ZBrushCentral

Thread Regarding Maxon Transition

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#75

It seems that many of the words had lose it’s meaning. Like “perpetual”. I get that if we don’t get free upgrade after a certain period of time, but I should still able to use the software forever. Okay, it’s still early days, but I am not too optimistic about what is going to happen. Hopefully, I am wrong about that.

The whole definition of profit is too narrow in my opinion. Again, I really do wish that someone out there had started working on a new, more awesome software that I will pay and enjoy for a while. At least until the same cycle start over again.

1 Like
#76

Even after announcing the take-over, this statement was still showing on the store page:.
Screenshot 2022-01-09 at 09-03-23 ZBrush 2021

The un-official policy should have been removed when the talks between Maxon and Pixologic started.

This was very misleading for new buyers…

Under the Consumer Protection Act 2007, advertising is seen as misleading if it involves false, misleading or deceptive information that is likely to cause the average consumer to act in a way they might otherwise not. Advertising may also be considered misleading if important information that the average consumer needs to make an informed decision is left out.

4 Likes
#77

I Agree, but the Pixologic team is very small, it was probably just accidentally left up. don’t be too mad at them about that, dude. everybody misses things here and there. i mean, i agree it’s bad, 100% bad… but i doubt they left that up on purpose after the talks with maxon started and maxon said no free updates. i mean, they’re just asking to get sued like that, so nobody in their right mind would leave it up on purpose lol

3 Likes
#78

I bought my licence in October, saved for it, bought it because they never charged for updates.

And now this.

I’m so pissed off about it.

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#80

Never even heard of Follygon, but that take of " bought software is forever yours" is so stupid, I don’t even care to know who that is.

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#81

Look him up on Twitter. he is a youtuber who does Admittedly great cartoony/Stylized work, im still a huge fan of his work, but he needs to seriously adjust his attitude on Twitter. he Mods for their Discord group, Reddit, and a few other places. its insane to me they have such a Toxic guy modding for them. i mean, in this time they need people with compassion and understanding. you don’t fight angry and scared people with insults and sarcasm. you know?

Also @Theobeest I know man, i bought it last year shortly after my mother died. she was always a MASSIVE help to me, she always cheered me on, told me to keep at it, i could achieve my dreams if i just kept working at it. i had pirated Zbrush for a year until i felt A: i knew it well enough (and loved it well enough) that i wasn’t going to waste money on it. i fell deeply inlove with the Pixologic team, and i said “even if i can’t afford it, im BUYING it. i don’t wanna pirate from a company i love” and then this happens a year later lol… what can you do, right? but i look at it like this. if it was either they get help/funds from Maxon, or go out of Business, id rather them go for Maxon. but if they had asked for Donations, just told us they needed help, i believe people would have POURED support in, even more-so than the Blender Foundation gets. all you gotta do is ASK PEOPLE FOR HELP! if you’re providing us a service, we will help! but now the future is uncertain, and we’re all angry and scared :frowning: it took me two weeks of depression and INTENSE Anger to realize why i felt the way i do, im scared the one thing in my life that keeps me going is going to be taken away from me. that the one group of people ive actually felt a connection with, (not even my own family were there for me, besides my mom and dad of course) so, thats why i reacted the way i did. Fear of losing everything i worked towards, fear of losing the joy i have finally found…

6 Likes
#82

will there be any information regarding this soon? or at least an approximate time it may be left before we receive the information?

1 Like
#83

As formal online statements like license conditions have already been changed to Maxon conditions, that implicates that the takeover deal has been completed and/or the regulatory approval won’t be an obstacle anymore. In that case, Maxon or Pixologic should already be able to release details to the ZBrush users. :man_shrugging:

2 Likes
#84

We are now able to provide more information.

The official announcement is found here.

There is also a comprehensive FAQ.

Please understand that the ZBrush team was legally prohibited from working with Maxon in any way until the acquisition had been approved. This means that we are still very early in the transition and there are a great many details that still need to be worked out.

The FAQ above provides all of the answers that we are able to provide at this time. We cannot yet answer any questions or provide details beyond what is given in the FAQ.

Thank you!

2 Likes
#85

Thanks for the Update, Aurick,
but being bluntly honest, the FAQ didn’t answer anything new at all… hoping for more actual info soon… but this wasn’t it lol… i mean, we already knew free updates were going extinct… we already knew Perpetual licenses would still be “Sold”
of course we’re all worried in a years time only Subscriptions will be sold, we’d have loved to know the upgrade price… but reading that some of the stuff listed will continue “For the Immediate Future” isn’t very reassuring honestly.

