If there is one downside to this acquisition/merger, I feel like Pixologic is great at offering users what they don’t know what they want. I am afraid to see part of this fade away. I feel like maxon wants to make tools more production friendly but not necessarily creatively oriented.
I would’ve liked to have a seen pixologic bridge the current gap that exists between GAN and 3d models. And this would’ve lead to a reasonably successful business model as they would be selling GPU processing time combined with a custom 3d GAN solution. I love working with GAN tools to discover a concept but at the same time it is hard to find the 3d object in a 2D mess. If anyone was going to pull it off, it would be pixologic. Not to say that it can’t happen, just that the idea feels unproven and therefore is a risky business venture.
Very slightly off topic, but wishing everyone here a very happy new year.
Please Pixologic, don’t make your users feel 2022 is as bad a year as 2020 and 2021, even if it’s for a very different reason! We’ve all had enough bad times over the last couple of years. Please don’t break our hearts with this next one!
But thank you Pixologic, you’ve been a shining beacon of goodness and fun in what has been a difficult couple of years. Your livestreams with @PixoPaul and @Piggyson were both entertaining and a great resource to help learn ZBrush better, when there wasn’t much else to do during long lockdown evenings. So if nothing else, thank you for the past 13 plus years (for me, more for some, less for others).
Happy New Year!!!
Is this over yet? When can we expect an official statement?
A lot of weird things is happening right now:
I’ve just found that Zbrush is listed in a new Maxon’s EULA as software that will be available through perpetual licensing.
But what is weird it is that Zbrush is listed together with redshift, which (correct me if I am wrong) have been sold subscription-only since Maxon took it.
From what I understand we can say goodbye to free updates: but again: I could be wrong.
Still: I’m ok with paying for the updates, unless it won’t ruin me. I’m not a company making money on using ZBrush.
Link to EULA:
Are you talking about Redgiant? Redgiant has stopped selling perpetual licenses and is only available as a monthly subscription. And it is possible for perpetual license holders to use their older versions. Of course, if you want to use the new version, you have to pay for a monthly subscription. This is most likely the future of Zbrush. Link
Feels off that nothing has been announced here, even though it says since the 29th. Not the level of communication we’d have hoped for.
Oh, and another change, although the MyLicenses page still lists Pixologic ID, this is changing to ZBrush ID
https://support.pixologic.com/section/25-zbrush-id-formerly-pixologic-id
The wording is very strange though. What happens for perpetual licenses bought before the 29th Dec 2021?
(obviously I know as users we can only speculate for now).
Those purchased before that date will receive free upgrades for one year from date of purchase, as guaranteed when the purchase was made.
We will be sharing more information in the very near future. Once the regulatory approval process was completed, we were finally able to actually communicate with Maxon. We are now working out all the myriad details that need to be addressed so that we have accurate answers for the questions we know you have.
Bear with us just a little longer.
That is exactly how I feel. Zbrush will never be the same under Maxon because they will care about maximizing profits like any other company. I am sure by next year Paul will be gone and so will zbrush live and zbrush central… I feel so sad.
Thank you for at least being able to tell us that. also im sure many of us would just like to say, since this software. no. COMMUNITY means so much to us, we’ve all been heated and touchy over it, we just don’t want to see something many of us have worked so hard for brought down to nothing suddenly. we, well i can’t speak for everyone, but i know I myself have said some things i regret, but its all out of fear and despair… and some anger, certainly. but we ALL hope for the best… of course im sorry you’ve probably had to sit here and read us complaining every day as well. either way, just wanted to add my two cents about that as well…
I couldn’t have said it better, @Julian_K !
The ‘Maxologic’ take-over has been on my mind ever since my jaw dropped when reading that news.
As a 3D industry veteran I can clearly remember how I reviewed the first ZBrush version for a Dutch computer magazine many years ago. Back then I didn’t really know what to think of the 2.5D approach, but it was immediately clear to me that the coding level was top-notch.
In the years that followed I remained faithful to 3ds Max, but always kept an eye on the intriguing developments of ZBrush, gradually developing the 3D sculpting medium.
Once ZBrush 4R7 was released, I had become very eager to jump on the ZeeBee bandwagon for an exciting creative ride.
Every time a major ZBrush upgrade was released for free again, I wondered how the company could stay alive like that.
I’m also an avid Blender user since 2012, when 3ds Max went the subscription way, and next to the Blender Foundation, Pixologic was the only other developer / publisher that kept my full sympathy, not only because of their lack of profit greed, but mainly because of their grandiose tool and the sympathetic atmosphere, both at the side of the developers and the side of the users / artists.
Looking at the facts up to now, the take-over by Maxon does not elicit trust in the future of ZBrush. Maxon quickly switched to a subscription-only model after taking over Redshift, and the subscription prices of C4D, Redshift and other Maxon products are way too high for a small-scale freelancer like I am.
I’m now hoping for one of these possibilities:
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Perpetual ZBrush licensees will remain respected and will keep being able to upgrade once a year for a reasonable price (comparable to what you need to pay to upgrade Keyshot for ZBrush), in stead of having to switch to a subscription-only pricing model.
