Tab or not?

    One for all you talented 2D Mapcorians.

    Whilst I have been mapping for donkey's years now across all sorts of engines and apps, I've never really invested much (any) time in getting my 2D skills up to the level where I can knock out acceptable texures to use on my creations. Mainly I guess 'cause I have always had someone far more talented than myself to do the job for me.

    Anyways as part of trying to get better at creating my own 2D stuff I am thinking of investing in a wacom tab. However, I would like to know do you folks think this is either

    • An essential bit of kit,

      or

      Nice to have/pretty useful but not entirely essential.

    To quantify a bit, I am only really interested in making environment textures and textures for my models, not any digital painting or other of that kind of creative malarky.

    So whatya think folks, is it worth the £200 or should I just put the cash towards a bigger fatter monitor?

    Its nice to have but not essential if youre not a hardcore texture guy. Specially photo sourced textures dont really need a wacom.

    And youre better of buying a 80£ a6 wacom to start with and see how it goes. It might seem small but its more than good enough for your average use.

    I agree with Hourences. I bought a wacom intuos A5 last year and it's really nice, but I've honestly not had a lot of time to use it. More often than not I tend to just use the mouse for bog standard photoshop stuff (like textures). When I do use it to paint highlights and other free flowing stuff, it's great, but it is non-essential unless you spend a lot of time in PS doing stuff that really needs pressure sensitivity & free flowing lines.

    I've bought a Graphire Classic 4 (A6) a year ago and it fits my expectations... I don't draw stuff, it just makes things easier with textures, nothing that can't be done without but faster and more fun.

    I'm atm looking at Blender 2.43 with the new Sculpting System, a Wacom is highly recommendable for such programs.

    btw, the Graphire Classic 4 costs about 80€.

    I have fallen in love with my Wacom Intuos3 A5 USB PTZ-630G, which has turned out to be really handy for doing paint deformation stuff in max. Having a non-pressure sensitive tool like a regular mouse for such a job just feels wierd after having used a Wacom.

    So my point is just that a digitizer can also be useful outside PS.

    I don't think a tablet will make you a better painter per se - if you can't draw or paint without one, then you still won't be able to draw well, even with a tablet... Or at least that's what I realized after I got an intuos2 a few years ago. It's handy for tracing and such, but in the end it's still just a tool.

    Ok thanks for all the advice folks. Since I am only really concerned with making environment textures, and since many of you guys seem to get great results with just a mouse (I got the same one as you Zaphod) I think I'll just get myself a fat ass new monitor instead.

    Lord knows these old eyes could do with a bigger screen.

    Cheers everyone.

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