ZBrushCentral

Microsoft Surface Pro

What do you think of that piece of hardware??
http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-US/surface-with-windows-8-pro/specifications

sound quite cool and wacom confirmed, that i comes with one of their pens.

So we have a 10" tablet with a

3rd Gen Intel Core i5 Processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000
4GB RAM***8212;Dual Channel Memory

so zbrush will work, no matter what.

so its like a wacom tablet just with a pc in it, with 10"!!!

What do you guys think of it?

I think 10" is a bit cramped. I have the Yiynova DP10 which has a similar size screen to the Microsoft Surface Pro. 10.1" and some of the ZBrush interface drops off the bottom of the screen. It may be possible to get it back but I haven’t worked out how yet. My dad tried it with Photoshop and didn’t like the small size at all, but his eyes are 50 years old and used to 24" desktop monitors. I’m only 17 and I can see everything on the 10" screen fine, so that isn’t an issue. Just not getting all the ZBrush interface on the screen is the bother for me.

//youtu.be/83HBkzHfPEU

If only it would run on my iPad…but 1024 X 768 ain’t gonna work. That and lack of mouse/keyboard.

I have been using the samsung slate 7 since about 1 year; it is great to have a sofa surfing device! one thing that is really important to me is the “artdock” (http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/samsung/47958-artdock-samsung-series-7-slate.html) - a hotkey plugin for zbrush, maya, max, photoshop etc… don´t know if it works for the windows surface tablet…

customizeable buttons and stripes beside the screen (like wacom´s devices) would make the whole tablet-thing much more interesting for graphic artists, I wonder why wacom hasn´t released a tablet for this clientele, maybe we are underestimated? - but for now the artdock does the job.

they just confirmed that the release date is the 8. feb!

Reviews are popping up, and in this Mashable review they mention the stylus (1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity) for a bit. Would be really cool to see how/if Zbrush supports it!

as far as i am informed, it will release tomorrow, therefore i’m very exited to see it in action!

soooo anyone has it already?

I have it. Kinda busy so I won’t be able to do anything with zBrush on it until this weekend.

One thing I’ve already figured out though is that this isn’t just any Wacom pen. So far I haven’t seen a desktop program support it’s pressure sensitivity, just the tablet apps. I’m sure it’s a matter of time though.

Here’s a crappy animation I made with it running Plastic Animation Pencil. It’s my first animation of a quadruped using no references or tutorials (can’t you tell?) Seriously though I was very pleased with the feel of working on a screen like this. Makes me want a Cintiq.
https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=4BEABDC927D27A6A&id=4BEABDC927D27A6A!2345

Hi guys, I just got my surface and wanted to answer a few of the norm questions ppl will have.

Firstly there is no pen sensitivity support as of yet. ( zbrush / photoshop )

zbrush runs very well, 5mil poly were np.

pen is indeed a wacom mobile pen. not quite the desktop intous / cintiq pen, its a bit thiner but works fine. however, only 1 button.

also maya looks great on the tablet, so long as your eyes are good… lol

if you have any other questions let me know, i will try to answer them.

also sketch book pro 6.0 works just fine with pressure sensitivity. seems like the only thing that’s holding back the train is zbrush and PS.

thank you for testing it with zbrush , been dying to find out after i heard it didnt support photoshop pressure sensitivity and Adobe wasn’t going to do anything about it , they only support WinTab and Wacom themselves remain silent. So the chance of it never getting pressure sensitivity support for PS and Zbrush is quite high. Which makes it useless for me to have and I big missed opportunity.

there is hope :smiley:
https://twitter.com/barbbowman/status/301422197900189696

how do you press the shift button for example to smooth things out in zbrush? i mean without attaching the keyboard to the tablet?
thanks in advance

That’s what I’m wondering… There probably isn’t a way yet. BTW, Sculptris works well on this too. The selectable areas for the sliders are a little off centered but it’s ok once you get used to it.

I’ve done benchmarks comparing this to my desktop. They are neck and neck in performance (who would have thought a HD-4000 would come so close to a Geforce 460GTX?) If this thing had more ram and a bigger HD it would replace my PC. All I’d have on my desk at home is the monitor and a keyboard, and my main PC would be this tablet. Honestly I can see it or something like it replacing many people’s computers - it’s on par with the low-end Mac Mini, and faster than the cheap Core i3 All-In-Ones the PC manufacturers are pushing now.

BTW, space is going to be an issue for you, whether or not you have the 64 or 128gb versions. Many programs (including Photoshop) will refuse to install onto an SD Card, although zBrush doesn’t have this problem, here’s a link to a tutorial I made on how to force-install such programs on the SD Card http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccoRddePFIQ

http://konartist3d.deviantart.com/art/ArtDock-283342420?offset=70#comments

hopefully there will be a stable win8 version available sooner or later

i am using it on the slate7 - without it i would have canceled the zbrush-tablet-experiment

It’s a program that allows you to use your fingers to select options / buttons, and moves away from screen when it detects your pen near.

As far as space goes, I used to have a acer w500 with only 32gig and I managed to live with it. just install everything to your SD card. So i honestly think 64gb is fine, just don’t expect to have your movie collection / 100 games on it.

That just about kills my plan to buy the Surface Pro, unless that issue is fixed.

10" is a bit too small for me to see well on. Unless you can make the text a lot larger.

I came across a version of art dock that seems to be working with the windows surface pro. I figured it’s worth posting here:

ArtDock Windows Surface Pro:
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/microsoft/55516-new-artdock-surface-pro.html

I’ve only tested Artdock with Sketch book pro 6.0 so far.

MS Window SPro Pen Pressure issue:
(been following this post for progress on pen pressure…seeems to be coming soon.)
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro-surfusingpro/surface-pro-pen-pressure-sensitivity-is-not/72f34b0e-e931-4fa0-8322-5f3933b061f6?page=7&tm=1361467583379