Epic Games has announced the acquisition of Quixel, creators of the Megascans library of photoscanned assets, the Mixer and the Bridge apps. Thanks to this acquisition the full contents of the Megascans library is now free to use with Unreal Engine with no restrictions on downloads per month or resolution.
A subscription is still required to use assets in other applications, but the price has been reduced and full resolution 8k textures are now available at every tier.
This announcement also included the news that Mixer and Bridge will now be made available free forever, even for users without a subscription. Quixel Suite which comprised NDO, DDO, and 3DO will be discontinued to support the development of these two newer standalone applications.
To find out more, including information about refunds for existing subscriber, read the Quixel blog.
This is great news, thanks Epic/Quixel! Right after that sh1tty substance move.
thank u epic, A name befitting this company
If you are doing UE4 stuff, it is great. But if you are texturing for other game engines or DCC programs, the subscription still looks to be twice as much as the Substance Suite ($199 for Indie Quixel vs $99.90 for Pro Substance, a month). Unless the price adjustment has yet to take effect? Which I doubt because everything else has been updated.
Yeah I’m wondering about this too. The pricing stayed the same as it was a month ago so I’m guessing they still need to update it?
Anyho, I’m totally fine with this acquisition. Epic isn’t known for dismantling teams so I have fairly high hopes for everyone involved 🙂
As far as I understood it, price will stay the same, but you’ll get twice as much assets:
“[…]we’re immediately slashing the pricing of Megascans, giving you nearly twice as much content to download, and removing the resolution cap—for everyone[…]”
The software (Bridge & Mixer) is free, you’re paying for the content library – so price comparisons ought to be with similar content.
@Kim: No, price comparison to use with other DCC is valid. To be able to use Mixer with VRay in 3ds Max for example, it will cost twice as much as using Painter. Whether you are paying for the software or the content, it is twice as much in the end. So my point stands. I don’t care if I can paint up a model for free if I can’t use it in the end. I will care that it will cost twice as much to get the textures into 3ds Max. If they want to hurt Adobe, charge the same rate for Quixel content as Adobe is for the software. If the pricing hasn’t been updated yet and they are waiting for the free versions of the software to be released, then it will be worth the switch. Otherwise, I’d have to play with it to see if it can paint hard surface models just as well, but without paying for the subscription, I won’t know how it exports to different platforms other than UE4.
Edit: Maybe something needs to be clarified for me. If we pay for a subscription and download assets. Then we end our subscription. Can we use those assets AND export to various DCC still? If that is the case, then yes, this would be valid to compare, and would be cheaper in the end for us, as we do mostly hard surface models, you only need so much rust, paint, and metal to accomplish that.
You’re maybe confusing Megascans the content library (and associated management/editing software Bridge & Mixer) with the Quixel Suite programs (which competed with the Substance software, but not very well)? The painting software will be dropped now and the content library will live on, that’s what you are paying for – the biggest collection of scanned textures and models there is. If anything it competes with Substance Source – but they are still very different products.
Not confused of that at all on the assets vs software; it is the licensing I’m not familiar with. Example. From the FAQ, you can’t use the free assets commercially WITHOUT having a subscription (except for UE4). Does the same thing happen for other assets? Or once you download them during your subscription, you own them and can use them indefinitely and export the use to other DCC (just make sure not to use free assets). That’s my biggest concern. If you can, and the soon to be released version of Mixer with it’s smart material and painting capabilities, there will be a pipeline change here. 🙂
As I understand it – and I might be wrong or something might have changed – but all of the assets you download during an active subscription are yours to keep and use commercially, even if you later allow your subscription to lapse. But I agree that’s a little confusing if it isn’t the case with ‘free’ assets.
So, Bridge and Mixer 2020 will be free, meanwhile Substance dropped perpetual licenses on their site, want $20 a month, and apparently Painter is not included as part of Creative Cloud?
I laughed. This is glorious. What great timing.
It’s an epic, full on revenge in it’s most powerful form. First, they not only freed themselves from Adobe/Photoshop, but then, they’ve also gained all the respect from an already steadily growing user base – but now, with the merger, they’ve taken all the things Allegorithmic messed up big times by merging with Adobe and earned the love from everyone!
Absolutely – for various reasons Quixel have seen their tools overshadowed since the ascendancy of Substance, but they seem to have used this time wisely to get well ahead of the curve with scanned assets. The ability to offer an alternative licensing model with Epic should really stir things up – I can already feel the tables turning 🙂 As a side note, I bet the Unity guys are also feeling a bit shaken from this news.
Unity is most likely planning to sell their company to adobe 😀
And so is Maxon C4D.
But seriously: this was great news – EPIC is great company and private owned(?) so its not stock holders who make these decisions? And supporting Blender <3
epic is mainly owned by sweeney but tencent has a huge stake (40% or so)
as long as tim is the man, nothing to fear. but the recent actiblizz fiasco should be taken note of.
i like epic alot, not the least for supporting blender, but things may shift though and soon at that.