ZBrush 2023 Complaints to Maxon

[Heath_Eblen]

I bought a perpetual license shortly before the swap. Just one last update and now, for some reason, my zbrush crashes almost like clockwork. Every hour just about it just dies. Could be because I tried to dynamesh, could be because I deleted an item or masked something. It will even do it on save which is by far the most infuriating example.

It’s so regular I’ve gotten pretty good at saving just before it happens. Like I can sense it. It doesn’t feel at all random, but something that occurs only after the last update.

I hate the fact that I paid for this but for stability I have to go and learn Blender. Especially after being sold it as ‘they’ve always given updates!’.

[ragajones]

I am a public high school teacher in Arizona and a hardcore zbrush amateur since 2009. I have loved zbrush so much over the years and have recommended it to my students and gotten so many hooked on its wonderful interface, tools, abilities and community.

Maxon, you have taken that away. I cannot recommend zbrush anymore to anyone for any reason - not even a little bit.

This system was a thriving ecosystem and you have now put your stamp of greed on it. The sculpting tools in Blender are rudimentary compared to zbrush but I will gladly switch over with my students and never look back because at least we will have something that moves fast, is unrestricted and has potential moving forward.

I feel so sorry for the employees of zbrush - what a beautiful, thriving, community they built over the years with such an amazing tool and now it is this -

Good bye - I cannot believe this has happened - what a shame

[jonestation]

I own the legacy version of zbrush until 2022. I was planning to buy the perpetual license again next year, then i see this in the perpetual policy:

“Perpetual users purchase a license to use the current base version (e.g. ZBrush 2023.0) of the software and are entitled to receive bug fixes and security patches for that version. These updates are essential for maintaining the stability and security of the software, but they do not include any new features or functionality.”

I am sorry but don’t we at least get 12 months of feature updates?

The annual update fees are like getting a new license all over again.

To make it even obvious, there is no discount for perpetual license during zbrush summit.

[LordPotus]

Haha… yeah i own a perpetual that lasted until 2023 and i thought no point in upgrading when the “upgrade” is basically the same price i paid for the first license… but had plans to “milk it” a little more until upgrading but as of today reading something different where a perpetual is year based… and to THAT amount? You got to be kidding Maxxon… Putting this into perspective for any serious Music Sequencer like Cubase i have upgraded almost every year since 15 years where a yearly upgrade is about a fraction of the full cost.
Why can’t a perpetual license be set to a sensible amount?
And here i thought Adobe was bad… You are clearly taking the cake here Maxxon

[DannyMcGrath]

@LordPotus and now they’ve made updates exclusive to subs. It was always coming. The over-priced perpetual upgrade was always a thinly-veiled and clumsy attempt to force everyone onto subs. It didn’t work so now they’ve just abandoned perpetual users altogether. And STILL Redfshift GPU is an extra sub. A year on and I still haven’t seen any Zbrush user using Redshift.

The whole sordid affair has been pretty much a disgrace, but expected from a company like Maxon.

[Meathelix1]

I am currrently in the process of getting a license transfer and the seller and I have been going back and forth with Maxon for over 3 weeks!

Their process of a license transfer is terrible. I would say one of the worse companies I have had to deal with. We have screenshots of the process from both ends, I even created a new support ticket and that has not been responded to either.

[x-space]

A lot of money for Maxon for Zbrush, but no real multiprocessing.
Decimation Master, ZRemesher takes too much time and uses only a few CPU cores and, to be honest, not even sensibly. The program should be reprogrammed from the interface up before so much money is spent. I also find it an impertinence how complicated it is to rotate and zoom. No other 3D program has implemented this so stupidly.

P.S. I’m sure that 3D will be obsolete in the near future thanks to new AI tools like Midjourney. So spending weeks on a simple portrait would be a waste of time.