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Tablet friendly interface, etc?


paulrus
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I just picked up a Samsung ATIV 700t. It's a Windows 8 Pro tablet (Core i5). I was wondering if anyone has put together any good information on using 3D Coat on a tablet?

So far I've had some difficulty here and there. Mainly it's because I'm used to using shortcut keys and when I'm using the 700t as a tablet, there's no keyboard at all.

I've seen a thing called "Artboard" as well as one called something like Photoshop board, where users have built custom docks for the side of the screen with a lot of shortcuts built into them for particular programs. I was hoping there was something like that for 3DC, or at least a tablet friendly interface or skin.

Thanks,

Paul

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I'm not exactly sure I get your meaning. It has a Core i5 1.7ghz processor, 4 gigs of ram a 128gb ssd and a 64gb xdhd card for storage. It's not an RT (Arm-based) tablet - it's a full blown Windows 8 Pro computer. Although it's not a monster like my 12 core workstation, I know quite a few people are using these for Z-Brush and Photoshop work, so I figured there might also be some 3DC users.

The screen has a 1024 pressure level Wacom digitizer in it. So basically it's a little Cintiq, except I can also use it as a computer (it has a detachable keyboard).

Art Dock is a little dock that sits at the side of your screen and lets you have shortcuts for things like Photoshop & ZBrush without having the keyboard attached.

Thanks!

Paul

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So ?

You added artdock to add direct shortcut to the most used functions you've got a "standard" ui, a detachable keyboard. What's the next step ? Making a button-fest like zbrush ? :/

I don't know I use 3dc on a cintiq too, with a keyboard I don't really know what a "tablet friendly ui" whould mean (except of course a reorganized/streamlined UI, but that's not the point here, or is it ? If that's the case then yes we agree and we wait :/ ).

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Art Dock is a little dock that sits at the side of your screen and lets you have shortcuts for things like Photoshop & ZBrush without having the keyboard attached.

Wow, I was thinking about how much I wanted something like this yesterday!

Right now I am using a Cintiq 21UX (2nd generation), and I don't like using it with a keyboard very much. I'd rather just stay on the screen the whole time and never have to reach for the keyboard....

I've thought a lot about what the best method would be, and I started to think that an onscreen virtual keyboard might be best. But not a full keyboard, just a small panel of customizable buttons that I use often. For example, I would like an onscreen button for ESC, for the number keys, for delete, and the arrow keys, and probably some keyboard combinations (like CTRL-T) as well. It would be great if this panel always stayed open and on top of all other windows, and I could drag it to any spot on the screen that I wanted...

The closest thing that I have found to this is called Hot Virtual Keyboard. I am thinking about downloading it soon and trying it out...

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So I downloaded and installed the Hot Virtual Keyboard app from Softpedia. I've been using it for a few days now and it's great!

I would highly recommend this to anybody using a large Wacom Cintiq with an Ergortron mount, or a Cintiq 24HD. It would probably also be useful for anybody using a tablet PC with or without touchscreen functionality.

So far I have only been using it for Photoshop (since my current project is entirely based in Photoshop), but I'm sure it will be great in 3D-Coat as well...

I have been working a lot faster now because I never have to touch my physical (real-world) keyboard anymore! Both of my hands stay resting on the Cintiq surface all of the time.

I really prefer tapping on the little keyboard keys in the floating window instead of putting my pen down and then moving both my hands to type on the keyboard, or leaving my left hand on the keyboard and the other on the Cintiq.

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Well I'm back in 3D-Coat again this week and started to use the Hot Virtual Keyboard there, and unfortunately it doesn't work very well. 3D-Coat doesn't seem to recognize the virtual keyboard for typing in text in any field. It forces me to use the real-world physical keyboard. On the other hand, all other hotkeys for 3D-Coat work fine on the virtual keyboard. I also tried the virtual keyboard that comes with Windows, but it behaves the same way as the Hot Virtual Keyboard (no text entry allowed).

This is very unfortunate because using the Hot Virtual Keyboard with Photoshop was perfect! I will put in a Mantis Feature Request to have virtual keyboard input supported in 3D-Coat.

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Thanks for that!

Yes, I'm talking about emulating keys with on-screen buttons. It also would be excellent if 3DC could support multi-touch gestures. Some programs are supporting it, like ArtRage. So pinch to zoom, rotating with 2 fingers, etc., all work. I find myself trying to use gestures when I'm using it & I think it'd be a natural extension to the program.

The big problem with the 700t for me is the size of the menus - especially at the top. Even using a stylus, it's nearly impossible to be accurate. It would be nice to have a factory-built tablet friendly layout (I'd love to see 3DC have a built-in dual screen layout too, but that's another topic).

Paul

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Good news!

The latest beta version of 3D-Coat (version 4 BETA 11) now allows for user-generated scripting/coding. Hopefully we can convince someone to create a plug-in for customizable on-screen buttons!

If not, then maybe it is time for me to dust-off my old programming skills and create the plug-in myself!

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