Review - Wacom 6D Art Pen with Painter IX

[Jin]

For anyone owns an Intuos 3 tablet and has purchased the new Wacom 6D Art Pen or is considering the purchase, there's a nice review at Renderosity if you'd like to read it:

The Paula Sander's Report: Wacom 6D Art Pen with Corel Painter IX (http://www.renderosity.com/index.ez?viewStory=10239)


Jinny

[Aberrant]

I got one a short while, it is very cool but theres no buttons or eraser on it. Also setting an expression rotation on MOST of the brushes generates an out of memory error for me. Other than that it's awesome, mimics flat brushes very well.

[Jin]

Hi Aberrant,

Have you tried using a smaller brush size to avoid the out of memory issue?

Too large brush sizes usually cause that error message.


Jinny

[Aberrant]

Yeah, that was what I thought at first but it happens with brush sizes less than 20, at that size they're useless to me anyway. I just mess with it and simplify the brush and it seems to work. I just can't set too many other expressions.

[Jin]

Corel would probably appreciate and benefit from your feedback if you can send a detailed report to:

Corel Painter Program Manager Rick Champagne

rick.champagne@corel.com


Jinny

[Aberrant]

Cool, I'll give them a shout.

[Zaknafain]

Is it possible to controll the angle of the palette knife with the 6D art pen?

[Jin]

Zaknafian,

Check here:

Wacom's Description of the 6D Art Pen (http://www.wacom.com/art_pen/index.cfm)

If that doesn't answer all of your questions, call Wacom:

Wacom Contact Info (http://www.wacom.com/companyinfo/contact.cfm)


Jinny

[Aberrant]

No, it's not, because it doesn't work with that dab type. I think this is something they'll fix eventually, it's a pretty new feature.

[Zaknafain]

I really hope they'll fix it soon. It would be the best brush ever, if you could control the angle.

[stark3d]

I didnt link the out of memeroy error to this pen.

SO What is good about it. Rotation with this pen was a joke.

It Was not for me.
I worked with it all weekend it was not worth the money.

No eraser no buttons.

I now believe even stronger it is a piece of crap

[Aberrant]

I should hate it huh... well actually I love it. I replied to the thread you started with some other uses for it. I'm sure there are a million other uses for it as well, but the important point is that it emulates natural media in a way that other tools can't. I don't know about you but when I sketch I blunt my pencil down to a chisel so I can control line weight. When painting with a flat brush in real life the rotation of it is vital, this tool emulates that feel of a real flat paint brush.

I suspect you haven't developed any meaningful measure of skill with natural media like the pencil and flat brush.

[Aberrant]

Oh yeah, it also has a huge felt nib with a lot of friction on the pad, feels nothing like the other tools, it feels like a chisel point felt marker. And you can use it exactly like one. I've never used markers much but someone who has would probably love this pen.

I have a regular nib in the grip pen, felt in the 6d pen, and a spring nib in the airbrush, every tool has it's own feel. The 6d pen with felt feels nothing like the tiny felt nibs for the grip pen.

[AussieArtist]

Now that a patch has been released that takes the 6D Art Pen into account has anyone got anything to say about how it works with Painter IX?

[pixlart]

Hi:

I've been working with the combination of the 6D Pen & Painter 9.1 release, so I can relate my experience to those that are interested. A bit of background first:

In capturing expressive gestures, there are a total of 6 axes of motion that can be captured: X, Y, Z(pressure), Tilt, Bearing, and Barrel Rotation. Wacom's stylii originally sensed only the X, Y, and Pressure (probably what it is most known for). Just the addition of pressure was a huge step forward in enabling expressive gesturing on a computer. A few years later, Wacom added Tilt and Bearing. Painter quickly added these parameters to increase the fidelity of artists' expression. That was 5 out of the 6 dimensions of gesture covered, Rotation being the sole axis not sensed. Now that Wacom has enabled sensing of this final axis, a complete measurement of the artist's gestural input is possible.

PIX.1 (Painter 9.1) offers Rotation support via Painter's Expression controller, which is a pop-up that is used to animate an attribute of a Brush variant. This Expression controller is sprinkled throughout the Brush Controls, enabling a wide range of expressive options. For example, an Expression controller is present in the Size palette. The Expression controller can dictate what animates a brush's size. The available Expression settings are: Velocity, Direction, Pressure (used most often for size control), Wheel (present on the Wacom Airbrush Pen), Tilt, Bearing, Rotation, Source (Image Luminance), and Random. Obviously, most of these are not useful with regard to brush size control, but they are all offered as options. Most Painter users are propably not even aware of the Expression controller. Its primary value lies in Brush variant creation and custom modification. Which leads us to the Wacom 6D Pen and its Rotation feature.

