Mobile Art Creation

[ATrout]

Budget (including currency): $600-$1500

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Blender Modeling/Sculpting (no rendering), Light gaming, 3d Print slicing, and Writing research papers for college. It must be mobile, but doesn't need to have stellar battery life or anything.

 

I'm currently working on a windows 10 desktop that has a core i9 10850k, 32gb ddr4 ram, Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000, and 2tb of M.2 NVME SSD storage. This system is used as my main work-horse for 3d modeling, rendering, 3d printing, animation, and gaming. I also have an old laptop that recently kicked the bucket. I had used the laptop to write my papers, submit my school work, and do any of the work that I would need to be mobile for. However, with the laptop having numerous issues I'm now looking to upgrade to a better laptop/tablet combo like the surface pro. However, I haven't been following the tech industry super closely and have no idea what kinds of new tech are out there or what kinds of compatibility Windows 10 has in terms of working with multiple different systems together at once.

 

With what I've listed above, what would you all recommend I take a look at? I would love to have a laptop that would allow me to do some light modeling, slicing for 3d printing, and research/writing on the go, yet also be able to get home and use it as a drawing tablet with my main system to do the refining/heavy work. I have no idea which brands at this point would have all of these features in one, but based on the reading I've done soo far, something like this should be totally possible/doable. I think the surface pro 7 or 8 might be the way to go, but I don't know if it's overhyped/priced or if there are any other better options out there. Wacom is definitely out of my price point, and Lenovo/Acer look like they might have a couple good options. I'm completely open to any and all criticism/advice, and I would really appreciate some help with figuring out which system would be best for my use case.

[jaslion]

Using it as a drawing tablet for another computer is automatically only possible on the wacom cintiq companion which is a bad device. So yeah don't get it.

 

I think you are wanting a little too much from 1 system here. For at home just get a cheap drawing tablet. Really good huion's out there for like 50$ if even.

 

As for the laptop well the surface lineup don't have the best hardware and you do want some nice performing stuff to do this.

 

Are you going to use the touchscreen for anything else except the thing you wanted to do that won't work? If not I can recommend a heap of great performing laptop for on the go.

 

If you are still going to use it for sculpting you will want a small keyboard or something for shortcuts because not having shortcuts SUCKS. It's legit the reason I got rid of my old yoga since I just ended up carrying a small bt keyboard with me and by then I was like wait why not just carry a small drawing tablet at that point :p.

[Bombastinator]

35 minutes ago, ATrout said:

Budget (including currency): $600-$1500

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Blender Modeling/Sculpting (no rendering), Light gaming, 3d Print slicing, and Writing research papers for college. It must be mobile, but doesn't need to have stellar battery life or anything.

 

I'm currently working on a windows 10 desktop that has a core i9 10850k, 32gb ddr4 ram, Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000, and 2tb of M.2 NVME SSD storage. This system is used as my main work-horse for 3d modeling, rendering, 3d printing, animation, and gaming. I also have an old laptop that recently kicked the bucket. I had used the laptop to write my papers, submit my school work, and do any of the work that I would need to be mobile for. However, with the laptop having numerous issues I'm now looking to upgrade to a better laptop/tablet combo like the surface pro. However, I haven't been following the tech industry super closely and have no idea what kinds of new tech are out there or what kinds of compatibility Windows 10 has in terms of working with multiple different systems together at once.

 

With what I've listed above, what would you all recommend I take a look at? I would love to have a laptop that would allow me to do some light modeling, slicing for 3d printing, and research/writing on the go, yet also be able to get home and use it as a drawing tablet with my main system to do the refining/heavy work. I have no idea which brands at this point would have all of these features in one, but based on the reading I've done soo far, something like this should be totally possible/doable. I think the surface pro 7 or 8 might be the way to go, but I don't know if it's overhyped/priced or if there are any other better options out there. Wacom is definitely out of my price point, and Lenovo/Acer look like they might have a couple good options. I'm completely open to any and all criticism/advice, and I would really appreciate some help with figuring out which system would be best for my use case.

