I think this is a good thing (possibly), I get people not liking a major corporation taking over a product, but I think Adobe is very fairly priced.
$50/mo is very reasonable for a complete production package. If they throw Substance in that bundle even with a small price jump it would still be a great deal. Compared to Autodesk, and all the other ridiculously priced programs that are just 1 program. Adobe is offering many programs at a small fraction of the price.
With that being said. I would love for Blender to have a code quest for a more “substance” workflow.
besides pricing which i think will not stay as the same with substance in it, there are many other factors too…they’ll be focusing on integrating substane with Adobe products what about others, also adobe is known for slow updates, patches…etc many people actually moved from Adobe to Affinity products for the same reasons.
Despite everything, it’s not a good thing most of the creative software to remain under only one company. Competition is good. Adobe needs serious competition.
Then you just get the single program plan, nothing changes.
I understand the perpetual license argument, I have been hearing it for years with Adobe and I agree. My point is at least Adobe inst ripping people off with price points. Like many other companies tend to do. You can always cancel your plan when you don’t need it and start up again when you do. There are no contracts.
I considered Substance Designer since Spiral Graphics was not really developing Genetica anymore, but I can be assured the latter is not going anywhere and it still has a few tricks to reveal yet (I do have the 4.0 version)
There’s also that Open Source software called Neo Texture Edit which is gathering dust, someone could fork it, move it to Github, and make it into a nice solution for textures.
They’re jacking the single app price up to $29.99 this year. And their prices are small business hostile, charging an extra $20/mo for the Suite for negligible “volume management” tools you don’t need.
Adobe subscription is like gym membership. Really easy to get into, but really difficult to terminate. That’s the primary reason I don’t use Adobe products anymore.
You see a cheap price under 10 dollars and think its cheap, but then find out there are certain windows you must terminate your subscription or pay for 50% the entire year. So, it’s not really 10 dollars, it’s 60, minimum. And that’s their cheapest product line. On average it’s not 60, because people are lazy and busy and they might miss the cheapest unsubscription window, thus making it a 2 year long trek of paying 240 bucks for something that had 10 dollars in the cover.
It’s not really the fact it’s subscription based - I mean, Blender is funded from subscriptions too, and so was Substance, optionally - It’s the fact they take away your license when you quit.
And if you hadn’t noticed, that Photography plan is annual, so you can’t quit whenever you like.
It is time for Blender to have some tools that will make Substance like apps not necessary for its users. After all it is not so difficult to implement such abilities in Blender. It is a matter of will only.
Good curvature masks producing nodes in the shading system for example: is it so difficult to have them? No, of course. It is just to be decided.
Here we go again. Historically, when Adobe can’t compete directly with a successful “newcomer” in the market, they will assimilate, and scavenge parts for use in their flagship products. Or just leave it to die to remove the competition.
I feel it is probably for both reasons that Adobe acquired Allegorithmic. Development will stagnate, perpetual licenses removed. Painter will become part of Photoshop. We all know that Photoshop’s 3d painting is a joke. Well, they’ve got it covered now, and removed the most important competition in one blow.
This is NOT a good thing for the 3d industry or for its inhabitants. This is bad, bad news. If Adobe history teaches us one thing, is that this will most probably the end of Substance designer and Painter.
Just look at what happened to Mixamo/Fuse. And the countless other innovative applications left to die by Adobe.
On the Allegorithmic forums a sense of utter dread reigns. I’ve read a couple of posts of studios pulling out now. I don’t blame them. Most of the users are aware of what this will mean in the mid/long run.
Many people already have to keep track of monthly payments for utility bills, cable and internet bills, streaming service bills, ect… Do people really want to add a forest of brand new monthly bills for their library of software?
Eventually, you might need to add a monthly bill to use software specialized in keeping track and organizing all of the other bills.
Simply put: I never rent software and I never will. When (not -if-) they remove perpetual options, they remove their own incentive to improve it at any significant rate, because users are forced to keep giving them money to use it at all.
With perpetual, the user has a choice to not give them any more money when they don’t add any significant improvements that the user feel is worth the upgrade. The user is free to stick with the old version. This encourages the developers to try to improve it enough to encourage upgrades.
There is also the access to old files argument. Not paying more money to read old files.
Well I would not use it. Simple.
The real worrying problem with software and “the industry” is not so much subscription models as is the trend of wanting cloud/web app/streaming model. The idea that the software no longer would be running on your local machine but on a remote server that requires a continuous internet connection to be used. A web browser or streaming of some type using a client. The internet is garbage where I am, slow and unreliable, has not improved much in decades. The only access was dialup until 2008. Around 1Mb/s DSL (was less most of the time) till last year (still is afaik), and currently 8Mb WISP, which has connection issues especially in bad weather because it requires many wireless hops.
Rental Only: Nope
Always Online: Nope
Cloud Anything: Nope
Cloud == LAN: Maybe
Local and Offline: Yes!
If Adobe or Autoborg acquire something, any option for perpetual licenses will die. Just a matter of time.
