I Think Maxon Hates Us | Zbrush 2023

I would consider subscribing to zbrush if they had anywhere near a good update rate. If they would make the app more useful and fix the quirky problems every just deals with because zbrush is so good from the most basic point of view. But for my use case I don't find the updates doing anything for me.

Blender seems to be catching up more and more all the time, especially on hard surface modelling and ease of multiple objects. I'm still a newb to zbrush it's true so maybe I'm not using the app but I feel like the support for blender is just so much better and it will eventually overtake zbrush if they maxon don't watch out and don't stop kicking their customers in the nuts.

What ESPECIALLY infuriates me is file sharing. I can't send a ztool to anyone who doesn't have 2023 because they can't open the file. That sort of thing is just so scummy IMO.

Maybe that option is for people that want to pay once and not interested in buying every single new feature every year. But honestly this video still makes me want to stick on blender

worst part for me watching this in different country is where it cost 1090USD to get the perpetual. -_- Monopoly is very dangerous.

I was saving up for a license till Maxon got their mitts on Pixologic. Same happens to most creative software: everything Adobe, everything Autodesk. It's bonkers.

So Zbrush is basically a dollar a day. This is what has you all mad?

chances are each new yearly update only ads very few features anyway, prob only need to upgrade every 3-4 years anyway

or just pirate it to make a point, no idea... but it is a needed tool for practice at least.

Blender gets closer and closer to zBrush in sculpting every release. With Maxon in charge of zBrush now, I see a much slower improvement schedule than prior for zBrush.

Fuck Maxon! Piece of shit company!

Welcome to capitalism at its last stage. Corporations eating everybody else. And shifting the products they are buying. I miss the old Mudbox before Autodesk has made him dead.

🤯Am I the only one who has to verify the perpetual license every 14 days? It seems like a permanent lease; why is Maxon/pixlogic marketing it as a permanent license? Wow. Someone let me know im not losing my mind or that I wasn’t scammed. Thanks

Arggg fellow skallywags 💀🪝

Nomad + ipad pro m1 12.9

Maxon behaves like adobe. They will buy out softwares companies with offers and then kill the software rather than think of its user progress. I think pixologic screwed us.

I dropped zBrush when it was taken over my Maxon. Blender for me!

You can't finance further software development just from perpertual licences someone bought 3-6 years ago. It was jus a matter of time for this to happen. Most of the users already have a license and newcomers are minority. The bigger the software, the more costly it's to add new features and debug older ones. That's why sometimes it's more efficient to rewrite the whole thing instead of patching and scrapping old one. Maybe that's what will happen in upcoming years? Especially when alternatives arises. Soon some kind of subscription will be standard model for everything (including games, cars or homes, if that's not already the case) so I think recently it's general economic phenomenon.

Besides license costs compared to money a skilled artist can make using ZBrush is not that big. And it's not like a digital artist have so much cost connected with his work compared to other professions. If someone is not a power-user of ZBrush and was doing fine with old licenses so far, there is no push to upgrade every year. It's however important to receive bug fixes for free.

This is exactly why I use Blender. Maxon are crooks!!

Bcz they very like money)

Purchased ZB in 2020 for nearly $900 in total including the taxes.. Contacting Maxon now if i could get some value out of my purchase they happily responded i should pay Euro 759.. not 659 even if Euro is less.. eat my feces Maxon... This is a joke

Always been a zbrush artist but simply cannot afford to upgrade, back to blender ❤

Immoral business practices. Maxon should be ashamed of themselves!

Greedy Maxon loves money, then we love torrents.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed in a software company than when Maxon decided to switch to a subscription model. I used to get excited with updates and Zbrush Summit. Now I just feel annoyed and disappointed. It used to be fun when a new update came out and I’d watch the streams where they’d go through all the new features, but now it’s just eh here’s some stuff you can’t use, should’ve paid for the subscription loser.

Even when Pixologic were behind the wheel, you could hardly call the features you received over a year particularly amazing. There were a couple of exceptions (Hello gizmo, hello Sculptris Pro). Some people would probably say Hello Zmodeler brush. Personally I don't know why anyone would want to poly model anything in Zbrush.... ever. Zbrush is a mature app. The idea you need yearly updates (or a sub) is sketchy. You could probably update three yearly and be just fine.

Other than file compatibility issues anyway.

I love ZB and the toolset but over time, I think we're going to see a lot of artists either sticking with the old version of the software or moving to Blender to sculpt. I am tempted to switch over myself

Sono merde. Deutsche Cabana.

Me who hasn't used zbrush since 2014... I am so glad, I used it and went Meh- it's ok~ I can do this on my own, with basic mudbox and program my own brushes. Autodesk is already expensive as it is? What the fuck?

I think the the perpetual is so high is because of how long Zbrush has been around. The software itself is probably reaching peak of what it can do and features it provides that all updates/upgrades will be minimal or gimmicky that people won't be interested in upgrading on a yearly basis. You sit on your copy for a while then upgrade when there's been enough things added that warrants your upgrade. And I think doing a huge overhaul of the software to make the upgrade look very big, is an extremely risky move, so I don't foresee that happening. Pretty much all the features in the "upgrade" version seem more like an update (although I feel the Dynamic Sym is actually a downgrade, it's screwed up my workflow, that thing needs to go back to the drawing board) and I feel the version of Redshift should just be included in Zbrush, or at the very least just provided a way lower priced sub of Zbursh only Redshift. Hopefully this is a bit of a growing pains issue and they resolve it, because it seems like many many aren't happy with what's going on. Cause they aren't the only program in town anymore that can do what they can. Blender and 3D coat could start taking over.

nearly 700 USD to update to the latest version. I knew maxon was going to fuck over the small creators that use their software but this is beyond disgusting.

