If you’re planning on using it for Zbrush a lot I would wait just a little bit to hear feedback from other users. There’s a possibility that the pen might not work with Zbrush due to the Surface Pro 3 not using Wintab.
By the way I’m selling my Surface Pro 128 if anyone is interested.
ZBrush runs very well on Surface Pro and even better on Surface Pro 2. Both use a Wacom digitizer for their screen.
The Surface Pro 3 use and N-Trig digitizer. It only has 256 levels of pressure sensitivity (SP and SP2 have 1024) but many people say it feels like it has more. People also say the N-Trig is more responsive, has better accuracy around the edges of the screen (a big problem for the Wacom digitizers in the SP and SP2) and has less parallax (less noticeable gap between pen and line/cursor).
However, N-Trig, at least since I last checked, is not compatible with all WinTab apps. ZBrush ignores the N-Trig pressure sensitivity.
The other thing to consider is that Surface Pro 3 is more expensive than it’s predecessors.
http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2014/5/30/surface-pro-3-one-week-later
I am still using my Surface Pro (1) and loving it still. If I had to choose between the Surface Pro 3 and the Wacom Cintiq Companion, I would choose the Companion.
Why would it have less pressure senstivity? Although I’m used to 1024 on bamboo and intuos 3. I have some old equipment. I was kind of put off about the only 10" screen, didn’t seem big enough to work with. 15" was great on my laptop but awkward to carry.
That stinks about zbrush ignoring the sensitivity too. That is a deal breaker right now, I assume that will be fixed though. Companion does look impressive, first time I heard of it. I guess its better to go with the 256 gig version and use flash drives for working on?
I had started a thread awhile ago asking about the Surface Pro 3 and zBrush as well, and was referred to the Surface Pro Artist blog. He was given an evaluation SP3 and did tests with tons of software. Initially, zB did not have pen pressure function but as of release day, with the updated N-Trig drivers, it seems to work now. Here is the relevant post from the aforementioned blog.
I’ve not found anything yet on 256 v. 1024 levels of pressure though, so I don’t know how jarring a difference that might be.
Hope that helps. 
~Eric
That’s a relief. The low end wacom one is 1800!?! And I hear it scratches easily, terrible customer service, and there is a charging bug which prevent charging sometime. Its the first iteration so perhaps the next version will fix those problems. It does have a matte screen and configurable short cut keys, so you don’t need a keyboard. Never used that workflow but sounds kind of cool.
One problem I came across with the surface pro 3 while reading is that the window button is right where you would rest your hand if your sculpting or painting right handed. The pennyarcade artist was saying how he had to disable the button while working or it would throw him out of the program multiple times while working!
I believe that these upgraded drivers fixed the zbrush problems? Link
I’m still deciding between getting a surface pro 3 or just buy a new laptop. I use Maya and I’m starting to use Unreal 4 so I think a laptop is still more reasonable.
I actually got to use the surface 3 finally. The size is just right, and its very light. The screen gets kind of hot to the touch like, and a few of the keyboards the magnet strip seemed to not work that great on, but that could be due to heavy usage in Best Buy. I’m not sure if its a worth getting the i7 or the i5 for zbrush. I think the i7 has a 5000 gpu as opposed to the 4400 one. Not sure what is better. The pen feels pretty good in the hand too. But not sure how well it balances in your lap.
For you guys and gals using the Surface Pro (1-3) would you say its usable outdoors? Even with strong sunlight? Indirect sunlight?
Thanks a bunch! 
I have the original Surface Pro 1. I have used it briefly in the garden doing a sketch of my dog and it was perfectly useable. I’d say that as long as it isn’t a very bright sunny day you wouldn’t have much of a problem as long as the light isn’t directly reflected off the screen
Hey all,
Back when the Surface Pro 2 was released I was able to snag a Surface Pro 1 super cheap and I wanted to share my configuration when I use Zbrush with it because I haven’t seen many people using a similar setup.
As you all know, Zbrush on a tablet PC has some limitations because Zbrush is designed to work with a drawing tablet/mouse + keyboard. Since a tablet PC loses some appeal when you attach a keyboard a lot of people work with the program ArtDock (http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2013/12/13/introducing-surface-pro-artist-artdock-20). I used ArtDock for a while but never really got used to it and never explored it enough to understand how to customize it.
