ZBrushCentral

does Zbrush support finepoint as well as wacom, or only wacom?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Hey guys, to make a long story short, I just bought the new Gateway tablet pc, fully loaded, cost me about 2500 bucks, only to find out that while it IS pressure sensitive, it used FINEPOINT technology, not WACOM like pretty much every other tablet pc on the market :mad:

other than that though, its a great machine and i dont want to have to return it! but pressure sensitivity in zbrush and photoshop are pretty much the reason i bought it!

i already know adobe does NOT support finepoint, does zbrush? if not, is there any chance it will in the near future through a patch or whatever?

thanks guys, i look forward to hanging out on here :smiley:

#2

This is actually a question that I don’t believe has ever been asked here at ZBC. About all the advice I can give would be for you to try it out and see what happens. Be sure to report back so that anybody else who might come across this in the future will have an answer, too!

#3

From a quick look at Finepoint’s site they offer optional WINTAB/HID drivers for some of their products. If you find that you can’t get ZBrush to recognize the pen you might contact them: http://www.finepointinnovations.com/support.htm
(see low down page for driver support).

#4

I am afraid the FinePoint technology does not support pressure sensitivity, at least not the last time I looked into it. The original HP TC1000 tablet used a FinePoint tablet interface and did not support pressure sensitivity which is partly why they changed to a Wacom interface for the HP TC1100.

But the Tablet PCs with wacom hardware do not support pressure sensitivity for non Pen Enabled applications (Zbrush, Photoshop and other programs not designed for Windows XP tablet PC edition), at least not straight out of the box. You need to install a Pen Enabled driver that you can get from the Wacom website. Perhaps the same is true for Tablet PCs with FinePoint hardware?

EDIT: Just found this page comparing FinePoint and Wacom technology. It seems the FinePoint does support 255 levels of pressure sensetivity, just like the Wacom.

#5

OK guys, im not 100% sure, but it seems as though zbrush DOES NOT support finepoint.

I don’t really know how to use this program at all yet, so I can’t say for sure either way, but i went to to Preferences -> Tablet, and the options in this submenu were all grayed out and could not be modified.

Is this my definitive answer? If so, any chance of a fix? I know I can email them and ask for zbrush/finepoint compatibility, but what are my chances realistically that it will be fixed? I’m sure they’re not gonna go through all the trouble to fix it just because one user had a problem.

thanks guys :slight_smile:

#6

This is from someone at FinePoint:

“[color=black]We are developing enhancements that will enable pressure with Photoshop and other Abode products. It will be released on the Gateway website when it is available.”

:+1:

#7

I spoke to driver developer from Finepoint. There already is a driver for photoshop only (beta, available upon request). Problem is that they DONT use wintab.

Here’s the last email i got from them-
"

Yes you are right, every application has to have an add-in. Bummer isn’t it. The only way to get around this is to use a wintab driver, but we are barred from developing one because someone (The Digitizer Technology Compay, www.vtablet.com) applied for and received a patent on Wintab several years after it was in the public domain. Several companies including the original developers sued, one company settled with DTC and is the only one developing new drivers today. The developers didn’t have the money to continue so the lawsuit was dropped. DTC aggressive pursues anyone infringing on their domain.

Most companies (Adobe, Corel, etc) will develop directly for the Microsoft Tablet OS marketplace. We are seeing this already in a few products. This should obsolete Wintab for the most part. Our add-ins are a bridge until this is complete.
"

Question to pixologic- are you going to use wintab in zbrush 2.5? Can we expect an add-in?