Any suggestions on a mouse for a disabled 3D animator?

[Steve082119]

Hey everyone!

Any suggestions on a mouse for a disabled 3D animator?

I've been looking around, watching videos, but normal reviews look for different things than what I need, so I thought it worth an ask.

I have severely limited range and strength in my arms/hands and use two hands on one mouse. I'm looking to get a mouse with many buttons to reduce the use of my onscreen keyboard. I need something small, light, quiet, and smooth. I also need the buttons to be very easy to press/click. My ideal would be a thin mouse with multiple wheels, and many buttons [not possible to have too many, even if I'm pressing them with a fingernail cause my fingers are too big, but I have really fine fingers to start] on a sort of thumb-rest pad [not on the side of the mouse like the corsair scimitar, but more parallel to the table] or at the back of the mouse. Sadly I've not found such a mouse type.

Any Ideas?

Maybe even a small button pad that I can just glue on the side of a mouse?

No clue...

Thanks!

 

[ssddx]

in all honesty, trying to use a mouse as a replacement keyboard is A) going to be harder to use than just having a keyboard and B) not going to work well given lack of keys.

if you want a mouse but do not want to move your arms, try a trackball. i hear they work wonders for people with RSI

if you want to type without moving your arms at all, perhaps one of the various RSI or injury related keyboards

http://ubercode.de/blog/fighting-rsi-part-2
http://www.onehandedkeyboard.com/maltron.html

etc.

or, invest in dragon or other speach recognition program to type by voice

 

[Steve082119]

in all honesty, trying to use a mouse as a replacement keyboard is A) going to be harder to use than just having a keyboard and B) not going to work well given lack of keys.

if you want a mouse but do not want to move your arms, try a trackball. i hear they work wonders for people with RSI

if you want to type without moving your arms at all, perhaps one of the various RSI or injury related keyboards

http://ubercode.de/blog/fighting-rsi-part-2
http://www.onehandedkeyboard.com/maltron.html

etc.

or, invest in dragon or other speach recognition program to type by voice

Thanks for your suggestion!
I just need the buttons to replace the shortcut keys/ and controls. I do use Dragon Naturally Speaking for writing, but it doesn't work well for "hold shift" as I select many faces to extrude, or "hold b" as I adjust the size of influence on a brush, etc. I think a mouse is Ideal, it gives me the most control over a short distance. Track-pads, and nubs and balls seem to significantly reduce my productivity and control. That's why a mouse with a mini keyboard on it, that I can custom map seems best for me.

Side note I also have a surface pro 4, but I find just using a mouse is easier for me still.

 

[ssddx]

based on your earlier post it seemed like you wanted to replace the keyboard with a mouse.. which is not going to happen and maintain productivity.

now, if all you want is a mouse with more buttons than usual to remap keys, there are certainly options for that.

mmo mice like the naga, naga hex, g600, wow mouse, etc might be up your alley

ones with a few less buttons for gaming like the tyon, volos, g502, etc might work if you dont need that many but more than simpler mice.

if this is for 3d modeling or painting there are specialized mice out there for that like the spacemouse.

another option is getting a gamepad like the orbweaver or tartarus and using that to map commands. given how you say voice commands good for everything but some program commands, perhaps you can map enough to those for it to work.