Wacom Bamboo

I have been getting back into 3D modeling lately and ran into my old nemesis — texturing!  For whatever reason, I had never really been very good at texturing.  I think a lot of that was due to the way Lightwave did textures.  It used to be extremely painful to texture a model because there wasn’t really a good workflow..

Previously you’d have to export your UV’s and do some texturing work in photoshop or some such, then import them back to the model, then render it… just to test your outcome.   It would take a long time to get something looking even half good.  It just wasn’t easy workflow wise causing me not to want to do it.. thus, I sucked at it..

Modern day texturing is so much easier it’s not even funny.  Now-a-days software allows you to directly paint on the model!  It’s so awesome seeing your model update in near real time as you paint on it.

It’s so powerful and so much easier to use.  The only thing you really need to use to take full advantage of that is a graphics tablet.   So this weekend, I went out and purchased a “Bamboo” Wacom tablet for $69.  What a steal!  This thing is awesome.   I realize there are several thousand dollar versions of this tablet and ot be honest I’m not sure what they bring to the table.  This tablet is fantastic and does such a great job I can’t imagine needing anything else.

I know they make a super expensive one that is also a monitor so you can see exactly what you’re working on directly on the tablet, sure that’d be dang nice but other than that I don’t know what the really expensive ones give you over the Bamboo.

I’m very happy with it.  Modo 3D by Luxology is the 3D application I’m currently using to paint and model my stuff.  It is designed to use a pen and does so perfectly.  I still haven’t quite mastered UV creation but I’m pretty close I think.  All in all the tablet was a good purchase and I would recommend one to anyone wanting to get that kind of detail out of their work.