Wacom Tablets

[mrboni]

Does anyone have experience of using Wacom tablets in our broad fields?

I’m curious about replacing the mouse with it for things like vvvv, Houdini, Rhino, Photoshop, Blender

A couple of VFX friends of mine swear by them, and I hope it would help my RSI.

My main concern is about 3d navigation (and vvvv interface navigation) due to not having a scroll wheel. There seem to be some approaches for this but do they actually work well?

Looking forward to hearing any tablet / stylus thoughts you have

w

[catweasel]

I’ve used one, and the right clicking is tricky, as well as the scroll wheel, especially in VL, where pins seem harder to hit, the slightly movement as you press down moves the mouse enough for it fail to connect. However I got one of those vertical mouse things and that has been at least as good rsi-wise, and still has all the mouse qualities! I got mine from aldi, and really like it, but it might be worth going somewhere you can try some out, as I’ve tried others that were too big and heavy for me

[mrboni]

Interesting, and a shame about vvvv/vl precision.

Do you think there could be a way to address that problem with some customisation either from the Wacom side or the vvvv side?

[catweasel]

I didnt find a way, and there is a setting for pin hit area in vl, but the issue was more from the touching down on the pen, so didnt help.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dcomputers&field-keywords=Vertical+Mouse+ are the kinds of mouse I’m talking about though, and they are much better as you hand doesnt twist, a flat mouse feels really odd now!

[schlonzo]

Intuos Pro and above come with a scroll wheel. My older one has a touch sensitive scroll bar. So scrolling should be working after configuring the wacom sonftware. I would recommend at least an A3 pad and a fine pen tip if you want that extra presicion.

[joe654]

I have used one. But it is not good for working that’s all I can say.

[mrboni]

That’s a shame.

Interesting to have the large size recommendation. People seem to have very different preferences about size

[schlonzo]

With zooming in VL size does not matter any more, but when picking pins in VVVV I believe tablet size should scale with your display.

[sebl]

maybe you want to increase the snapping sizes in vl’s settings

<SETTING name="LinkSnappingAreaSize">
<VALUE>25</VALUE>
 </SETTING>
<SETTING name="LinkSnappingAreaSizeSmall">
<VALUE>16</VALUE>
</SETTING>

[catweasel]

Tried that, its fine for ending links but starting them isn’t affected, so I was ending up with 7 or 8 knots next to the pin where I had missed! Infuriating!

[mrboni]

@devls, please add a new setting LinkStartSnappingAreaSize. It’s the missing piece of the puzzvle

A few more -

• keyboard shortcuts for zoom - ctrl + / ctrl - would be in line with other software

• fix support of forward/back commands on some devices. Not sure why this works with some mice and not other devices, but it doesn’t work on my wacom and I saw elliot post something about this in another thread

[mrboni]

On a similar note - I bought a fancyish Microsoft mouse with 5 buttons and while the back&forward buttons worked, the scroll wheel did not, even though it was fine in windows

[joreg]

@mrboni

zoom - ctrl + / ctrl -

added now.

@mrboni

LinkStartSnappingAreaSize

noted.

@mrboni

fix support of forward/back commands on some devices.

a bit too unspecific. usually those buttons can be configured and they should be mapped to back/fwd accordingly so they work with navigation in vl. should be same as in a browser.

@mrboni

while the back&forward buttons worked, the scroll wheel did not, even though it was fine in windows

still please check the devices button/wheel config that it is actually sending wheel messages.

[shengke]

wacom is good, just super expensive. I own a XP-Pen Deco Pro Drawing tablet that I use for various applications. The XP-Pen Deco Pro offers tilt sensitivity. This is HUGE. It makes it feel like a real pencil. This makes using a tablet worth it.

[guest]

Interesting. Bots be like:

[seltzdesign]

If you need 3D navigation you should use a 3D mouse by 3D Connexion. They work great in pretty much all 3D software and you can also make them work in vvvv. We have been using them for many years and they are amazing. They are used in conjunction with a normal mouse or even a tablet.