2D Digital Artists Equipment List Poll

[Concept Monkey]

I've always wondered how this breaks down in the real world......

Please list as close as you can what your hardware (Please list the CPU type and speed, type and amount of RAM, type of videocard, number and type of monitors, and model of digitiser), OS and software plus your artwork canvas resoultion is like for doing 2D digital works.

I'll start:

COMPUTER: Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8Ghz), 2X 512MB DIMMs of PC2700 DDR (total 1GB...needs more RAM), and nVidia GeForce2MX based 32MB PCI DVI/VGA Dual head videocard.

DIGITISER: Wacom Cintiq 15X and a Wacom PenPartner USB sharing the same Wacom Ultrapen

MONITORS: (2) Wacom Cintiq 15X 15" Pen Tablet LCD and a Sony G400 19 inch Aperature Grille CRT (Cintiq is monitor 1, Sony is monitor 2, with the PenPartner controlling the Sony). Resolution is set at 2048x768 (Win2000 treats both monitors as one big desktop).

OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 2000 with Service pack 2.

SOFTWARE: Painter 7 (no patches applied) and Photoshop 7 (no patches), both in dual monitor mode. I generally sketch more than paint in my work, thus Painter is my main program (gives you much better line quality than Photoshop). My usual Painter canvas reolution is 5000x3000 for fine line work and 3000x2000 for rougher sketchy linework (I use 5.3 pixel brushes for linework in both resolutions)

[killing.people]

i am not a professional.

computer: my roommates 700mhz computer. mine is by by.

he runs windows 98

digitizer: my friends had an extra wacom tablet, it says aiptek on it, its smaller than the one he has its about the sixe of a notebook. so i put it on my room mates computer.

i have a flat bed scanner ..

speakers ..

god i am so restricted .. :cry:

[gekitsu]

me no pro, too:

athlon xp 1700+
256 mb ddr ram (+1 gig on its way to me)
noname 19" screen (one), running at 1600x1200, 32 bit, 85 hz
wacom intuos 1 6x8 usb
os is win2k with sp 3
progs used are:
photoshop 6.0.2
photoshop 7 without patches
painter 6.1 (with the 6.1 patch obviously)

preferred canvas size is 2000 x 2000 px for sketching and everyday use, everything else depends on where i want to use it and at what size.

scanner is epson perfection thing, works sweet.

[amphex]

Wow, your set up is the stuff of dreams Concept Monkey =)
I got
17" Trinitron Monitor
1GHZ P3
256MB SDRAM
32MB NVidia GeForce2 GTS
WinME
PS Elements
4x5 Wacom

Please dont laugh..im poor =)

[Fipse]

Hmmh, if you want to know,

this is my private equipment where I´m doing the more "arty" stuff. My professional equipment is somehow more elaborate.

Computer: P4, 2000 Mhz, 512 MB RAM, Nvidia Geforce 2/400, 64 MB for my main monitor an a cheap SiS Videocard 4 MB for my secondary monitor.

Digitizer: Medion Board, ca. 21 x 28 cm size - if I get some money I will buy a Wacom ;)

Monitors: 21" Quato Twopage Professional (main monitor) and a 17" Belinea

Programs: what I get my hands on but mainly PS 6 and PS 7, Painter 7, Freehand 9, Adobe Streamline. resolution depends on project

OS: Win 2000

Not the top-notch stuff but it works out o.k.

[ATOMICsizePENCIL]

ok heres the cold hard facts.
ohhh so sterile.

keep this in mind.
A) im a top notch pro.
B) no im not.

my sys;

PC: AMD 1.3ghz w/ 512 DDR ram, GeForce2 mx/400 32 MB w/ tv out, 70 GB's HD space, 40x TDK velocity burner (so nice)

Dgitizer: standard wacom tablet (not sure the size specs) its the smallest of the line (4x5?)

Monitor: Dell/Sony Trinitron 19"

Programs: Painter, PS6 (need 7), Maya 4, Flash MX, Adobe premier.

Resolutions: whatever seems to fit the moment. this is a field i need to be more informed in. Generally ive been working in painter at 1200x2 at 300 dpi.
Monitor resolutions?: 1280x768 @ 72 refresh.

OS: winXPro. its a buggy baddass....gonna have to go back to win2k soon.

Scanner: Epson perfection 1250
-gek... they are nice :D
-gekitsu.... wow those are some high monitor resolutions :|

chow4now.

