ZBrushCentral

Microsoft Surface Pro

Hi,
I downloaded wintab, and it fixed the Pen Lag and sensitivity by a lot!!!
I like it now somewhat, but I still got to learn that radial menu, I’m not enjoying it yet as its quite hard to use. It doesn’t do what I want to yet and I miss that tactile feel.

I’ll play around with it some more,
thank you for the help so far beneath_the_surface.

####EDIT####

Having sluggish perfomance in ZBrush on Surface pro 4?

Turn off flicks!!!

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/customize-flicks

It made a HUGE improvement in responsiveness.

ZBrush + SP3 + RadialMenu is better than any set up I’ve had.

Having good ZBrush performance in a sketchbook that I can take anywhere is a dream come true.

I think some people will prefer a desktop with a big screen.

This is more ergonomic for me though. I can hit the couch and enjoy sculpting for longer sessions, then take it with me when I go relax at the coffee shop :+1:

Zbrush running on my surface pro 4 i7…

I prefer the keyboard to radial menu. I might buy a blue tooth device of some kind in the future, maybe a wireless keyboard.

//youtu.be/4jFAkHoiyT0

Thanks for posting that Anders! Great to get a sense of how ZBrush feels on it.

Have you tried doing any marathon sessions to guage a vague average of how long you can sculpt on it before the low-battery warning comes on? Does the cooling fan kick-in most of the time when sculpting?

Thanks again

No marathons yet. Though I estimate about 5 1/2 to 6 hours of heavy use based on my first day of intermittent testing with cpu heavy work.

Only two apps have made the fan come on. Lightroom, when compiling a 192 megapixel panorama. And Paintstorm studio. Zbrush has not triggered the fan once. Nor has sketchbook pro, art rage or photoshop. I think gpu usage is really high in paintstorm, which is what causes the fans to engage.

If only THIS was programmable!!!

It’s the size of a silver dollar basically. You could stick it on the back of a Surface Pro, program shift, alt, ctrl buttons down the middle, and putt left and right brackets on the sides :smiley:

multimedia_measurement.jpg

Wacom is selling express key remote separately now. It uses a usb receiver. You have to install a wacom tablet driver.

I think you either need a wacom tablet connected to customize the remote, or customize it on a computer that does, then export saved preferences to Surface.

Sculpting doesn’t seem to make the fan spin, only renders and other processes.

I’ve done 3+ hour sessions with battery to spare. Depends on screen brightness, and how many processes you’re running vs just sculpting

Epic tip on the ExpressKey remote, James. Thank you.

Was previously wondering if I’d have to resort to some kind of micro keyboard: http://amzn.com/B00MYZ7LUQ

You can use RadialMenu using touch and pen at the same time, like this http://imgur.com/aXCmxWz or this http://imgur.com/m34GGsZ (possible on the Surface Pro 2. I heard you have to change your Pen setting to “left-handed” on the Surface Book/Pro 4 to get it to work). You can use the PlayStation Navigation Remote: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3v2mxz/photoshop_update_includes_shift_ctrl_and_alt/cxk94ks

Ahnslaught - what do you mean the WinTab driver fixed your issue on the Surface Book? Isn’t the WinTab driver just for devices using the Wacom digitizers (pre SP3)?

I can’t seem to get any pressure sensitivity in ZB on my Surface Book at all so if WinTab is the key, i’ll go grab it but I thought it was just for devices using the Wacom tech.

mrwhiskey - When i try to go to Pen and Touch Settings, i get a dialog that says “Pen and Touch Settings unavailable”.

nevermind, apparently I was behind on a hardware flash. once I got that, the Pen and Touch settings were available and I could turn off touch which helped immensely. The sensitivity is also now in evidence. There is still some lag and the sensitivity seems limited to much less than the 1024 levels that are available, but at least that seems like known problems as opposed to the weirdness I was seeing before the hardware flash.

Thanks!!

Install win tab driver for surface devices from Microsoft downloads page for pressure sensitivity in ZBrush. It won’t interfere with the n trig driver, it just enables pressure sensitivity in apps that use win tab.

Have you tried a high poly scene yet? I’m considering a surface pro myself to replace my desktop which is like 6 years old. It looks like the surface pro will perform far better than my old desktop does… LOL!

@Gareee

Current project is over 20 mil

Good performance, no heat/fan issues. But I still recommend using the built in performance optimizations, such as qmesh threshold for faster rotation.

I did a bunch of group loops at the highest sub div, which meant deleting the lower ones. So qmesh threshold wasn’t an option.

So I just turned on “dynamic” at the top of the solo button. When I zoom, rotate, etc, it temporarily hides everything but the current subtool. Makes it nice n fast

[SUB]Good to know. BTW, does the surface pro come with additional tips for the pen? I saw theres an add on kit, and I didn’t know if they were replacement tips for ones you worn out, or if they were ones not included with the surface.

[/SUB]

BTW, I’m trying to compare the surface pro 4 with my aging old hp with a AMD Athlon II 635 in it… the new cpu runs almost twice as fast as my current desktop, BUT the surface has only two cores, and my old system has 4. (And its 6 or 7 years old now.)

I figured the surface would run much faster than my ancient desktop, but from looking at benchmarks, my old system might be twice as fast as the surface pro 4.

There are other differences (ram speed, my old system’s 8 gb vs 16 on the surface) but I’m not sure is the surface won’t feel like back pedaling instead of having a newer faster machine.

Honestly couldn’t tell ya, but my guess is Surface would be equal or better. I can only say that based on my previous machines: older Mac Pro and 2011 i7 MacBook Pro.

Surface is just as fast, but less heat/fan than the MacBook Pro (zbrush specific)

It has much newer gen architecture of cpu, ssd, ram, etc than your machine. All that stuff comes together to make things snappy.

I was completely surprised by it’s 3d performance (zbrush, modo, unity).

The main value add for me is the sketchbook form. I pretty much only work on the couch now, or at a coffee shop. I have ergonomic issues at a desk. Can work all day on this thing, no prob.

Also, ExpressKey Remote back in stock. Just ordered!

Not using on screen keypads will open up more space. That’s some seriously precious real estate on a tablet.

I’ll have to Google express key remote.

For the money, I was hoping I’d see a big performance boost, but when you consider the sketch potential, along with tge firm factor compared with a clunky old desktop, it’s pretty amazing.

Btw do you use artrage or Manga studio? I’m planning on using both for sketching, lineart and coloring.