After that I used Toolbar Creator (http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/threads/toolbar-creator-v-2-1.63014/) but found that it had some limitations as well.
So instead, what I’ve done is started using a Playstation 3 Move Navigation controller as a keyboard replacement. What I like about is that I can comfortably hold it in my left hand and easily reach all the buttons while I sculpt with my right hand.
I have it connected wirelessly through a Bluetooth dongle and setup to mimic my most commonly used features in Zbrush.
Like so: 
Setting it up was a bit tricky but I personally find it to be much easier to use than ArtDock and much easier to customize.
To use one with a computer you need a few things:
- A Playstation 3 Move Navigation Controller. http://www.amazon.com/Playstation-Move-Navigation-Controller-3/dp/B002I0K6X6
- A program that allows you to connect the controller to your PC, I use one called MotioninJoy but there are a few others as well. http://www.motioninjoy.com/
- A program that lets you remap the buttons on the controller to keyboard functions. I use xPadder. http://xpadder.com/
- (OPTIONAL: IT ALSO WORKS THROUGH USB) A bluetooth dongle that works with MotioninJoy (for some reason the built in Bluetooth radio in the Surface Pro doesn’t work). I used a random dongle I picked up from Fry’s a long time ago.
http://www.frys.com/product/7299223?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
If anyone wants to try it and has trouble setting it up, let me know and I can try to help you as much as possible. It was sort of a pain to set up but like I said, I find it to be totally worth it.
Oh, on a side note, I also used to have a ton of problems with random button presses and brush strokes on my Surface Pro because I’d lift the pen off the surface and the palm block would turn off while the touch functionality would turn on. I have toyed with two ways to get around this.
First, I used a program called Tray Touch Toggle (http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/threads/apps-for-tablet-pc.56322/) but found having to remember to turn touch on and off all the time was kind of annoying, so now I just wear a pair of fingerless arthritis gloves(http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/imak-arthritis-gloves-small/ID=prod4052065-product).
Thank you for testing it with zbrush , been dying to seek out out once i detected it didnt support photoshop pressure sensitivity and Adobe wasn’t aiming to do something regarding it , they solely support WinTab and Wacom themselves stay silent. therefore the likelihood of it ne’er obtaining pressure sensitivity support for notation and Zbrush is sort of high. that makes it useless on behalf of me to possess and that i massive uncomprehensible chance.
I have a 256gb SurfacePro 2 and its brilliant for Zbrush, if it did not run Zbrush I wouldn’t have got it.
1024 levels of presh. Can handle meshes up to 18-19 million polygons like it was nothing brush-wise, but the viewport navigation is a little heavy with one piece of geometry that dense with no subD levels, but if the same 18 million poly mesh has been subdivided 3 or 4 times to get that big, everything is fine though, viewport navigation sails along like it was a six poly box… well… maybe ever so slightly minutely sluggish but hardly noticeable at 18-19 million, and definitely nothing noticeable at say 11-14 million. (Provided that that single solitary subtool mesh has multiple subdivision levels)
I use the small version of Artdock with the Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Space buttons, along with capacitive touch screen buttons by SteelSeries, I found out about those stick-on buttons through a blog post of a brilliant artist called Landis Fields, who was reviewing the SP2 just before I bought it. (cant find it now, his website has changed)
Just recently the artdock scripts/programs that make it all work (I think there are 4 altogether) stopped working as normal maybe due to an ms update or something I dont know, but the default TGuard Touch On function does not work as it should, rejecting palm and skin contact while pen brushing. It now rejects everything upon starting up, pen and hand, so I must now sort of multi-tap/stab at the “show hidden icons” on the taskbar to finally reveal the TGuard icon, and then multi-tap that until I get a confirmed/successful click that turns off touch, the stylus is then usable but so is your skin, which is kind of okay for me as I use a cheapo thin woolly glove with the thumb and two fingers cut off, with the frayed unraveling leftovers of said glove stitched and sown up by my lovely mother.
(I don’t really know and am not sure as I’ve not looked into it much, and am not bothered about it really but)
It seems the 3rd Surface pro is bettered and oomph’d up in every which way but one, the main one.