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If ZBrush becomes subscription-only, I dearly hope the subscription price will be reasonable to hobbyists and small-scale freelancers. My personal maximum monthly budget for a ZBrush subscription would be $ 20, but preferably less of course.
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A third option I’d definitely find interesting to consider is an Indie license for a combined C4D and ZBrush package, with a yearly price not much higher than that of Maya Indie: currently $ 280. But I consider that to be very unlikely, although it could be a strategic blow to Blender, Max and Maya.
However, if Maxon turns out to take full advantage of the take-over for maximum profit gain, then for the time being I will probably keep using the last ZBrush version covered by my perpetual license, but sooner or later I’ll completely switch to Blender, Nomad Sculpt and/or 3D-Coat, although it would break my heart to leave ZBrush, its sympathetic developers and the creative community behind.
The bottom line: I really hope Maxon and Pixologic will soon release reassuring info to the loyal ZBrush user base.
I Really doubt the sub cost would be $20 dude… its not even $20 before they merged with Maxon… unless they’re able to negotiate it being lower since they’ve got more money behind them, but the $40 sub price that will likely stay, if not go even higher if Maxon tries to Shove some other program in there with it. (that none of us want) Worst case, don’t just move on JUST to Blender, keep the current Version of Zbrush and use that, they literally cannot take it away from you. its yours. and will most likely work for for 10+ Years or more without any Fan Patches or Bug fixes from Windows “Fixing” things in its Operating System.
I’m afraid so too. 
There’s another thing that might prove to become a hurdle for me:
When I bought ZBrush 4R7 I was still working with macOS. When I returned to a Windows PC, the license was transferred by Pixologic, but with the message that the switch would only be possible once.
I’m now seriously considering a return to macOS, and wonder if that rule still stands, forcing me to buy ZBrush again, or having to go for a $40 subscription.
Does anyone happen to know if that would be the case?
No idea about that, ive never used a Mac. but its worth asking of course.
Have you upgraded your license to ZBrush 20xx? With the release of ZBrush 2018 all licenses became dual platform. You can run it on either platform – or even have it activated on both at once.
That’s great, thanks Matthew! Yep, I’ve upgraded to every new release so far.
Hi @Aurick,
Thank you for your reply about people who purchased within 12 months before the 29th Dec '21, and I’m sure those customer willl be very relieved to hear that they wil get the contractually obligated 12 months of updates.
Even if you canot give full details, is there any reassuring news you can give us longer term users who may have purchased before those 12 months, that there will be some upgrade path, some future for us (speaking for myself as a hobbiest rather than making money from using ZBrush professionally, hopefully one that won’t require paying 25%+ of a new whole perpetual license per year), but I realise you can’t give specific details yet?
I’m sure you can see people are worried, and as someone who has supported this community for much longer than I have been here, I totally believe you and your team/colleagues do want to tell us more, do want to reasure us, but you want to make sure all news is correct, so there cannot be any misinterpretations or misunderstandings making things “worse”. Remebering the old '84 Dune movie, “A beggining is a very difficult time”. By that I mean this realy can’t be an easy time for you guys, and I know you are trying to do what is best for people here as much as changes allow for.
But please, if enough is worked out with Maxon that EULAs could be changed and published publically a week ago, saying a few words of reassurance will help more than just me realax and fear the total worst.
As someone who was burned, and then priced out of the market by the Autodesk buyout of Softimage/XSI, maybe I’m being overly paranoid or sensitive, but it is still a bad memory of the “takeover” that this could be, without us as users knowing anything otherwise.
Anyway, enough of that for now, thank you for your time in considering any reply, and more than that, thanks to you, @Pixolator, @PixoPaul and the whole Pixologic team (past and present) for all the enjoyment (and occasional mild frustration trying to wrap my head around things) I have had using ZBrush ever since I was totally blown away by the ZBrush 3 announcment video and ordred it a few days later!
Even if everyones worst fears come to pass (and I do have more faith in the Pixologic team than to believe that entirely), thank you all, it has been a blast!!
Simon
I don’t have a good feeling about that, always these changes…
if that goes like the change of the forum, it now looks like the impersonal artstation there are barlely any community talks between the users like in the past, smaller problems shouldn’t be posted anymore, always soon a big wave, pardon ticket, there is hardly any contact between the old users and I also have to look at third-party software, what should I do with Blender or other??? Nobody asks for opinions anymore and I bet it will get worse with the takeover of Maxon.
Is there a very minimal chance that the comments here might still be able to rescue something, is there a glimmer of hope…?
Maxom might be a very good company but they are not a private company, so their goal is to maximize profits above all for their investors. So for sure there won’t be any more free upgrades and anything that is not cost effective will be eliminated. Just my humble opinion. The reason I loved Pixologic so much is because it was a small company that made amazing software and kept getting better and better and gave the users so many resources and tutorials and they made us all feel they actually cared for us the artist community. It was an extraordinary feeling in today’s world where companies just want to squeeze every penny out of you. I feel like I’ve lost part of my family…