Substance going subscription only
polycounter lvl 6
Fresh news, Adobe decided to go subscription only with the Substance suite after they officially published Alchemist.
Official forum post: https://forum.substance3d.com/index.php/topic,30855.0.html?fbclid=IwAR0_--Lza3L_jMUbGcDWkKO2wM15S5JrUZGdGrKkTSlqRZO_5xAPm92x0o
Another article: https://cgpress.org/archives/changes-to-substance-licensing.html
Basically you can renew your perpetual maintenance plan until october 31, 2020 after that sub only ( if i understood correctly ).
The subscription price has been reduced to 219 $ from 239 $ but if you have a perpetual license and you switch to the annual sub you pay 149 $ at least for now without giving up the perpetual license.
You can still buy a perpetual license from Steam...for now.
I also noticed that Allegorithmic site disappeared replaced by a new site called Substance3D by Adobe and their logo is nowhere to be found. RIP
Nothing to say more, i saw it coming from the moment Allegorithmic sold themselves to Adobe.
I still have my perpetual of Painter and Designer with over 1k materials and smart materials...we will see.
Official forum post: https://forum.substance3d.com/index.php/topic,30855.0.html?fbclid=IwAR0_--Lza3L_jMUbGcDWkKO2wM15S5JrUZGdGrKkTSlqRZO_5xAPm92x0o
Another article: https://cgpress.org/archives/changes-to-substance-licensing.html
Basically you can renew your perpetual maintenance plan until october 31, 2020 after that sub only ( if i understood correctly ).
The subscription price has been reduced to 219 $ from 239 $ but if you have a perpetual license and you switch to the annual sub you pay 149 $ at least for now without giving up the perpetual license.
You can still buy a perpetual license from Steam...for now.
I also noticed that Allegorithmic site disappeared replaced by a new site called Substance3D by Adobe and their logo is nowhere to be found. RIP
Nothing to say more, i saw it coming from the moment Allegorithmic sold themselves to Adobe.
I still have my perpetual of Painter and Designer with over 1k materials and smart materials...we will see.
Replies
And obviously this was going to happen. In fact I would be surprised if it's not simply part of the CC at some point
ps: thx @defragger for this gif
The fuckin audacity to post this shit is fuckign amazing.
I use Affinity Photo instead of Photoshop ( 50 € more or less, perpetual, 2 types of brush stabilizer, similar interface and it has 90 % of the features of Photoshop ) and DaVinci Resolve instead of Premiere Pro ( free, professional software with an interface that is also easy to use and that makes sense ).
The more time passes the more i realize that if you want to truly be free from all these bullshit you must use open source softwares or softwares from companies that have a mindset where "innovation" and "indie friendly" are their main goals like SideFX.
Although if you use softwares from a company that is not open source like Blender, you can't really be sure that it will continue to exist or that they will keep the same prices over the years.
Of course there are also people like Vitaly that still uses XSI without caring about updates nor support and he's doing fine.
and the effect on people who don't subscribe or regularly upgrade is precisely nothing
and
it got a bit cheaper
how awful
Quixel in my opinion is very good and mixing scan together is a powerful feature but it is sub only and tailored for realistic style.
If we try to measure lost cost of opportunity (assuming Adobe does intentionally devour competition to stifle progress) well that is all speculation of course. But I'd still wager it's a good thing. The more "progress" is made, the sooner many employed people here lose value. If you happy with what you got better to make it last. "Chew slowly, it's the good stuff."
However, in my case i use only Painter. I also have Designer but i use it 1 time per year maybe. So i was paying 75 $ for the maintenance, now i have to pay 150 $ if i accept their offer of switching to sub that means x2 what i was paying before only to use the software alone and there is no guarantee that the price will stay the same.
Ex. Some months ago Autodesk increased the prices for the subscription of Maya LT and i think for Maya full version as well. And you can't do anything about it. It's not a question of "i have the perpetual, i'm not interested in the new updates so i don't pay and still use the software". You must pay in any case if you want to use it.
Subscriptions are not created to benefit the clients. This is true not only for IT but for all the other things in general.
In any case i think that for the owners of a perpetual license of Painter or Designer, even if you don't update them for 4-5 years you will still be ok...maybe.
Whatever way the wind blows as long as you take time to be silent and read it you can find your opportunity. There is still plenty of room in the game for small fish, you just got to understand how to work your angle in the food chain.
For me, working independently on my own game projects, I think smart thing to do is look at these free alternates you guys mentioned.. because I don't need the best tools, the basics will do for me. But if I were working professional or as freelance? I think it may be best to stick with best and most commonplace tools and pass increased cost onto employer or cloent.
I'd love to ditch zbrush, you have anything to say about that?
Users: No, it does not work that way. You will answer to a board of directors who only care about profit, about turning your product into a service so they can milk the consumers more and for longer with less money thrown into R&D. You sold out and everything we said is going to happen will happen.
Allegorithmic: We did not sell out, we just took their money and became part of the corporation. How is that selling out? Just trust us ok? We got your back.
Users: Uh huh, sure...