[Martial Loh]

im a student, i gots a Pentium 4 2Ghz, 2 sticks of 512mb DDR Ram. 2 60Gb hard drives using a raid feature(stripped).
monitor 19" Gericom.res - 1280x960...graphic card - geforce 4ti4400..
Graphic tablet - Nisis 12"x8".scanner - some cheapass usb one. oh - and a cheapass surround sound system too!
i want a faster processor...
almost forgot - Windows 2000 with service pack 3..
progs - PS7, Painter 7(although i dont use it much),Maya PLE, Houdini Apprentice,Premiere...
Thassit!

[piGfreeZer]

hey, I'm a pure beginner in digital painting (and drawing too... i'm young, so i'm really not a professional)
but here's my stuff:

Athlon 1Ghz
256 MoSDRAM
GeForce2 GTS
17" Trinitron
Tablet is wacom Graphire2, A6 format (quite small ;) )
OS: Windows XP
programs: Photoshop7, Painter 7, and Open Canvas (i like it !)

I draw on 1024*748 standard desktop resolution, which is not too big, but big enough :p

[sin]

so many pc's...-wimper wimper- am i the only mac'er here?

if you guys are curious, i run a....

G4 Quicksilver Dual 867 MHz

1.2 GB Ram

22" Flat Screen LCD

Flat Bed Scanner

and one of those tiny wacom tablets, its kinda laggy, any suggestions?

PS7, Painter 7

[Concept Monkey]

Sin:

I'm also quite surprised that you're the only Mac owner that has posted in this thread. But then, among my own friends, the breakdown is something like 8 PCs to 2 Macs.

BTW, are you using OSX? And in which programs does the tablet feel "slow"? I'm guessing that you are using OSX and Painter 7 is feeling slow. It's definitely not the tablet. It's the OSX and Painter 7. When using Painter 7, I strongly suggest that you go back to OS 9.xx. It should speed things right up.

Amphex:

The only expensive components of my set up was the Cintiq and the Sony 19 incher ($1900 and $400 respectively). The Cintiq might have been more or less a way to compensate for my crappy skills, but it did allow me more freedom in sketching and to stop buying expensive media (I remember spending $30 for 50 sheet pad of Vincent Vellum back in school.... And go through that in about 2 or 3 days X_X.)

The computer was just a hair over a grand to put together (this was a ground up, which is rare. I usually transfer the old power supply or the case to th new machine at least). I love the PC platform because I can put together a very poweful machine for about a grand or less. This allows me to put together a new machine every 12 to 18 months or so without feeling too guilty. My next upgrade should cost anywhere from $300 to $600 or so, since I'm going to be only upgrading the motherboard, CPU, and possibly RAM.

[ZippZopp]

i'm not a pro, just a student tryin to learn as much as i can!

AMD AthlonXP 2100+ with 512 megs of PC2700 DDR (i need more), 55 gigs of hard drive space, ATI Radeon 8500

Digitizer: Wacom Intuos2 12x9 USB

Monitors: i'm using two 17'' monitors. both set to 1280x1024. one of them is about to go so i think i wanna get a 19 or 21 inch to replace it!

i put my canvas on the main monitor and all the toolbars on the other

Programs: Photoshop 7, Painter 7....i've just gotten into painting so i'm doin a lot of self portraits, painting at 1600x1200.....sometimes more

OS: i'm using WinXP with service pack 1

thats it! oh and i have a big blasting stereo system so i can listen to loud music when i paint!!!

[sin]

Concept Monkey - actually, the tablet felt laggy in painter (in osx, btw once you osx, you never go back ^_~, and and and, i have a backwards emulator...) but i went to ps7 and it works great.

[Fipse]

At work I´ve got my G4, too, with 1 GB RAM, a Formac Card and a 21" Barco Calibrator (oh, how I wish to have one at home, too). No lacks with our wacom but we´re using OS9.

As a systemadministrator in our firm I decided no to put OS X on our computers until there´s a good solution for all the trouble with QuarkXpress. The licenses for the updates are so expensive we decided to wait until enough computers here are so far updated and there´s a patch for Quark 5.0 that we can work without any problems. I see a stable system is much more important than having the newest stuff around.

And at home I´m working with a PC because it´s much cheaper ;).

Fipse

[Concept Monkey]

Sin:

It sounds exactly like what I suspected. It's not your tablet. Tablets never have impact on "lag". It's definitely OSX and Painter 7.

If you want to use Painter 7 to any useful degree, you have to use it under OS9 until Procreate fixes whatever bug Painter 7 has under OSX. Who knows how long that will take. It took forever for Procreate to fix dual monitor + dual tablet bug in Painter 6. It was called Painter 7. :D

All I know is that Painter 7 under OSX, even with a Dual 1.25Ghz DDR G4 tower was unbearably slow. I know OSX is quite nice, but use Painter 7 under OS9.

