Wacom Renews and Expands Commitment to 3D at Las Vegas CES 2016

You might be interested to know that Craig Barr is in Las Vegas. No, this isn’t a story of an extremely handsome Scottish footballer living it up playing the slot machines. I’m talking about the Craig Barr who has made a name for himself by working on projects in animation, visual effects, and software production and through a series of technical videos on hardware and software workflows. And I am not in any way suggesting that he is there to gamble. Instead, he has arrived as part of what might more appropriately be categorized as a sure bet: demonstrating at Wacom’s CES booth.

Wacom is placing particularly strong emphasis this year in using its booth at CES to demonstrate how users can get the most out of the technology they have to offer. Barr will be showing visitors how he uses the Wacom Cintq 27QHD in combination with a variety of softwaresuch as Autodesk’s Mudbox, ZBrush, and Maya as part of his regular workflow when creating 3D models. It’s not so much that Wacom is hoping to break in to the 3D market as they are demonstrating their fierce determination to continuing to be both on the cutting edge and at the core of production in 3D space.

Their Executive Vice President for Branded Business, Jeff Mandell, explained their ongoing commitment:

“3D Design has been undergoing a transformation driven by trends in 3D engineering, rapid prototyping and on-demand parts production. That is why we have mobilized our resources to accelerate brining new 3D products and services to market addressing both legacy use – cases such as 3D, Multimedia, and CAD as well as emerging segments such as 3D printing. The big players in automotive, consumer electronics and fashion have been using Wacom Cintiqs for years, but the evolution of 3D and increases in affordable and powerful software applications such as Solidworks Industrial Designer from Dassault and Autodesk’s Mudbox has helped Wacom open a lot of new doors.”

The Cintiq pens and Intuos Pro tablets have garnered a growing number of users from among 3D artists, designers, and engineers, something which Mandell attributes to the feel of the pen, the intuitive nature of its use, the speed with which it allows users to work, and the superiority of the support offered to Wacom users from all major 3D software providers. Rather than remaining content with their current capabilities, Wacom is growing the possibilities its tools provide by adding 3D-optimizers and bringing a slew of newly developed, tailor-made 3D solutions meant to address the specific needs of their 3D space clients. And they have no doubts of the potency of their new and up-and-coming offerings:

“Based on what we are seeing in the market and hearing from customers, we are confident that Wacom’s pen and touch creative devices and future products will play a major role in the development of this important growth business for Wacom…wherever computer arts, virtual or augmented reality, special effects, 3D models, animation or plain and simple 2D graphics can be found, odds are that Wacom products were used in the creative workflow. And with our increasing focus on 3D, the market segments and type of customers we service will continue to expand our creative design leadership.”

And as a dedicated Wacom tablet and pen user myself, I can’t wait to see what they bring us next.