My current home setup for basically the same purposes is as follows: MacPro 4.1 (yes, 10 years old box with some upgrades), Intuos Pro M, 3dConnexion 6DOF controller and NEC EA294WMi monitor (I often work with 16:9 graphics for games and having wider screen proportion enables me to not rely on dual monitor setup and still have a room for palettes but if you require tight color calibration it's not the best choice, I use my old Cintiq for print calibration purposes). Using both 6DOF and tablet inputs give you very natural interface - if you are accustomed with manual sculpting and classic drawing/painting I see no other way to interact with software (I have not use mouse as input for nearly 15 years).
But there are a lot of headaches with this setup (mantaining decade old box is one, mainly graphics card upgrades and compatibility) so if you are starting from scratch then you might try to build something else as even 4.1/5.1 are near end of their life cycle by now. If you go Wacom, then manual tracking of which drivers are usable and which ones will give you a day long stall in work untill you revert succesfully to working version is pain, but I honestly don't think that there is anything better than Wacom (when working properly). Two hardware advices though - for 3D work you're better with CUDA than OpenCL so you need NVIDIA, and for stable workflow you need error correction so you need Xeon based workstation. It will save you a lot of hours of work lost to random crashes. As to what OS - whatever you are more accustomed with, I preffer OSX because I like having one more key modifier so a lot more instant shortcuts, but I do miss windows alt-sequences in PS.
Laptop/Macbook is only a valid choice if you need your workplace to be mobile, as you always have to pay "mobility tax" for the same parameters. No graphic designer ever will tell you "I don't really need more display space" with comfort zone starting only at 27" and laptops bigger than 15" are not really all that portable if you also have to carry your tablet, secondary storage, 6DOF etc... with you.
As to software - for character design/modeling PS+3d suite of your choice is a good starter, but making money with graphics design is more "jack of all trades" job, so Adobe "all apps" subscription plan is way, way better than "single app" subscription.
|