What's up world?
Welcome to Mike Drops, the show of, by and for creatives.
My name is Mike Thompson and today I will review the Wacom Pro Pen 3D.
I will show you how to maximize its mobility.
I am not in my studio today, I am in my dining room.
I will be talking about and reviewing the new Wacom Pro Pen 3D.
That's right. There is a Pro Pen for 3D users.
It is a stylus by Wacom. I will tell you what I think of it.
I have had it about a week.
You might be asking, do I need a 3D stylus?
If you are anything like me, you're trying to get more mobile.
However, this is what I must use.
I need a keyboard if I'm using ZBrush.
I have my mouse in case I'm using Maya.
You have to plug into the dongles.
It has USB-C, so I have a hub and my big flash drive card.
It all plugs into a base that has a fan because I don't want it to overheat.
There is a lot of stuff.
It is no longer super mobile, like a super computer on your lap.
It is a computer that needs all this stuff attached to it.
It is still great but I can't balance it all on my lap
if I am at my son's hockey practice waiting in the cold.
We're going to fix that with this.
The Pro Pen 3D.
It looks sleek.
Let me show you the actual pen.
It comes with a cool cigar case.
It looks like it should be in a sci-fi film.
Open it up and there is the Pro Pen.
It looks like the Pro Pen 2.
However, if you take it out, you will notice that there is no eraser.
This new pen has been developed without eraser.
I have been using a Wacom product for the past 15 years or so.
I have not used the eraser very much.
It's a great concept.
It takes longer for me to flip it around and use the back end
than it does to press the eraser button.
If you are working in 3D, you don't really need to erase,
such as working in a 3D application, such as Maya or ZBrush or MudBox.
You will see there are three buttons now.
You have the original rocker panel here with the front and rear button.
You can assign these to do 3D functions, like zoom in and rotate around.
You have the third button here for the third input on 3D apps.
I use it for ZBrush.
I haven't set it up for Maya just yet.
I use 2D more.
I will show you how I use it.
I have opened ZBrush.
I have my sculpture here,
and I'm just panning around with my stylus.
I've assigned that front button to be the Alt or option button on a Mac.
As I click on the screen and drag it around, it moves.
As I lift the pen and let go of Alt, it pans in and out.
I've set the back two buttons to be the select keys.
The front toggle will do a mask.
The back toggle will do select, either the lasso or the rectangle.
It is easy to zoom. I can do it with the stylus.
I can drag it around where I want.
I don't need a keyboard.
It's all done with the new buttons.
You might not think this is important.
I could do those before. I had them mapped to the toggle.
That's true. Now you can do another thing as well.
You can use Alt. I use it all the time.
I usually rest my finger on Alt when I use ZBrush.
I will draw a mask.
I have set this to the front toggle.
I will select the object, click on it and drag out the mask lasso.
There are all the same functions I would use for my mask.
If I hold down that front toggle and click on the object,
it will smooth the selection.
As it is high-resolution, I should drop the resolution here.
Once that's down, it will smooth a little easier.
I just click on it and smooth, smooth, smooth.
I reverse it by clicking off the model.
Then I can click and smooth it more.
If I wanted to make the muscles bigger, I select the inflate brush.
It only affects the places I don't have the mask.
That is how masking works.
But, I have done all this without using a keyboard.
Select off the model and get rid of the mask.
I can use the third button, which I have designated as select lasso.
I just grab the hand here.
I can zoom in again.
All I am using are the buttons on the stylus.
I rotate it around, like this.
Now, I can start to sculpt.
I have my hand, now I want to sculpt on it.
I have done all these things with the buttons.
That is much nicer than having to use my keyboard.
You might say, I have three buttons now,
but I need a lot more to navigate ZBrush or other 3D applications.
I have set up macros to get around that.
These are easy to pull up and allow me to free up my space.
If you look at my screen, it's a custom layout.
I have everything I use for ZBrush on the screen all the time.
That is nice when I work on my Cintiq display,
but on the MobileStudio Pro, there is not as much space.
On the left-hand side, I have layers.
I can collapse the palettes.
That gives me more room to work.
I have removed those.
I will show you in a minute.
Let's sculpt a bit of detail on this hand.
I will select my Standard brush.
I want the draw size to be smaller.
It is big here.
I would normally select the b key and then change the size.
On the MobileStudio Pro, I could collapse the layer and scale it.
I don't want to do that.
That's where those ExpressKeys come in on the side.
I can rotate my finger around, on the touch-sensitive circle.
The brush size changes, which is pretty good.
As in Photoshop, you can use that wheel to interactively size your brush.
I have done that and have the Damien Standard.
Without selecting anything other than the screen and stylus,
I can dig into the mesh.
If I hold the front button, which acts as Alt,
I can pull out of the mesh and get an inverted stroke.
This is my setup for the ExpressKeys.
There are not a lot of ExpressKey buttons
so you probably want to maximize your usage of them.
I have my radial menus.
For ZBrush, there are a lot of commands that are used.
Normally, you would use your keyboard.
We just want to use the Pro Pen 3D.
I set the functions you need keys for on to radial menus or buttons.
You could put them all on the screen, but it takes up a lot of space.
I set them inside of a central radial menu.
I can click on a button on my ExpressKeys
and it will pull up that radial main menu.
There you go, ZBrush Radials.
I have A through E.
Click on A and I have things like primitives, brushes and alphas.
Click on those and they pop up.
The ones that I use mostly are D and E, my custom brushes.
These are usually on the right side of my shelf,
but I can collapse both sides of my shelf now.
I have a lot of space.
This is the MobileStudio Pro.
It looks like a giant screen because I got rid of those sidebars.
I can press the button and pull up a radial,
and I can do a BPR or something not on the screen.
I have touch-sensitivity so I can use them like physical buttons.
I just press with my finger, I don't have to use the pen.
If I wanted to use my left hand and press the buttons,
I could keep sculpting with my right hand.
This is what I think.
Thumbs up or thumbs down?
I give it a three-quarter thumbs up.
I like what they are doing.
I like that they are catering to a 3D audience.
However, it doesn't work with existing Cintiq displays for the desktop.
It will work with the MobileStudio Pro and the current Cintiq Pro display
but those are small formats.
It's going to work with the upcoming large screen Cintiq displays.
Those aren't out yet.
Obviously, that factors into my opinion.
It is a nice piece of equipment, it feels nice in the hand.
I like what it does.
Wacom should include this in the box with the 28 and 32 inch versions.
It should come with this.
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