I am considering a tablet for Blender to draw strokes on my model, and eventually later on, to sculpt.
I have never before used a tablet for drawing, so I know nothing about it. However, I have read a little about it, and see that people recommend the Bamboo from Wacom, but since it is too small for my purposes (I like good space in general), and since it is not pressure sensitive, I am considering “Wacom Intuos Pen & Touch Medium - digitizer”, but I want to make sure that that this go well with Blender and furthermore can be used for sculpting when I get more used to it.
And btw. can this be used with a USB extension cable? Because my PC is located to my left, and the USB-ports in my monitor too is located to the left. I am right-handed.
Be careful with the size. If you can, try one out at a store. When I was new to tablets I made the mistake of ordering one much too big. A tablet is not like a piece of paper - your monitor remains large, and you can zoom on a computer, so a tablet’s small size isn’t much of a hindrance, but swinging your arm around a large surface for hours can be tiring.
I’m not sure how large the “medium” wacom is exactly, but for a first tablet I wouldn’t recommend anything with an active area larger than an A5 piece of paper, except if you have dual monitors and want to use your tablet on both at the same time.
I do have dual monitors. One small for setting up lighting and stuff like that, and one for modelling and rendering.
My desktop is extended towards the second monitor. Does that make a difference when using a Tablet?
Not really, though you would ideally want it mapped to just one monitor. If you go with a Wacom (preferably intuos pro which is the best option), you can set up a hotkey or tablet button to switch monitors affected by the tablet.
In the Wacom driver settings you can pick on which monitor the tablet will work. Or you can set it to work on both, but then some of the vertical area of your tablet will be wasted because the combined aspect ratio of your two monitors is much wider than your tablet. (Or you can set it to ignore the aspect ratio, but you REALLY don’t want that if you ever hope to draw a circle.)
If you’re only going to paint on one monitor at a time, this isn’t a problem. If you insist on being able to access both monitors with your stylus, then you’re going to need an appropriately wide tablet.
Wacom’s are great, and if you don’t mind a small one they are affordable too ($75 USD aprox), there are super expensive ones too, nice but not essential by any means (great warranties though)
I’ve had offbrand tablets too. I had Aiptek personally, I’ve heard there are many good options from different generic/lesser known brands. Other than the fact that their pens require a AAA battery, mine worked perfectly, was nice and big and was very inexpensive. I’ve had a few expensive Wacom’s too, wasn’t much difference other than nicer plastic.
The cheap Wacom has a sold seperate adapter for like $25 or so, that lets you use it wirelessly.
