OT Maxon to Acquire Zbrush
Kev914
Posts: 1,115
I just got an email from Andrew Price and he says in the email that Maxon is buying Zbrush. Probably no more free updates and maybe no more premanent licenses [mod note: according to the announcement on their web page perpetual licenses will continue].
Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
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Comments
That's bad news for users of ZBrush. The cost of using it will likely skyrocket. I think that affects the overwhelming majority of DAZ PAs. They'll have to stay at their current version with a perpetual license I suppose. I guess it's Mudbox or Blender for most noobs in the near future.
That's terrible news. I have not even recovered my current license after my previous computer crash.
Hope to find something similar in Unity...
Why? Maxon offers permanent licenses for C4D and RedGiant products.
...received the same email.
Not new news. Known early inn the week. Go to the websites and read the official announcements.
pixlogic is to remain a separate entity. Not much is changing but a zbrush wil probably be in maxom's subscription package but that's rumor not official.
it's not scared news, its great news for cinama4d users n maxom's other packages.
My biggest worry, aside from the likelihood of doing away with our existing perpetual licenses and the inevitable price hikes would be their inclination to discontinue support for any non-C4D bridges, including GoZ for Daz. It would be annoying if the only way to enjoy new features would mean manually exporting .objs and importing with morphloader pro, especially in scenes that require dozens of corrective morphs.
I hope we get a GoZ type of bridge for Blender now. I'm in and out of Blender multiple times a day and the convenience of a GoZ style bridge is near the top of my wish-list. Note that I'm talking about using Blender to make morphs, not for rendering DAZ Studio scenes which is what I might use the Diffeomorphic bridge for.
@DaremoK3 was busy working on such a bridge a year or so ago but I am not aware that it was ever released.
Maxon offers perpetual licenses, and ZBrush upgrades are not game changing. It's not like we will need to subscribe or keep upgrading, unless we really want to.
They have always given away free updates. Maxon is going to want to recoup some of that investment, so I can't see this continuing for much longer. During the Black Friday sale, I weighed up the pros and cons, and the fact that they have never charged for an update almost convinced me to pay the steep price, but I'm now glad that I went with 3dcoat instead.
Added a note on perpetual licenses to the opening post, to avoid unnecessary panic.
Maxon bought out the Forger 3D sculpting app on the App Store and initially said they were leaving it as is, then after a few months killed off perpetual license and made it subscription only... so now my perpetual license version has been downgraded to "Classic" and will probably be useless after some iPadOS near future update.
As a company, lie to me once and your word is meaningless.
No biggie to me, I found Nomad Sculpt which is a much better app with more features and a better GUI, and I was probably never going to be able to afford Zbrush anyway.
Wait... Then some instances of panic are necessary?
Keep Calm And Carry On
Unless It's Necessary To Panic
Then Freak Out Like A Chihuahua On Cocaine
Well, Substance moved to kinda subscription only (theer is a permanent version on Steam though, so the panic may not have been entirely necessary even then). Marvellous Designer has gone subscription only (it is a huge struggle not to write "non-malicious ransomware") though they are at least honouring the right to upgrade for the promided next three versions post the change.
...I wish Clo would still sell a legacy licences for those who want them. I get a little l extra scratch in the account and, they go subscription only.
Yeah, there have been several programs I was saving up for or intending to buy on my birthday or something and right about the time I was ready to buy, they turned subscription.
I'll never deliberately buy into any subscription... I understand if a company offers it as an option, kudos for them, then that's a great way to try out the software if you don't really have the money, or don't intend to use it often... then you are actually offering customers an affordable option to try it out, but subscription only... naah, that's just a money grab.
That's a good way to look at it really. In the end if you can find something that better fits a more comfortable work flow that's a bonus especially if you were driven to find it for other reasons. ZBrush probably still has one of the worst interfaces I ever experienced and there are good or better alternatives anyway.
It's like if you bought the last version of Photoshop and what it was up to that point is stilll a very useable complete application that's just fine. They never improved the pencil and you can still draw with it. The only thing that might change is the cost to buy 'em.