Unlike previous Wacom stylii, the 6D Pen is not round; rather, it has an elliptical-shaped barrel. This enables the user to tell what the current orientation of the pen is in their hand. The stylus tip is also shaped to aid in orientation; it is rectangularly shaped much like a felt tip marker. Wacom supplies both felt and teflon nibs, allowing the user to choose the one that feels most comfortable for their application. Rotation is as simple as rolling the stylus within you grip, just as you would with traditional media.

How does the availability of Barrel Rotation control impact Painter? There are several of Painter's Brush Dabs (the element of the Brush Engine that applies the mark used to create a stroke) that are not (or potentially not) round. Painter has previously used the Expression controller's Direction animator to "fake" rotation. For example, a rectangular Captured Dab is used for some of the Chalk variants. Using Direction, the recangular dab shape changes its angle based on the current directional vector of the stroke. It's kind of like dragging a box around by a rope; the box turns based on the angle the rope is being pulled from.

PIX.1 reads the 6D Pen's Rotation data and couples it with the Expression controller's Rotation animator. This means that, among other things, it can be used to control the angle of a non-round Brush Dab. The potential for this is not to be underestimated; this is the holy grail of expressive input. A complete real-time data stream that measures all attributes of an artist's expressive gesture is now possible!

I suspect that it will take some time for this technology to completely mature. For the time being the 6D Pen is an optional (read as "costs more money") piece of kit for most digital artists. However, over time the Rotation feature will most likely become a common feature and will not require an additional expense and market penetration of the product will reach a majority of digital artists.

Secondly, PIX.1 represents the initial support of Rotation via its Expression controller. Corel has done an admirable job getting this feature implemented, but it is just a 1.0 feature release and there are certainly more ways it can be employed. One feature currently missing is the ability to adjust the starting angle of a Brush Dab under Rotation control. Without this, it is difficult to build some brush variants in the manner you'd want them to behave. Hey, it's the 1.0 release; these things will be addressed and improved, I'm sure.

I hope this is helpful information for you!

Note that the opinions expressed here are solely mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Corel Corp.

[stark3d]

Well i just sent my 6D piece of Crap Back and got my refund
Thanks Wacom

[AussieArtist]

Well i just sent my 6D piece of Crap Back and got my refund
Thanks Wacom

Why do you say it's crap? What didn't you like about it?

[Edwood]

I wish they made the nib not at an angle. This makes the tilt annoying. It would almost be better as a flat paint brush style, rather than a marker. As it stands, I tend to turn off tilt when using rotation.

I need to play with it more.

I love the feel of the felt nib on my Cintiq.

-Ed

[stuter]

Even with my Grip Pen I don't flip it to erase, such a waste of time when it's waaaay faster just clicking "E" on Adobe Photoshop or adding the eraser tool in your Custom Tool Pallete in Corel Painter and clicking it when I need it :coke:

[Pigumon]

Hi All,

I was thinking about getting it since it seems to be closest to the real thing. But now it seems to have sold out?

Amazon has it for MORE than the retail price which is kind of strange, and maybe because it's sold out on Wacom's site.

Are there any other places online that have it for less?

BTW I usually only use one button on the grip pen, for UNDO,

[jfrancis]

Seems to be completely non-functional in Painter IX.5 for me. I did a reset to factory settings - corel support's only recommended solution.

Works fine in Photoshop CS2, though, and the wacom control panel diagnostics report valid rotations.

[rogfa]

Corel had a Wacom Cintiq on display at the workshop with the 6D pen. I have to say I was really impressed by it. The ability to make thick strokes and thin strokes just by rotating the pen was pretty cool. It would be a big speed increase for me so it's on my wishlist someday.

[jfrancis]

wacom's new 3-week-old driver fixed the Painter issue for me

[jfrancis]

For those of you hoping this would improve the handling of the palette knives, I'm sorry to report this is not yet the case.

Palette knives with angle keyed to direction swing erratically around, like there is some sort of inflection point gimbal lock error in the path calculation.

***

actually I confused rotation and direction. The direction fails as described above, but rotation works as one might hope.