10 months later
Allegorithmmic: Great news, we listened to you and are ready to give you exactly what you want.... SUBSCRIPTION ONLY SERVICE!!!
Jeb B. enters the scene saying: "Please Clap".
Users: Yeah we never wanted that. Oh hey whats that over there? Quixel? $99 perpetual license for Mixer? Looks like someone is paying attention to the users.
I am also still on xsi. I'm trying to think of a way to convince a lowly programmer at autodesk to go grab the source for it and release it on the net.
Now 'do whales fart?' is in my Google search history.
Saying goods and services cost more as time goes on makes sense and all, but this isn't a simple matter of, "it's been a while since we've increased our price a bit, so we're doing so now." The amount someone now needs to spend in order to have access to these programs has sky rocketed. It costed me $300 to get both SP and SD. If I were to instead rent this for 5 years, it would now cost me $1,095.
We can't just say 'money is an arbitrary notion, so who cares?' Our society runs on money, it sets the difference between quality of life. The difference in price for this program, for having access for 5 years, has more than tripled. That's not even taking into consideration if someone is still using these programs for longer than 5 years. If it was the same practical outcome as inflation, the price would have gone from $300 to $312 for ownership, maybe a bit more to make up for inflation for previous years. Watch any other company announce they're tripling their prices and see what happens; as the consumer, we're allowed to heavily criticize this. I'm just one of the lucky ones with a perpetual license.
I think, for the freelancer, it is still a matter of simply balance the budget. Tools cost more, how to balance that?
I don't disagree that fuck greed and the whole system and all, and as you know I love to do my bitching like anybody else, but in this situation it just looks to me like small potatoes and fairly predictable. Not like rug has been pulled out from beneath.
So, btw, do whales fart?
https://armorpaint.org/
It's based on Blender 2.8 technology, so it's my hope that, with enough support, we'll see some of more formats supported, as well as retooling of Blender's Dynamic Paint into a particle brush system similar to the PopcornFX-powered particle brushes in Substance Painter.
Remember--people once laughed at Blender. For years. Now, it's looking pretty sexy these days. ArmorPaint has the same bright potential.
Sorry for the OT but yeah, Armorpaint seems to be chugging along nicely with release of v07 recently, had lost track it a year ago when researching likely potential Painter alternatives after it's acquisition.
...and a Blue Whale fart bubble can fit a full grown horse in it...just say'n
Armor and coat will automatically recognize the pbr textures and create a pbr material out of them.
"we wanted to create a new home for NDO and DDO in a new stand-alone software, eventually to be named “Mixer”.:
https://quixel.com/blog/2019/1/30/the-year-of-mixer
so yeah, Iam just waiting for it.
https://magazine.substance3d.com/tons-of-announcements-at-substance-day-at-max/
Just offer BOTH, like Allegorithmic was already doing. Also, why get rid of the "rent-to-own" model? That was the perfect middle ground between subscription and perpetual licensing.
If you need more money, then just offer that model for Version X.XX series and tell folks they'll have to buy the next major release Version Y whenever it comes out.
I get it. Even Pixologic had to stop offering the "free updates forever" model for ZBrush, because, hey, you gotta pay bills. But it seems like if you offer multiple ways to access the product, you're maximizing your profits.
Of all people, Adobe, the last company I'd want offering a subscription model, ruined a great business model. I was hoping more companies emulated what Allegorithmic was doing with offering three styles of payment models.
As for plugins, there is still a reasonably active community that makes plugins, renderers, etc. over on one of the old xsi forums. Kinda amazed at the staying power of the software.
Current licensees with a perpetual maintenance or a legacy license can still update their maintenance for one more year until October 2020, which means you can still get a perpetual license with updates until October 2021.
That's the offering right now and it may evolve and change again in the future like is has many times in the past 10 years.
That does not mean less updates, lower quality releases or features, to the contrary. We have tons of new features coming up in all the tools, a new version of Substance Share, tons of R&D projects and entirely new products in the works.
The idea that subscription always equals slow development and lack of innovation is simply not true, and definitely doesn't apply to Adobe nor Substance.
But hiding this fact behind marketing bla bla has never worked.
I like substance and I will continue using it (that was and is my intention by buying a perpetual license) but I'm not going to hurrray the subscription only move for whatever reason.
Heck that is one of the reasons why some of the competing products are doing so well right now. Affinity designer, Publisher..ect Adobe simply has a horrible track record, which is why you guys were given so much such sh*t when you announced being acquired by Adobe.
Again, just for sake of argument, I almost wonder if Adobe's slow innovation is not a good thing in some sense. I've talked to a few long time game devs who eventually quit cause it gets too tiring after a decade or two. Many reasons, but blistering pace of software innovation is big part. And what's benefit? Are games better now? Not in my opinion.
Imagine if for the past decade no software improvements had been made. So no dev energy allocated on prettier graphics. Where does that energy go then? Refining design over and over. Games might be legit art by now! Like serious writing, real themes that could be studied in universities and make impacts on people's lives, or just ultra refined gameplay and tons of super unique spins.
Man, you're posting this on a forum filled with people who have made it their life goal to make the prettiest graphics possible.
On a side note, check out the ad I'm getting on this page :P