ZBrushCentral

New Tech for Next Year?

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

NOTE: I apologize in advance if this is in the wrong forum! I’m still a bit new here. :slight_smile:

Hello!
I am currently a freshman in the Virtual Technology and Design department at my University, and I was hoping to get advice on what technology I should upgrade to next year. I used Blender for about 3 years, and probably will again in the future. At my University, we use Maya mostly, along with 3DSMax and ZBrush. I’m currently using a cheap Wacom Intuos (the kind with the two buttons in both the top right and top left corner, no screen) that I bought off of Amazon for around $60. My computer is a Dell XPS 15 with an i7-6700HQ 2.60GHz processor/GeForce 960M GPU/16GB of RAM. I plan n continuing in this field of virtual design so that I might go on to hopefully work at a movie company or gaming company of some sort. I know that I’m eventually going to need upgrades however. I set myself with a $1500 budget for some sort of upgrade for the upcoming year (hopefully it’ll last me the next three years, but you know how technology gets), and I am not sure what I should be purchasing with it.

$1500 is enough for a pretty decent desktop computer, which the extra computing power would be great (and my Dell has caused me no end of problems. $1500 is also enough for a decent Surface Pro 4, which could be used in place of my current Wacom Intuos, and wouldn’t require me to carry around a tablet AND a computer (The main problem is that I’m pretty sure the GPU is poor quality, which would mean all rendering would have to be brought back to my laptop). $1500 is also enough for a decent Wacom Cintiq, assuming that they put the 13 inch tablet back in stock again soon. It would be annoying to have to carry around both the giant drawing tablet and my computer, but I’d have the added advantages of Wacom’s supposed higher accuracy when using the tablet, and the processing power of my laptop. There may be even more devices out there that I don’t even know about that I may be considering, so I hoped to get some feedback. Thank you in advance for your answers and input!

#2

My 2cents:

Mind you, I’m old school.

Ditch the laptop. Put your money into an actual machine that can do actual work.
You’re not really that portable when you need to carry around a 2nd screen and/or a tablet. You basically have to be plugged into a wall and have a desk.

That said, you can get a surface pro, but it isn’t a replacement for a work machine (as you noted). So you’ll end up needing to maintain and upkeep 2 different systems, which is a pain in the ass. I’d rather just keep a nice sketchbook and a good set of pens on me over dragging a computer around everywhere with me. You’ll appreciate getting to work in a different medium as well.

eh…

#3

I certainly am not against those ideas, even though I’m quite awful at drawing. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: it was mainly a question for sketching things in ZBrush, sculpting, etc…