Why us no one talking about mudbox in place of zbrush

Zbrush just flatlined 😢

Blender is all we have left

Bidding yourself out of projects you don’t want to take is a well-known (but not often publicly discussed) reality in any trade where the price isn’t listed and is instead issued to the prospective client via quote. I’ve seen it in Graphic Design and as a tradesman, and I’ve done it myself when potential clients have thrown up red-flags for me. Word of advice to anyone out there, if you are really obnoxious or condescending you might literally be paying an a**hole tax to get your car or roof repaired or your house painted.

Also, this should be common sense but it’s obviously not, It’s best practice to reign in your politics (whatever way they swing) and not introduce them into conversations with anybody about to give you a quote for work. If they don’t share your opinions and you rub them the wrong way, you might end up paying additional money (or have trouble finding a contractor for your job) just because of a need to make your politics known. I’m not saying it’s good that people can and will exercise pettiness over their differences in this way, I’m just telling you that’s how things work. TLDR, don’t be a d**k of any variety, but especially don’t be a d**k before you have to ask the price when the person you’ve just pissed off gets to set it.

Blender 3.4 and Nomad sculpt to the rescue.... for some artists. The high end character artists and other "essential users" of ZB.... good luck, hope you are paid well or the company covers the cost .... which is the same thing, it makes no difference in the long run.

It's just hilarious to me that they don't think anyone in their right mind will just say "Shit on that, ill Pirate it" especially with how easy it is to Pirate. or just move on to something else. i mean Zbrush is the best, but its not like it's the best by a country mile anymore. you CAN do nearly everything in Blender, 3DCoat, Nomad.. its just harder. but for someone who is a Hobbiest or not a huge artist making bank, $700 a YEAR is a huge amount to just pony up cause Maxon are Greedy, Filthy Pigs.
i mean, its not like Maxon is Autodesk or Adobe.. they don't have powerful anti-piracy tools, their programs are incredibly easy to crack. the only thing Zbrush had going for it against the Pirates before was company goodwill. and guess what? they literally flushed all of that when they sold out to Maxon. and the few "Hunks" of it that didn't flush in 2021, SURELY Flushed in 2023 with the second pull of that Handle being the $660 "Upgrade" price.
and i want to add i say none of this lightly. Zbrush literally gave me a reason to live. it gave me a reason to wake up in the morning. to keep striving to get better at it. and it still does. i just don't feel the same way about the people behind it anymore. now its just a Tool to me. not a "Community"

Oh they do, they hate individual users and us small fry, these prices are still noting for any big entertainment company.
Anyone else tho, is screwed.

Glad I did the yearly sub. Now I can focus on work. Next year I’m going to pay 350 and still not reach the full price of perpetual or additional upgrade costs. I’m actually saving money not going for the perpetual.

So which 3d program still sell perpetual licenses. Can’t think of any.

This is bad analogy, Tattoos are based off of artists Time and Experience. Not all Tattoo Artists are the same and what you end up getting in the end would be different depending on the artist you go to. An analogy to your analogy would be as if you went to ask Rafael Grassetti to do a sculpt and he quoted $800 and then calling him stupid when you can get any artist from Art station to do it for $200. Things have a price and Value and then it's up to the consumer to either purchase it or not. Lets ignore the actual sticker shock of the product for a moment and look at what they are actually offering for the different prices and why they are actually different. Subscriptions offer a product for your time of usage. You stop your pay, and they stop access to the product. A perpetual licence is more expensive and you essentially get less benefits. But you can still use that licence 5 years from now. Which means that it's naturally going to cost more. Yes all companies want you to take the subscription model and yes they suck, this is no secret. They should come out with an indie license and charge $10-15 bucks a month (similar to what Autodesk does with their cheaper Maya license). But can we stop bitching about it for easy outrage clicks.

What I don't like of subscriptions is if sometime in the future if I stop using zbrush and I cancel my plan, if the I want to open a single file, I cannot open it unless I pay another month or so.... That only reason is a big no no for me.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new with subscription pricing. Perpetual license is almost always significantly more - in a past life I set these prices and we did 2.5x more than the cost of the annual subscription.

Subscription revenue is more attractive to investors over someone who pays 1 time and potentially won’t ever pay to upgrade again.

I’m still honestly shocked zbrush pre maxon managed to stay profitable by giving away free upgrades for ever and ever. From a business standpoint that makes zero sense to me.

I do think maxon should be offering some sort of discounts for long term zbrush users that they want to convert to subscription or to upgrade

Sucks all around honestly

Ughhh what a joke. What I always found to be cheeky about subscription based models - is that say X years from now I will want to revisit an old file and export it out into some new software I'm working with then. Or make a higher-res render of it for my new showreel. So then just to open that file I would have to purchase subscriptions for all the softwares/plugins that were involved in the making of that file. Just to be able to open it. I worked for years in 3ds Max, I have no access to any of the files from there now. I hope these corporations choke on their own greed.