Maxon has announced that it is to acquire the assets of Pixologic, the creators of the well-known sculpting and painting software ZBrush. The acquisition is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2021 when Pixologic founder and CEO Ofer Alon and his team will join Maxon. Read the press release in full on Maxon’s website and this message from Pixologic.
Maxon to acquire assets of Pixologic, creators of ZBrush
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Oh well, there we go on the path of “subscription only”
This will help push the open source community even more. Yes, that one you’re thinking of.
For some reason, I don’t feel good about this news.
I used to like Redshift, but after Maxon acquisition things didn’t get better, actually all the opposite.
For me, Redshift now is very buggy, it reminds me of the old good Octane.
We’ll see, but I just expect another subscription model with no significant improvements.
I don’t like this news one bit.
Am I the only one surprised that Maxon can afford Zbrush? Is c4d or Redshift that big? I think of zbrush as being the bigger player. Maybe thats what comes of not charging for updates for 15 years….
As far as I am aware pixologic has been bleeding money. the long free update cycles might have possible been the reason for the lack of a steady cash flow.
I’m sure they needed a loan, with a promise to investors that they would milk the fat ZBrush cow to pay it back.
Just what I was thinking. Investors, banks and lawyers love this kind of move. Ongoing debt and acquisitions mean juicy profits for them.
I’m definitely jumping the gun here, but I can’t help but wonder if this is an attempt by Maxon to attract Adobe. Their debt would then become Adobe’s – which I’m guessing has more than enough capital to swallow it. Meanwhile the banks and corporate lawyers take another chunky slice of profit. Its just conjecture, but it would make sense to me that Adobe waits a while for Maxon to handle the expensive, unpopular and risky transition of ZBrush to subscription, and a year or two later – if Maxon is still standing – Adobe finally makes a move, which would allow it to offer a near complete 3D package on subscription.
maxon can afford zbrush because they are part of the nemetschek group (they’re big in CAD)
Maxon recently brought Red Giant- probably the best set of plugins for Adobe products. I’m sure Adobe would love Red Giant but I don’t see them getting into Zbrush or CD4.
I don’t really see a strategy here. I just see companies buying things. Almost at silly as Autodesk buying Maya and Softimage and then spending the next few years competing against itself. (I said ALMOST as silly as Autodesk).
The worst news possible, Autodesk/Maxon same shit different Logo.
I would have NO problem paying Pixologic for Zbrush updates.
But Maxon? oh man what a bad day.
Oh well, another day another reason to donate to the blender foundation.
I honestly can’t believe I am saying this….. but if I had to choose a company to buy Pixologic my pref would have been adobe.
At least substance seems to be doing well. Development is steady. Which is something I wasn’t expecting when they announced they were bought by adobe.
I personally have no faith in Maxon especially with what I hear cinema4d users say and how redshift seems to have changed.
Would have been better if Epic had done that, alas ):
I would love Epic to buy !
It was only a matter of time.
I’m curious what will be autodesk move. I been waiting for the revamp of the ui like blender did to dig a little bit more but apparently I don’t have to wait no more i will give 2/3 years to be a dead software
Why would you want UI like Blender?
Are you using blender ?
I don’t think Autodesk will do anything. They have been steadily building their bunker for years, and are quite happy where they are I guess. That might change if Adobe goes onto acquire Maxon.
Maxon has just got more expensive: the value, incl. ZBrush, is now much more then a week ago; why did Adobe wait for so long?
Not necessarily more expensive, but more valuable in terms of assets (and to counter that more debt probably). They might not even want Maxon or ZBrush, but if they do they must have calculated that they can wait. Maybe they are still ‘digesting’ Allegorithmic. Maybe they hope Maxon will oversee a re-vamp of the Zbrush UI? Substance at least has some dna in common with more classic Adobe products, but ZBrush is on a different planet. Maybe that will change under Maxon, if so they will carry the risk of upsetting the core users.. who knows..?
Autodesk will do what they do best: NOTHING
the last bastion fall…
No, the last one is SideFX.
Epic own part of SidFx so in a couple of years SideFx will be on Epic Games roster
this industry has turned in so much shit its really sad…
Muiito bom
More power to blender :’). Sure, sculpting tools of blender stand nowhere close to that of Zbrush. But I can feel that Zbrush is becoming a subscription only software, sooner or later (like redshift). With that more artists, especially freelancing ones will be moving to cheaper or even free alternatives. To be honest, paying for utility softwares on monthly or annual basis is painful especially when you’re not earning a stable income.
Blender sculpting isn’t near the level of Zbrush thats true but its getting there. They have their own version of polygroups called Face Sets….color codes them just like zbrush.
It never get there, because zbrush is specialised towards sculpting and thus can focus more resources towards it, while Blender is a jack-of-all-trades. Capable of many things but not really exceptional at any of them.
My hope is Chaos takes over and we don’t have to worry about any of this
Chaos takes over what Maxon? as in chaos group?
or you do you mean the angry mob chaos ?
Choas group are terrible now sadly, vray gpu is dead and development paused on vray cpu products and now only much focus on vantage to please their investors who want a real time product – source insider staff.
the constant price increases are also a worry. sad decline for a once great company.
Its a time of transition – they need to adapt to survive. Change is happening at such a pace for their clients I’m guessing the options for traditional renderers are narrowing quickly. The challenge will be to bring something to market that ‘clicks’ with users in the same way Vray has for the last decade and a half.
So, your “insider staff source” forgot to tell you Chaos is independently owned by the two founders?
Under EU laws, investors have to be publicly stated, can you provide for a link which lists them?
Finally, they had Vantage out *for free* since its inception, why would they concentrate on a free product at the expense of the money-making ones?
Man, ain’t you full of s*it.
So there is mudbox (no.. not real option because no development from ad).
Modo’s pretty basic sculpting tools or Kanova (also foundrys sculpt tools but it is just alpha)? No.
3Dcoat it has improved a lot and can handle pretty smoothly 300million tirs when in old days it was handling slowly 30million tirs. So maybe.. maybe
Blender is free option so they should now improve their sculpt engine or make that hybrid sculpt dev plan real. is there other options available?
meanwhile at 3DCoat headquarters: “Finally! Our time to shine!”