Christ i wish none of this had ever happened, id have rather Re-Bought Zbrush every YEAR from Pixologic, than to have it in Maxons hands… we’ve all been waiting so long for more info and this is all we can get? it just feels so hopeless and disappointing. none of us are buying the “MAXON LOVES THE USERS!, AND WANTS TO PROVIDE THE BEST, MOST AFFORDABLE PRODUCTS” either, $3500 for C4D is absolutely Insane, and i just hope Zbrush’s price isn’t increased to boot.

6 Likes
#86

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

4 Likes
#87

I have to agree with everything in @Gremlin’s last post.
Without wishing to sound bitter and cynical, there was clearly enough communication with Maxon that EULA’s, license transfer details, Pixologic ID changing to ZBrush ID etc could all be changed on Pixologic and Maxons sites on the 29th, almost two weeks ago, and that was done without any announcment here to users. The longer it keeps getting said that you’ve not been able to communicate with Maxon, and that there are very important details that you can’t announce to existing users, the less people are going to believe that to be true, and that instead you’re just trying to hold off the backlash from hundreds of thousands of users.

As many others have said I hope Maxon don’t price us hobbiest users out of updates, and saying that there is ZBrush Core for hobbiests to licence owners of ZBrush full would be a stab in the back, so I hope that does not get suggested.
Another concern I have, and I expect many others will, is that even Cinema 4D perpetual users don’t get every update, only subscribers. So there are Subscriber only update releass like Cinema 4D S24, but full perpetual releases like Cinema 4D R23 and R25. So could a simmilar thing happen with ZBrush, where yes, there might be a perpetual ZBrush 2023 (and who knows the cost from that useless “Comprehensive FAQ”) we can pay to upgrade to, but might only subscribers get the 2023.X updates through the year?

3 Likes
#88

Well that happened really fast. Ending free feature upgrades before the acquisition had been finalised, and already Maxon have apparently finalised upgrade costs.

Can PIxologic/Maxon confirm if this reseller’s price list with the €579 upgrade price is legit, and also can you confirm why these were effective from 1st January? So resellers have known for nearly two weeks what the pricing would be but you’ve been telling us that you have no idea and can’t say anything? And why is the upgrade price 2/3 of the purchase price of a new licence? Is it so that you can soft push people onto the subscription plan like Maxon does with C4D?

You probably need to think hard about the price of these upgrades when you consider your hobbyist market and that the most significant update has come in the form of dynamics - which aren’t, let’s be fair, actual cloth physics like you get in Maya, Houdini or Marvellous Designer. I watch you struggle to market the bevel tool as significant - a bevel tool - and although the knife was loved, it was way past due. Considering most people have already been using far superior, actual physics based solutions for dynamics for years, why on earth do you think that the recent history demands a nearly €600 upgrade cost?

And I can’t be the only one seeing this statement as vaguely threatening about compatibility going forward:

To provide the best customer experience and performance, we truly believe all customers should be running the latest version. Cutting-edge technology and performance require agile development and delivery. All Maxon products, including ZBrush are fully dependent upon third-party hardware, operating systems and software solutions. In order to maintain compatibility with the latest hardware, drivers and host application updates, our development teams are constantly updating, optimizing and ensuring stability.

That says to me that you’re about ready to grandfather older versions immediately, even if you do provide critical fixes - there’s a point where you simply won’t provide critical fixes because anything but the latest version would be put in the too hard (don’t want to) basket. Oh we’re sorry, ZBrush 2022 is unstable with the latest Ryzen - you’ll just have to upgrade.

Guys, we make our living from ZBrush. I thought you appreciated how many freelancers and self employed people make up ZBrush users, but this whole thing has been cloaked in confusion and omission so far. Up until today I’ve been defending this, but it looks like Maxon are going to move people into subscription models fast, and they’re likely to do it by hurting compatibility and then telling us it’s not their problem that older versions don’t work, and oh, hey, why don’t you subscribe at half the price, huh?

As far as I’m concerned we have a fully functional sculpting program here - I have no reason to upgrade when everyone’s been so disingenuous and every other reason to start exploring alternatives. People have been doing wonderful things with 3DCoat lately, I have enough experience with ZBrush to demonstrate to others I can work with it fine, so right now it’s really about Maxon/Pixologic giving us reasons to stay rather than assuming we’re all trapped in ZBrush.

7 Likes
#89

@ckhunter That’s a great, albeit prohibitivly expensive find, but listing/upgrading from ZBrush to ZBrush 2022 doesn’t totally make a lot of sense, as there isn’t anything yet for that to be an upgrade from and to, but it is very concerning and far too expensive going forward, if that is the perpetual pricing. Thank you for sharing it though!

It looks as though logo’s have started changing on Pixologic pages now too.

