Pen Display Questions
marble
Posts: 7,500
I was looking for a second monitor when I stumbled across a Flipped Normals review of a Pen DIsplay. I see that the price of the one reviewed was not that much more than a second monitor but has the advantage of being a pen tablet with all the functions that brings. So I ordered the 21.5 inch pen display instead of a second monitor.
Now I am starting to have questions and I know a lot of people here use pen displays so, to start with: can I extend my application space (DAZ Studio Viewport) across the two displays to that I can use the pen in the viewport? I have a Windows 10 PC and I have never used two monitors/displays before.
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Up until recently I've been using 3 monitors (one pen tablet, one touchscreen, and one regular) and the short answer to your question is YES. One problem is that each monitor will use some of the power and memory available on your GPU. This will leave you with less vRAM for renders. Because of this, I've recently made the decision to duplicate monitor 1 on the pen tablet instread of extending to it. If you['ve got a 3000 series GPU it might not matter, I'm still using a 1660ti.
A second monitor is always useful. Honestly, I havent found the pen to be very useful in DAZ, but it's great in Bledner
My wife uses her 21" Cintiq as a second monitor and pen tab to do this stuff and loves it. We don't have desks that are suitable for putting in second monitors so we got a pivoting arm bracket for it. I only have a 16" Cintiq so not much of a monitor but a fantastic pen tab.
About 10 years ago I had a Wacom Bamboo and enjoyed messing around in MS Paint, etc., but never did anything serious with it. Now I'm trying to get more into Blender and maybe do some sculpting. I've seen a couple of tutorials and the artist is using a pen rather than a mouse to do that. I haven't seen much that shows a pen being used in DAZ Studio so would appreciate it if you could describe how you use your pen display (or tablet) to do stuff in DAZ Studio.
Having had that Bamboo, I naturally looked at Wacom first after having seen the Flipped Normal review of the XP Pen display but, gee-whiz, the price comparison is daunting so Wacom was out if I wanted a pen display that doubles as a second monitor (which was the motivating factor for me).
Sure, your last comment is why I'm asking. As for the GPU, my family were generous enough to buy me a RTX 3090 just before the prices went shooting into the stratosphere so I feel very lucky.
I read about duplicate and extend so I think I get it - and that was the main reason I wanted a second monitor: I find the DAZ Studio interface a little crowded and wanted to shift some panels over to a second screen or, best of all, just have the viewport on one screen and the rest of the panes on the other.
Wacomes have gotten very expensive over the last 8 years or so. Not sure why though. My wife uses pen tab to sculpt in Zbrush and it does a fantastic job. I was a long time Bamboo user. I loved them and used it for texturing all my products. I had one of the bigger ones and gave it to my youngest son to use in Autodesk for one of his STEM classes in high school when I got my Cintiq. God that seems like such a long time ago that the kid was in STEM classes, lol. He graduates college next year now. I looked recently at Wacom's again to replace this small Cintiq but my god you have to hit the lotto to get them now. Even the regular pen tabs aren't that cheap anymore. In more demand now so they jack up the prices I guess like they are doing with the GPU's atm.
I always mean to figure out how to put the tool boxes floating on a second monitor in DAZ. Every time I actually attempt it I end up with a bit of a mess and revert back to my old layout. It's easy enough to use a layout that has the viewport on one side and tools on the other. Then just use Windows extend setting and manually adjust the DAZ window and dividers so the viewport takes up one monitor and the tools are on the other.
As far as use of the actual pen in DAZ, it's good for painting the distribution map for strand based hair, or any weight maps. I had those set up to open on my pen tab, which would sometimes cause problems if the pen tab was off. Otherwise it's fine for pointing and selecting, and obviously your mouse still works.
With a 3090 you may not have issues with vRAM like I do, and even on my system 2 monitors is fine Worth mentioning is that even if you turn the additional monitors off, your GPU to reserve vRAM for the monitor if it's plugged in.
I'm using three monitors on 8GB RTX 2070 Super with no problems
I don't have my second (pen) display yet but the promo page says it would be detected as a second monitor by Windows 10 and is in extended mode by default. Is it a simple task to separate the DAZ Studio panes as you have done?
It has been easy, don't know about the latest versions as I'm still on 4.15.0.2 and I hear they have removed the undockable option from the panes.
I checked the change log and there are mentions of docking but it doesn't suggest to me that undockable panes have now been disabled. Mind you, the way it is written, I could well be misunderstanding it.
I had a Wacom before but lost it due to flooding several years back where I lived. When looking at finally get around to replacing it last year I rean across the XP-Pen. This isn't some cheap knock off, this is a high quality Japanese made product and I do not regret spending for the XP-Pen at all.
Same! The absolute beauty of having a 2560 x 1440 viewport to work in after coming from a single 1080p after so long is amazing. After all my scenes for a set are put together I have an older pc I only use for the web or watching movies when acitvely rendering with everything else shut down on this one except DAZ.
My Dell monitor is 2560 x 1440 but the XP Pen display is only capable of 1920 x 1080 so I asked a question on Amazon whether this would be a problem. I got no answers but I am guessing that the problem would be in Mirror Mode (which requies both to be the same resolution) but not such a problem in extended mode - would I be correct?
I couldn't answer that since I transfer my images I wish to work on to my older desktop that I replaced with my new one when I got the triple screen monitor. I have DAZ on my new system but run photoshop on my old one which also has my old 1080p monitor as well.
This might help
windowsreport dot com/dual-monitors-different-resolutions-windows-10/
Windows handles mixed resolutions on various monitors just fine in extended mode. There's even a nice interface to orient them so the computer knows how you want them to be physically laid out.
Good to know, thanks. I tried dropping my Dell Monitor to 1920 x 1080 and it looks poor compared to the recommended resolution of 2560 x 1440 so I would prefer to keep it at that.
OK - so my XP-Pen display has now arrived and is connected. All looks good other than I can't move panels from DAZ Studio across two displays. I can have a browser open on one and DAZ Studio on the other but I can't move the viewport across which is what I wanted to do.
Any ideas?
In my experience, DS is horrifically ill-equipped for touchscreens. I've used Houdini and C4D with a stylus on a Surface Pro with no issues, and actually found them quite pleasant, but DS is borderline unusable that way.