I don’t know what Microsoft were thinking by quartering the amount of pressure sensitivity to 256 on the new v3, the very thing artists want in a tablet is pressure sensitivity, and they went backwards X3/4 from 1024-256.
Neck ties too tight restricting amount of oxygen to the brain or something? I wonder if they got an applause during the unveiling announcement on that function/restriction. Or did they just not mention it? Its a bit of a compromise upping everything, and reducing the ONE THING.
I don’t know if it makes a whole lot of difference, but i’d imagine it would. And if the SP2 had only been 256 levels, i wouldn’t have got one.
One thing I wish the stylus pen had was another button, a rocker button like Wacom.
My stylus setting are always:-
Stylus nib touch down = Left Click (obviously)
lower button = right click
upper button = middle click
So I’m missing an upper button function on the SP2, but that does not matter in Zbrush, unless your using the Blender navigation script, in which case just change the button function in the Wacom pen setting control panel from right click to middle click obviously. I like Blender and the zscript is very cool, but I’m happy with Zbrush’s default navigation.
I just had a very quick look at the SP3 and it does look very nice, bigger etc. AND it has a 2 button stylus…Aarrrgh.
But it cancels itself out for me with the 256 levels limit, but I wonder how much difference that would be in practice.
If 1024 is a must then the SP2’s are going to be extinct before long (as they do) and are a few hundred quid cheaper now.
If I was looking to get one now (which I’m not) I would either grab a SP2 or wait until the next Surface Pro comes out that supports 1024, or maybe they have made an update to the SP3 to make it 1024 in which case I’d most prob get that.
I love my SP2 and am happy with it…oh, my SP2 screen rez is set to default with text and item size etc set to larger, which is default and makes it “normal” looking.
I tried Zbrush with smaller size and its way too small, and so is the rest of the OS, middle size is doable, but I’ll most prob leave it at def Large to keep my eyes in perfect working order for as long as I can.
Zbrush is perfectly workable and comfy in default size but I had to customize the screen on a laptop/another PC to tailor it to fit because some of the buttons etc were unreachable.
After using SurfacePro Zbrushing so much, its kind of weird going back to Wacom and a laptop/TV, but that kind of thing never lasts long, and I’ll always prefer looking at the screen while tablets on the table right, and keyboard on the left.
But it is cool drawing/sculpting on-screen.
OK sorry for waffling and/or repeating anything that’s already been said.
Yeah… the never ending chasing of technology which is rampantly stomping onward all the time.
For those Zbrush users like myself with a Surface Pro 3 - frustrated by the lack of Artdock as it is not compatible - I have found a great solution by way of Radial menu / Toolbar which can be found here http://radialmenu.weebly.com/ It’s creator is active on http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/threads/radialmenu-toolbar-0-3-4-239.64232/
Shown above is my current setup with a custom toolbar I created today. With the correct settings you CAN press one of the buttons on the toolbar and use the pen at the same time - eg for modifier keys. The Brushes and Material buttons point to custom menus I set up in Zbrush. When I have more time I will be creating proper icons for the buttons. I currently don’t use the radial menu as I find the toolbar sufficient for my needs.
MarkWhitcombe - There are Surface Pro compatible pens with 2 buttons. It’s a pain to find them because few vendors accurately describe the button functions (or even how many buttons there actually are)
http://store.modbook.com/modbook-accessories/mbi-acc-mbp-pen.html
There is a cheaper pen than the modbook pen that has 2 buttons. I have to find it. I think it’s the fugitsu.
yep
http://surfaceproartist.com/blog/2013/12/14/fujitsu-digitizer-pen-t-5000-is-a-two-button-charmer
Gary.M - Thanks for the tool type. I think Radial Menu is slightly easier to setup than Toolbar Control. What settings did you use to get Radial Menu to allow simultaneous button press while using the pen?
I think I figured it out. Using Key Hold mode seems to work.
Sorry I missed your question, glad to see you have found the solution. Incidentally, the latest update allows you to set a repeat to a scroll type button so I have a tall button I can drag up to increase brush radius and down to decrease it. Works fantastically well 
You can use the surface pro as a tablet or laptop.