Hello, I would like to talk about courses on sculpting and grease pencil. Also talk about Krita and the graphic tablet.
Since I am on CG Cookie, I really love every courses. But recently, I bought a graphic tablet (Huion Kamvas pro 16 because it's not too expensive) and i find myself struggling on both courses and on the use of Krita.
The reason is when I use the tablet, I don't have access to my keyboard. I thought I could handle it by setting up shortcuts on the stylus and the buttons on the tablet, but to be honest I feel very overwhelm. For instance, on the beginner course on grease pencil, I found myself stuck just creating a cercle and not finding a way to escape from editing mode on that circle with my stylus nor my tablet buttons. I have the same kind of issues on Krita, I don't feel confortable without my mouse and my keyboard.
I really could use a course on how to setup the workflow with a tablet. For now, I will focus on other courses (I really like hard surfaces, lighting and products animations) but I hope to find here some advices or anything that sheer me up and motivate me to use the tablet, for now, it will stay under its fabric.
Thank you for reading me and have to put up with my whining.
Peace.
I also started sculpting 2 weeks ago and I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same way.
But I've actually gotten used to having my left hand on the keyboard and the pen on the right. The keyboard is then positioned above the tablet
This certainly won't help you but I bought the UGEE M708 tablet (has no display) which has 6 programmable buttons right next to the drawing area. That's quite nice because then you can put Strength, Size, Undo or other shortcuts on the keys and you need your keyboard less.
Hi David,
I use my Pen&Tablet as a sort of Mouse replacement and my left hand (mostly) on the Keyboard.
There are certainly things, that are less easy than with a Mouse (like clicking Buttons), but a lot can be done with shortcuts.
Of course, if you don't have enough space for both Tablet and Keyboard at the same time, things get a lot more complicated.
Right click is very overlooked. You can esc with right click. Also when in draw mode right click brings up a context menu with color, strength, and radius. I just got an XP-Pen 13 last week. I've been working with the same issues for the last few days then I remembered the context menu. My understanding is most drawing tablets can confirm with double tapping the pen on the tablet. Turns out XP-Pen is single tap and double tap acts like double clicking.
For Blender I generally use a small, wireless Intuos tablet. Previously I've used everything from an enormous Cintiq to a 13" XP-Pen pen display and ultimately settled on the Intuos tablet as the most efficient. I am able to set it on my desk or hold it in such a way where I can comfortably keep my left hand on my keyboard. For sculpting and most Grease Pencil work I've found that I don't need the immediate feedback of being able to see the tip of my stylus over the cursor so a pen display is overkill.
That said, when I am digitally inking over pencils I absolutely need to be able to see my stylus over the linework. So I keep the 13" XP-Pen handy since it's also small enough to move easily and I can still keep a hand on my keyboard.
The struggle to find a comfortable Blender workflow with a tablet is real. Blender has so many hotkeys that it can quickly become impractical to bind them all to the limited buttons on a tablet. When you become more familiar with the tools you commonly are reaching for in Blender you might be able to make custom pie menus that you can then bind to the tablet to minimize keyboard usage.
*eavesdrops*
Ok sounds like a great subject! All tablets have their own settings, and customizing them to work is generally done through their interfaces. I am not familiar with Huon products. I've used Wacom and XP-Pen. But if there are buttons and a dial, they can generally be mapped to the most frequent keys you use for shortcuts - CTRL, ALT, SHIFT, TAB, ETC. I use my dial for zooming, rotating, and changing the size of a brush - although I see there's no dial on the model you mentioned - perhaps asigning two buttons to the enlarge/shrink shortcuts for brushes? Does the pen have a button/2 buttons? These can usually be mapped to right/middle mouse and work great for navigation with the pen.
All the interfaces are different, and this is so you can assign your own shortcuts your way. I wish there was a one-size-fits-all option. Another option is to get yourself a small controller - I believe Huion does a Keydial mini? This is something you can program custom shortcuts into and use alongside your device.
I'll try to get something together for Youtube soon, but I cannot guarantee it will be specific, or will solve al the issues, because Blender uses ALOT of shortcut keys, so it's going to need some form of key input for the main tasks - menu selection, switching modes, navigating, etc.