I recently saw a 3d printing thing that was actually a Microsoft excel plugin.  Got the impression you might have to be a mathematician to actually use it though.  It did great work.

[ATrout]

9 hours ago, jaslion said:

Using it as a drawing tablet for another computer is automatically only possible on the wacom cintiq companion which is a bad device. So yeah don't get it.

 

I think you are wanting a little too much from 1 system here. For at home just get a cheap drawing tablet. Really good huion's out there for like 50$ if even.

 

As for the laptop well the surface lineup don't have the best hardware and you do want some nice performing stuff to do this.

 

Are you going to use the touchscreen for anything else except the thing you wanted to do that won't work? If not I can recommend a heap of great performing laptop for on the go.

 

If you are still going to use it for sculpting you will want a small keyboard or something for shortcuts because not having shortcuts SUCKS. It's legit the reason I got rid of my old yoga since I just ended up carrying a small bt keyboard with me and by then I was like wait why not just carry a small drawing tablet at that point :p.

I would still love to use a stylus to sculpt on the laptop, and I totally get what you mean about hotkeys; I don't know if I'd be able to use my workflow without them. With that being said, I do have a small cheap drawing tablet so I'll probably stick with that for the time being. I already took a look at the Wacom device, and it's definitely out of my price budget, especially for the hardware that's inside, so I'm in total agreement there. If the surface pro really isn't all that great for drawing/sculpting then I'll probably forgo the touchscreen and go with something a bit cheaper to use the savings on a resin printer instead of a nicer laptop.

[ATrout]

9 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

I recently saw a 3d printing thing that was actually a Microsoft excel plugin.  Got the impression you might have to be a mathematician to actually use it though.  It did great work.

I think I saw that too, and I don't think you need to be a mathematician at all. It's a lot like other skills, you get faster/better over time. It is a really cool way of controlling a 3d printer, and it gives you a lot more control. However, if that method is too advanced for you, there are a lot of free and great slicer softwares out there that can do most anything you would normally need/want.

[jaslion]

12 minutes ago, ATrout said:

I would still love to use a stylus to sculpt on the laptop, and I totally get what you mean about hotkeys; I don't know if I'd be able to use my workflow without them. With that being said, I do have a small cheap drawing tablet so I'll probably stick with that for the time being. I already took a look at the Wacom device, and it's definitely out of my price budget, especially for the hardware that's inside, so I'm in total agreement there. If the surface pro really isn't all that great for drawing/sculpting then I'll probably forgo the touchscreen and go with something a bit cheaper to use the savings on a resin printer instead of a nicer laptop.

Then I'd recommend a lenovo legion 5 with a ryzen 5600h, 16gb ram and a rtx 3050. You can also opt for a higher spec unit. The unit described is under 1000$ normally.

 

Not having shortcuts just breaks the experience. I know someone who tried to use their acer studio thing (that folding over gaming laptop device) in my last year of 3d arts school and well it took not even 4 weeks before he bought another wacom intous medium and used it like a normal laptop again :p. Just for matte painting he used a wii mote for shortcuts but for any 3d program he needed a keyboard :p.

 

Nothing really beats just having a regular ol decent drawing tablet. My wacom intuos pro 2015 medium is WRECKED and looks like garbage but still going strong :p.

 

The wacom companion lineup has basically always been a bag of crap. Massive issues with them like charger ports just failing due to a manufacturing fault, cooling issues, pen and touch input hardware failiure, freezing up, connect to pc locking up device,...

 

Cool concept of a device but they always just sucked.

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, ATrout said:

I think I saw that too, and I don't think you need to be a mathematician at all. It's a lot like other skills, you get faster/better over time. It is a really cool way of controlling a 3d printer, and it gives you a lot more control. However, if that method is too advanced for you, there are a lot of free and great slicer softwares out there that can do most anything you would normally need/want.

I don’t know it is, it merely looked that way to me.    Dude was talking about using mathematical algorithms to draw with.  Area under a curve is calculus. Calculus is advanced.  Thinking in calculus is more advanced.  Engineers do that a lot too. I might have got the wrong impression.