Same here.
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Another let-down. I’ve bought the Bridge and KS for ZB + upgrades through the years, but now, Keyshot is not an option anymore. Long live Cycles, Octane and Luxcore.
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Going by their history I doubt that Maxon would give away a 50% discount for years to come. It`s just a way for the spider (Maxon) to get you entangled in their subscription web. This just tells me that a Zbrush subscription is imminent…
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I think so too. It’s a 50% discount on a subscription, as an offer to perpetual license holders, so that discount will probably be temporary, offering a band-aid for current ZBrush owners, so they might not leave.
This is the second time a big CG corporation managed to get me to leave. I used to be an avid 3ds Max user until Autodesk went the subscription way in 2012. That was the moment I decided to completely switch to Blender, after already having explored it.
It’s not that I don’t want to pay for my software, I just don’t want to rent it forever and never own it. At the moment I’m a Patreon supporter of the MagicaCSG developer. Supporting small-scale indie development feels much better than paying pricy subscriptions to big commercial corporations.
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Yep, I hate this model too. I don’t mind subscription but only when I see the results from money spent and can own the final product perpetually.
Blender dev fund is essentially a subscription but I know it supports developers to deliver better product. With commercial apps 95% of the income goes to useless marketing and to investors instead of RnD and developers. And you rent to use, not to own.
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You also get to decide how much you want to pay (from very little per month to thousands), you don’t get that choice with subscription software.
Considering the unprecedented rate of changes by Maxon as far as software goes, I wonder how long before Zbrush users get an email like this.
Dear valued user.
As a company that takes pride in delivering the industry’s leading technology in computer graphics, we invite you to take part in the next big leap as we work to maximize the synergy between our diverse array of products and their users. For a limited time, we ask of you to take advantage of this unbeatable deal to keep your access to Zremesher, the industry leader in retopology (now exclusive to Cinema 4D Studio Edition).
I mean Maxon does in fact have some level of redundancy with the Zbrush purchase as of now (that and how it is now in Cinema already with the latest release).
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You will own nothing and be happy.
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How many zbrush users do you think have not paid for an upgrade since … however many decades ago?
Got mine in January 2013
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So if zbrush hasn’t received a penny from you in 10 years. How many other people might there be like you? 400? 4,000? 8,000? Does anyone have a good guess?
What I would try if I were them is to charge people $1 for every year since the last time you give zbrush any money. Haven’t paid for upgrade since 2016? You only pay $7 this year, $8 next year, and $9 the year after that until you get up to the same price everyone else is paying. Let’s say there’s 40,000 who haven’t paid for an upgrade since 2005 specifically. Zbrush has not received 1 penny from them since 2005. If you charge them $17 this year, that’ll be a profit of $680,000 instead of a profit of $0 AND it’ll be worth its weight in gold in word of mouth marketing and giving a feeling of good will to the people who have thoughts of hate and resentment growing in their soul towards Maxon and Zbrush. Do the same for each specific year and they’d make something instead of nothing from the people who are most likely to jump ship, and also happen to be probably the most skilled and most die-hard zbrush fans and most active community members.
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Now you’ve made me feel guilty
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It’s not like it was the users decision for them not to ask for money for decades.
I don’t mind paying for software, even if it goes into the thousands for a perpetual license, since I use them professionally and generate income using them.
What I do mind is having to pay for a subscription model. I can understand the problem from a business/developers point of view, but from a user point of view what I see is a lack of motivation to actually improve, and seemingly pipe more money going into aggressive marketing and enforcing licenses.
As with most specialized solutions I don’t see Blender being an alternative for Marvelous, Zbrush, Substance/Mari, Nuke, Katana etc. any time soon. Would be neat though, Zbrush is the one and only reason for me to keep using windows, which is annoying me for years now.
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Agreed, even though I only have experience in ZBrudh and the Substance package besides Blender. It’s sad to say, but even Zbrush from 10 years ago would be a better option for professional sculpting than Blender as it is right now. I think I’ll move to 3D Coat if Maxon messes things up even more in the future.
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Absolutely. It’s not some sort of criticism either I think - it’s just not a reasonable expectation for Blender to compete with specialized softwares. No other package is as diverse anyhow.
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I really hope that Nomad Sculpt will become available for desktop OSes next to mobile OSes. From what I’ve heard, Nomad comes closest to the ZBrush experience.
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I hope that people finally will realize that Crapple is worst company in human history and stop support it.
Main issue in my opinion is that by going with the kind of subscription model that is prevalent your work files end up paywalled. Stop paying, lose access kind-of-deal.
If the model were the type of ‘stop paying, lose access to support and future versions but keep what you got’ then it wouldn’t be such a drama. I recall Unreal engine using this kind of deal for a while before going free.
Shame too that Zbrush files are not really backward-compatible or most people would probably be able to just stop updating. But it looks as if you have to collaborate there’s no way around getting on the subscription train and staying current.
Happy to be in a specialty field now where I don’t have to exchange ztools anymore.
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Did you try running it with WINE?
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That’d be neat. I like it a lot, and seeing how procreate changed the way many concept artists are working I really hope that we can do the same. Working on the couch suits me a lot more than sitting in front of a pc all day. Biggest problem I see with that is file exchange, which apple tries to make into the biggest pain possible for users. That plus my reluctance to use anything that has cloud or virtual in it’s name.
I’ll try to drag it out as much as possible. I still don’t see a reason to subscribe to substance for example. Hell, if I was using photoshop I’d still be happy with CS2. I’m a bit of a special case though, I have a real aversion against anything subscription based. I don’t even have netflix or a cellphone plan.
Ye, had a tiny bit of a lag when I tried it about 7-8 years ago. Didn’t try since. They had a linux version way back in the day, not sure why they stopped. Generally when working long hours, my willingness to compromise or play with fiddly versions and settings is heavily limited. 
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Received the 50% subscription discount e-mail for the third time in 9 days today. Maxon seems desperate.
They should have waited with the perpetual license to subscription transition until new features in ZBrush 2023 have been announced and demonstrated. That would make it more attractive to ZBrush users to consider the subscription offer. Right now they’re asking users to start paying extra for a version they already own.
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