Now it’s ZBrush BY MAXON. Same for ZBrush BY MAXON Store

So the talk of “we’ve only just started communicating, things are still being worked out.” Oh, but we can change all our websites and logo’s, we’ve communicated enough for that.

Disingenuous really does seem to describe this far too well.

4 Likes
#90

Well… finally the truth is out : forget about perpetual Licence !
A total disregard of the ZBrush community by Maxon is going to kill on the long run this wonderful software. Many are already doing the switch to Blender… I suggest you all download your copy of ZBrush 2022.0.2 and make backup copies for the future as we are never again goin to get any upgrade for free. I’m very disappointed with pixologic selling out and I can forsee how the community will decline and so the software we all love so dearly. Maxon will kill it just as Adobe has done with Flash after first ruining it completely. It’s just in the nature of these big companies: chew up any small companies producing great software considered dangerous and too competitive for their own product. Buy it and in few months or even few years make it go missing. Bad move Pixologic, and again : Liar Liar Pants on Fire!

5 Likes
#91

That is Mediamachine’s price list. It is not Maxon’s price list. Mediamachine probably misunderstood something.

ZBrush 2022.0.x is a free upgrade for anyone who ever purchased a ZBrush perpetual license. Whether you upgraded to it before Maxon acquired ZBrush or not is irrelevant - you are entitled to that upgrade. Just like people who purchased ZBrush in the past year are still eligible for upgrades for one year from date of purchase as guaranteed when the purchase was made.

Moving up from ZBrushCore to ZBrush is not a version upgrade. It is going from one software to another software.

NOBODY (including me) knows how much it will cost to upgrade a perpetual license beyond ZBrush 2022.0.x.

3 Likes
#92

You are right. This upgrade price was not announced by Maxon. But there’s also no guarantee it won’t be at this price. These questions will persist until Maxon discloses the cost of the upgrade and explicitly declares that it will not remove the perpetual license. Looking back on their past, there is no reason not to be suspicious. Maxon might say this a year later. ‘For better service and compatibility, we have decided to stop selling perpetual licenses and only offer monthly subscriptions!’ I just wish it was a joke. :sleepy:

5 Likes
#93

@AURICK but that’s such a weird price. Can you think of any other product in ZBrush’s pre-Maxon offerings that costs €579? There isn’t anything. This is a new price for a ZBrush product, a new category (the upgrade to this version), and mediamachine are a new vendor, seeing as before they didn’t sell ZBrush - there’s only one place they’re getting their pricing, and that’s their Maxon contacts. And I know it currently says upgrade to ZBrush 2022, but there’s every chance that this is the right category and product code they’ll be using for “Upgrade to ZBrush 2023”.

And I appreciate that you might not have access to pricing structures, but otherwise the €579 price is weird to see. It’s hard to see what they might have misunderstood - except that they’re a new vendor and not used to the ZBrush current version structure and pricing structure, and they’ve just taken the part in the reseller information that says “Upgrade to [latest version]” and put the latest version in there.

I’m not prepared to give Maxon the benefit of the doubt like I was Pixologic. Sorry, but my trust was placed with Pixologic, and all these changes happened rapidly with next to no communication. Everything is wrapped in the nebulous phrase “the immediate future”. My customer loyalty was to Pixologic, and you’re now clearly Maxon - it even says in your user title now. So considering this is exactly Maxon’s MO, and that’s pretty much exactly how Maxon structure their other products, and also this is exactly what they did to Redshift, only much more rapidly, what other information can you provide to say that this isn’t the case except denying it and saying Mediamachine didn’t understand something?

And also, it’s not like almost every person in this industry hasn’t been through the acquisition process with their daily driver software before - like when Maxon bought Redshift, or when Adobe bought Allegorithmic. We know how these acquisitions work, a lot of us have had or currently have relationships with these companies. Nothing about this points to Maxon behaving any differently from Maxon.

4 Likes
#94

Well, all i can say is lets TRY and wait a little longer and see what the official word is before we get our pitchforks out. we owe them at least that. but if that IS the yearly upgrade price, that’s some ABSOLUTE BS. especially if its just from year to year. that’s above and beyond the upgrade price even for Cinema 4D from year to year! Vs how much the License costs to buy

3 Likes
#95

If the prices of almost 600 are correct, it will be many years before an upgrade.

Would easily support the old pixologic team, but a maxon? not a chance unfortunately.

know that this is a very bad comparison but it almost feels like you are buying a new car and next year they have fixed some new mirrors in the car or similar. I already have the car and I do not intend to pay two thirds of the full price of the car for a pair of new mirrors … really bad comparison, but what is a reasonable sum? I do not know. Yeah i know, that comparison kind of sucked.

2 Likes