It really was as simple and basic as owning brushes pens and drawing desk or a new camera for me. You invested and upgraded as and when you could afford to and when the moment was right. This is how independent creative’s have always worked for decades. Through good times and bad you invested in your tools and equipment when and where you could and looked after and carefully maintained them for years. Artists so often form a deep emotional attachment to their tools and they not only represent a financial investment but most often a very substantial time and learning investment too. this is where a lot of the more emotive responses and tribal loyalty we see online from creative software users like us comes from and it is so often mocked and deeply misunderstood.
Thank the gods for Blender and Ton, Krita, and the others and that there is an alternative way and vision happening out there. If not I really think I would have tried to get out of working with CGI and 3D a long while back. I started out traditional and it was never about just getting endless studio gigs to me and being a cog in a bigger machine. If I was going to invest this much of my time and creative energys into something then I wanted to have some independence and freedom as well and the ability to work solo for others and on my own projects. Most importantly to feel I had control and ownership of my work and time investment.
I have always wanted to support and promote brilliant and innovative customer focused company’s in this field and will still continue to do so. But I also feel constantly insecure who might be next. I think Metin’s write up on this probably speaks for a great many of the user base. ZBrush has such a very wide and diverse reach across so many creative fields and has always been community driven. It’s not all been about big money movie effects animation and AAA games. The impact on a large majority of the user base community if things go the way everyone is fearing will be very substantial.
I had a similar story to Metin as regards Max and Blender. AD have recently started to recognise the individual user base again. Whatever reason’s that might be it’s still to be welcomed.
But being priced out of Max back then turned out to not be such an issue and in Blender I found a very happy home and it actually suited my own needs much better. But being left behind and priced out of ZBrush or just finding the continued use of it to be a difficult frustrating experience would be far harder to manage and a very substantial loss.
Yes i feel this post. I have the feelings the big guys are just trying to earn as much money as they can. Its very convenient to have everything in one program and not for every step a new program.
With that price i have the constant pressure to do something in it or its wasted (with subscriptions let it be adobe, marvelous or zbrush). I might be the only one. That they changed from updates forever to none is such a hard change in politics…
Yes of course. This is another thing about it. I think most of us might not use a particular important work app for perhaps days weeks or months at a time. But then during that time we will often need to have quick access to perhaps re export a file or quickly adjust an asset in a bigger project or pipeline. So perhaps 30 or 40 min of intermittent usage in a week or a month. Then other times intense daliy usage. I have several apps I use in this way. The idea of them all being separately on a pay by the month basis is both very scary as well as hugely impractical.
I’ve started with 3DCoat the other day, and I want to cry.
ZBrush has its GUI all over the place, but has great tutorials; 3DCoat, coming from Blender is counterintuitive to me, plus, I can’t make the applink work in a understandable way.
I’ve spent two days trying to simply sculpt a tire’s thread, with no success, quitting in frustration.
My opinion, for what is worth, is that these complex systems that any 3D software deals with: sculpting, UV / retopo, modeling and texturing could be better served by some standardization and GUI modernization.
2 Likes
Renzatic
(Professor Emeritus Billy H. Wafflesmith XIV Esq.)
385
Well, we do have QER for Translate, Scale, and Rotate. That’s sort of a standard. Kinda.
not to derail the thread with my frustration, I think I just can’t grasp the mesh “conversion” from one scope panel to another, or the (lack of?) pivot and the scale things often messing my scene, the tools being like different modes in themselves, the stacks of layers next to the “outliner”, navigation customs resetting after each load and not taking in account the preferences in Wacom settings, etc.
I’m sure it works, just, coming from Blender or ZBrush, is a whole different system.
In comparison, Nomad Sculpt (which is mostly single purpose, but still) took me half a hour to use decently.
I’ll start from scratch next week.
2 Likes
Renzatic
(Professor Emeritus Billy H. Wafflesmith XIV Esq.)
388
I can entirely understand where you’re coming from. I tried using 3DCoat Textura back when it came out, but ended up bailing on it because I didn’t have the inclination to learn all the ins and outs of yet another complicated application at the time.
Like almost every 3D program out there, it’s not immediately intuitive. I’ve since accepted that if I want to learn how to use 3DCoat, I’m gonna have to set aside some time to spend going through some newbie tutorials.
I’m really happy that I didn’t bought zBrush. Thought servel times getting zBrush, but for my demand Blender (with future updates) and/or Nomad Sculpting should be enough. I would puke if i had to pay a $200 transfer fee right now.
Just think, being as Blender is fully open source. A group of users who came over from Z-brush say 50 or 100 or more could actually pay the same money as they would for Z-brush subscription but pay for a full time developer of their own, to work on a Blender Sculpt branch… Right?? Could that ever happen?
And if that were to happen, and they directed the developer specifically on what changes the wanted, could such a group expand to thousands of people and many more full time developers?
I hope so. I don’t mind paying to upgrade if the features are worth it but if I want to continue using zbrush I have to pay $200. Nope. Zbrush is amazing as is and I will ONLY pay to keep it up to date if it’s worth it. Anyway, thanks for helping to shine some light on that for me.
Heavy beneficial for Unreal users because it’s free to use, while not beneficial at all for the big majority that are artists and not game or movie makers.
How much did Arstation price increased ?
It’s not possible, they are millions Zbrush users.
Around 300 000 would be really too much low, Zbrush beeing used by users from all others countries in the world, and used in games, movies, illustrators and all other stuff.
Plus Zbrush existing from long time and alsmot never asked to pay for upgrades, the base users have grown each year faster.
Don’t base number users on Zbrush site only
Because big movie and game companies makes deals, and they don’t purchase copies one by one on ZbrushCentral site.
Also you buy Zbrush on Pixologic site, link below, without needing to use ZbrushCentral site.
So Zbrush Central site is really not representative at all about the number users.
Perhaps he is excited about his salary, Zbrush features and more Zbrush developpers.
But not sure he is aware about pricing, or he would have said some words about it.
Be carefull most of the time it’s free but only if you are making content using it for Unreal engine.
Otherwise you must pay.
But increasing price for non Unreal users on a product they bought, i agree it’s strange.