Fipse:

My reason for using PCs is that they are much powerful than Macs right now. Cost is great, but the fact is, 3Ghz P4 set up right now is about twice as fast at Photoshop and Painter than a dual 1.25Ghz DDR G4 towers. Motorola is really holding Apple back in the power struggle.

[MindCandyMan]

I have an Athlon 1.4 gig, 512 megs of pc2100 ddr ram, 64 meg video, 9 x 12 intuos 2, 19 inch monitor.

OS - Win XP pro

I work with painter 7 mainly at 1800 x 2400 at 300 dpi. Concept Monkey...what dpi do you work at? I think if I worked at 300 dpi at 3000 x 5000 my computer would have a massive heart attack.

[N3W8I3]

COMPUTER: P4 (2.6Ghz), 4X 512MB DIMMs of PC2700 DDR (i always need more), Matrox parhelia 256MB card with triple head.
1x 200GB ide harddrive
1x 18GB scsi harddrive

DIGITISER: Wacom Intuos 2, standard stylus (its fine) 4d mouse, blah blah oh and i just bought an airbrush for it.

OTHERS: i use a flatbed Epson Perfection 2060 photo (if i remember correctly) and

MONITORS: 3 x Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070U (i highly reccommend these are fairly priced very good image quality VERY flat CRT)

i dunno what my resolution is but i used 1600x1280 when i was using one monitor, the matrox card i now use whacks it up to something silly like 48,000 orsomething (i assume thats the entire deskspace for all three 22 inch monitors?)

OPERATING SYSTEM: i dual boot between gentoo linux and Windows XP... when they bring painter to linux systems i will be a happy man (is there anything except gimp or alias wavefront stuff out there?)...
as a sidenote i use a shell replacement programme called litestep (some of you must have heard of it, it seems to solve the problem with windows XP deciding to crash) this replaces the explorer bar and windows manager tht you normally use in winblows , i use either flux or noir as a theme.
another sidenote... if u use litestep get an indie build NOW the official version is a heap of steaming junk.

SOFTWARE: Painter 7 with patch, Photoshop 7, paintshop pro (when i have to) opencanvas, gimp, maya 4.5, 3d studio max 4, lightwave 7, bryce 5, er.. i think thats all i use?
no ... adobe streamline (only for vectorising line art), dreamweaver mx, flash mx, er... i mostly use a little notepad called koolpad to write html in now tho... if im not being a supageek and using vi in linux.


i think thats it
:eek: :eek: :eek: i never realised it before but i spend far too much money and time on this thing

[Big_O]

AthlonXP 1800
512 MB DDR-RAM
40 GB IBM + 60 GB IBM Harddisk
19" Samsung Syncmaster Monitor

Wacom INTUOS DINA4 + Stroke Pen + Ink Pen

EPSON Stylus Photo 870 Printer

EPSON Perfection 1200U Scanner

Canon Powershot G2 Digicam

Win2K + Servcice Pack 3
Photoshop 7.0.1
Thumps Plus 2002
Freehand 10
Irfanview
Speedcommander

And of course a nice Drawing Table, lots of paper and Pens and Pencils and stuff:-)

[Grooveholmes]

My pride and joy:

Alienware machine
Dual 1.8 Ghz AMD
1 Gig o' DDR RAM
Geforce3
6x8 Intuos2 Wacom
5.1 Surround speekers
Windows 2000 professional

My main programs are Maya4.5-Photoshop7-Painter7.. Looking for another copy of 6

I have no scanners or printers at home currently.

[Blackhawk]

1 gig AMD
512 PC133 Ram
40 Gig HD
19" Viewsonic
6x8 Intuos2

It's not much, but it gets the job done for what I need to do. It doesn't like the watercolor brushes though and it hates Maya.

[ODIN SIX]

Well Computer 1::

AMD 750
512mb ram
Elsa 64mb AGP card
30 gig HD
80 gig HD
6x8 Wacom
Epson 1250 scanner
Programs ::
OS ...XP
Photoshop 6& 7
Illustrator 9
After Effects
Painter 7 & classic

Computer 2 :: (XMAS present to my self)

P4 2.0
1 gig ram
120 gig HD
PNY Quadro 4 750 XGL 128mb Card
Programs:::
OS...XP
Adobe Premire
3DS MAX 5

One Monitor for both for now,,, plan to get another one later

:chug: :chug: :chug:

[Clodhopper]

my old war horse is:
SAG workstation
dual 800mhz P3s
ELSA Gloria 2 64meg video card
6x8 wacom
i swear by trackball mouse
512ram
19inch Sony
but more importantly:
16 inch 300watt sub woofer and 4 satallites

it been a great 3 years with this old bastard, his name is elwood. I've had to reformate 4 times now.
painter,
pshop7
max5
after effects 5