[D.R. Greenlaw]

Hi,

I just got a Cintiq 12WX and it's pretty amazing. However, for the life of me I can't seem to get the 6D Art Pen to work properly on the Cintiq. In Painter, I can see the rotation of the brush icon as I roll the pen, but as soon as the pen touches the tablet surface it snaps to the default vertical position and no longer follows the rotation of the pen. I've tried the pen's rotation expression set to rotation or bearing and neither seems to work. I tried this in both Painter X.1 and IX.5.

Can anybody guess what I might be doing wrong?

I wrote Corel about this and their recommendation was to reset the program by starting it with the shift key held down, but this didn't seem to help at all. (It just made my presets go away.)

I haven't tried the Art Pen in Painter with my Intuos 3 yet, but if it works on that device then my guess is that there may be a problem with the Cintiq. I'll post more info when I can.

DRG

P.S., Some additional info: I just ran the Wacom Diagnositics for the Cintiq and the Art Pen seems to be working fine--the tablet is definitely receiving rotation data.

[MDurante]

Can anybody guess what I might be doing wrong?

From my personal experience (got an art pen from Santa):

Be sure you install the latest driver, 6.05-7.

But before you do that, *completely uninstall* the old one, and reboot.

If it doesn't work, try it again. For some reason it can take more than one uninstall-install cycle to get the art pen to work in Painter X...

- Matthew Durante

[D.R. Greenlaw]

But before you do that, *completely uninstall* the old one, and reboot.

Hi Matthew,

Now that you mention it, I did overwrite the previous Wacom driver rather than uninstalling it first. I'll try this again.

Thanks for the suggestion!

DRG

[D.R. Greenlaw]

That was it! Thank you very much Matthew!

DRG

[Improv]

Oh yeah, it also has a huge felt nib with a lot of friction on the pad, feels nothing like the other tools, it feels like a chisel point felt marker. And you can use it exactly like one. I've never used markers much but someone who has would probably love this pen.

I have a regular nib in the grip pen, felt in the 6d pen, and a spring nib in the airbrush, every tool has it's own feel. The 6d pen with felt feels nothing like the tiny felt nibs for the grip pen.

My 6D came with both a felt and regular (hard nylon) nib.

[Improv]

Here's a good demo video to give you an idea what the 6d looks like when using the real bristle brushes.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=br_gRhWVnDk

[The Oneirologist]

I'd love to get this pen. Then again I'd love a cintiq as well... Perhaps in the future. I hope by now they've ironed out the initial driver issues.

[nasserhoff]

Hi there,

Could someone help me out to set up my 6D Art Pen. I have a few questions.

The curser rotates in Painterx but not in photshop though the rotation seems to work, is it possible to set up the curser rotation (gosting)?

Theo other thing that bugs me more is that I don't know how to set up the 6D Pen properly. The rotation works but i want to be able to just use the very tip of the pen in order to do quick fragile lines, without switching the brush. That should be possible, no? I hope you know what I meant.

Thanks
cheers
d

[pixlart]

Hi David:

Could someone help me out to set up my 6D Art Pen. I have a few questions.

The curser rotates in Painterx but not in photshop though the rotation seems to work, is it possible to set up the curser rotation (ghosting)?

Rotating the ghosted cursor in real-time requires some heavy lifting by the underlying code. For that reason, it appears that Adobe chooses not to implement it. While real-time feedback is possible with the ghosted cursor in Painter X, it can—and does—slow older systems down. For this reason, I advise users with poor performing brush symptoms to turn off the ghosted cursor in the General Preferences. This always improves brush performance.


The other thing that bugs me more is that I don't know how to set up the 6D Pen properly. The rotation works but i want to be able to just use the very tip of the pen in order to do quick fragile lines, without switching the brush. That should be possible, no? I hope you know what I meant.

The only brush variant that currently performs this trick is the Flattened Pencil (Pencils). Even without a 6D Pen, this variant responds to pen tilt to adjust the surface area of the drawn line. Additional engineering would be required to add this functionality in a more general manner.

You could use the Flattened Pencil as a starting point to create new variants with similar behavior.

I hope this answers your questions!

Viva la Painter!

-john

[nasserhoff]

Hi John,
Thanks for your quick reply. I hope to have some time this weekend to fool around. Though it would be disapointing to me, if i can't use the very tip of the pen for finer lines. I would asume that to be the bearing or tilt funktion.

cheers
d