to Shift+MMB, and the lag will be obvious. After about five minutes, it becomes very irritating. Before you go down the rabbit hole with a 3D mouse, I would suggest you use a mouse instead. If we can persuade Alibre to fix that navigation lag on a single MB rotate, using a tablet becomes possible. I would like MMB -> Rotate, Shift+MMB -> Pan, and Zoom to be something like Crtl+MMb, and right to left to zoom out, and Crtl+MMb, and right to left to zoom in, on a tablet. Having said that, that is just my personal preference when it comes to tablets

 

[HaroldL]

I found that changing the default behavior always causes a little lag.

I use a 3-button wheel mouse and changed the rotate button to the RMB and I have not seen any lag when using it. I left the other buttons as they were Wheel for Zoom and MMB Wheel (depressed) for Pan. Just that one custom setting has sped up my work in Alibre.

I would suggest that the lag may be caused by the Wacom mouse driver and not Alibre.

 

[Garrit]

You're right, it's not there with the right mouse button. I would never want to give up my RMB menu though. However I still don't think that a tablet is good here. I know hard surface artists
prefer to use the mouse in packages like 3DS Max for modeling. Switching between monitors can also be a bit of a pain. Take your hand off the mouse; pick up the pen; put it down; return to the mouse. I'm only telling you my experience here. ZBrush, Photoshop, Ect were made for the tablet. Alibre just wasn't. If you still want to try though, an intuos should get you what you want. I have found that a cintiq doesn't make you better, just a bit faster, and I still use an Intuos all the time. I really dont think its going to make you any faster though. Use hot keys and an MMO mouse for that (I use a Logitech g600) That's just my input on tablets. Maybe real engineers here have had different experiences.

 

[HaroldL]

I would never want to give up my RMB menu though.

Resetting the RMB to rotate doesn't affect the RMB menu. To rotate you hold the button down throughout the rotate. To get the menu you just click the button and it comes up.

 

[Garrit]

Thanks, I will try it. Maybe I will experiment with my Cintiq in Alibre.