My thoughts on the 'Maxologic' take-over

Maxon's recent Pixologic acquisition has been on my mind ever since my jaw dropped when reading that news.

As a 3D industry veteran I can clearly remember how I reviewed the first ZBrush version for a Dutch computer magazine (PC-Active) many years ago. Back then I didn't really know what to think of the 2.5D approach, but it was immediately clear to me that the coding level was top-notch.

In the years that followed I remained faithful to 3ds Max, but always kept an eye on the intriguing developments of ZBrush, gradually developing the 3D sculpting medium.

Once ZBrush 4R7 was released, I had become very eager to jump on the ZeeBee bandwagon for an exciting creative ride.

Every time a major ZBrush upgrade was released for free again, I wondered how the company could stay alive like that.

I'm also an avid Blender user since 2012, when 3ds Max went the subscription way, and next to the Blender Foundation, Pixologic was the only other 3D software publisher that has always kept my full sympathy, not only because of their lack of profit greed, but mainly because of their grandiose tool and the sympathetic atmosphere, both at the side of the developers and the side of the users / artists.

Looking at the facts and the public response up to now, the take-over by Maxon does not elicit trust in the future of ZBrush. Maxon quickly switched to a subscription-only model after taking over Redshift, and the subscription prices of C4D, Redshift and other Maxon products are way too high for a small-scale freelancer.

I'm now hoping for one of these possibilities:

1. Perpetual ZBrush licensees will remain respected and will keep being able to upgrade once a year for a reasonable price (comparable to what you need to pay for upgrading Keyshot for ZBrush), in stead of having to switch to a subscription-only pricing model.

2. If ZBrush becomes subscription-only, I dearly hope the subscription price will be discounted indefinitely for owners of the perpetual license. My maximum monthly budget for a ZBrush subscription would be $ 20, but preferably less of course.

3. A third option I'd definitely find interesting to consider is an indie license for a combined C4D and ZBrush package, with a yearly price not much higher than that of Maya Indie. But I consider that to be very unlikely, although it could be a strategic blow to Blender, Max and Maya.

However, if Maxon turns out to take full advantage of the take-over for maximum profit gain, then for the time being I will probably keep using the last ZBrush version covered by my perpetual license, but sooner or later I'll completely switch to Blender, Nomad Sculpt and/or 3D-Coat, although it would break my heart to leave ZBrush, its sympathetic developers and creative community.

The bottom line: I really hope Maxon and Pixologic will soon release reassuring info to the loyal ZBrush user base.

🐵 3D game intro animation monkey model for the Birth Place game.

🎨 https://metinseven.nl

#3d #3dmodeler #animation #environment #artist #cgi #game #climatechange #deforestation #palmoilfree #gameindustry

🐺 Wolf howling at the full moon ─ engraving-style fairy-tale themed graphic design.

🎨 metinseven.nl

#engraving #woodcut #fairytale #fullmoon #wolf #howling #bat #dark #night #magical #graphicdesign #illustration #artwork #2d #vector

👴 Stylized old man head sculpture.

Concept by the talented Kevin Keele. 👌

🎨 https://metinseven.nl

#stylized #3d #head #sculpture #sculptor #character #design #zbrush #modeler #rendering #b3d

Back in the 2000s I was illustrating a lot for magazines and news media, both printed and online. One of the pleasant aspects of that work was that the magazine art directors usually sent me an article draft and left the illustration concept and style choice up to me. This gave me the opportunity to experiment and develop new illustration styles. By that time, I was already specialized in 3D illustrations, but as I've got a background as a pixel artist for commercial 16-bit games (Commodore Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS, Windows and more), and grew up with 8-bit and 16-bit games, I was searching for a way to combine my pixel love with a 3D illustration style.

In the mid-2000s I was asked to create illustrations for periodical special issues of the Dutch 'Webwereld' magazine. The job included a cover illustration and variations / details of the cover illustration to be used inside the magazine. I decided to use an isometric bird's eye perspective for the cover illustrations, and a regular perspective view to accompany the magazine articles. One of the Webwereld specials was about navigation systems, so I made this cover illustration in a game-like isometric style:

In my spare time as well as in paid illustration jobs, I continued my style experiments, and more and more cubic shapes were incorporated, heading towards a pixel-like 3D style. In those years, there was no dedicated voxel editor yet, and I used polygon extrusion and beveling in 3ds Max to create the scenes. Here are a few creations from the mid-2000s:

Arriving at a full polygon-based 3D pixel style in the second half of the 2000s, I decided to start paying 3D tributes to classic 8-bit games I grew up with, such as the great early shoot 'em ups: Space Invaders, Galaga, Defender and Vanguard.

I frequently published my voxel-style artwork on various social media and on my website in those years, sevensheaven.nl, which had a relatively high Google ranking because I created a daily news cartoon for the Dutch news platform NU.nl, resulting in a lot of site visitors. Soon the voxel art was noticed by popular media platforms (at least at the time), including Technabob, One Large Prawn, It 8-bit and Laughing Squid (even another time).

To put it into (preferably isometric) perspective: Minecraft was released on the 18th of November 2011, years after I started creating 3D pixel art.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s I continued refining my voxel style and frequently published the works on various online platforms. In the mean time, a first basic voxel editor was available: the now-discontinued Paint3D for Windows (not to be confused with Microsoft's Paint 3D editor). Voxel scenes were created in Paint3D, then exported to 3ds Max for materials, lighting and rendering. My voxel artwork evolved to a more graphical style, often leaving out the edge bevels, and sometimes adding typography and/or a grungy texture. Some examples from that time:

A September 2010 magazine cover illustration featuring a voxel-style Steve Jobs being built by Pixar characters, as Steve's Pixar investment became his biggest success next to Apple.

Minimalistic voxel style experiments.

In 2010, a Dutch iOS coder I knew from social media, Paul van Dijk, paid me an introductory visit to discuss a possible cooperation. We decided to create a voxel-style isometric-perspective iOS road game in our spare time, featuring my minimalistic voxel style. Work soon started. I created voxel characters in their own distinctive cars, along with some first scenery props and a complete set of seamlessly looping road tiles.

But paid work had to get priority in order to pay the bills, and the project soon stalled. I decided to publish the graphics that had been created, and move on with illustrating.

Four years later, in November 2014, Hipster Whale's Crossy Road iOS game was published, a variation upon the classic Frogger game, featuring graphic voxel style cars, roads and props by Ben Weatherall.

Crossy Road became a huge hit, and sequels followed, including... a Disney version, featuring familiarly voxelized Monsters Inc. characters.

Crossy Road made the minimalistic voxel style known on a massive scale, and sparked some regrets not having finished our game, although you never know when something is going to become a hit.

During the past years, new minimalistic voxel style artists emerged, such as William Santacruz and Mauri Helme. I also still like to create voxel art every once in a while, using the fabulous MagicaVoxel editor, but these days I mainly focus on high-polygon 3D character sculpting. It has the added advantage of not being as imitable as low-resolution voxel art.

─ Metin Seven, metinseven.nl

🤖 Cyborg Frankenstein.

Based on concept artwork by Eric Yan.

🎨 https://metinseven.nl

#cyborg #zombie #frankenstein #scifi #sciencefiction #scifiart #illustration #characterdesign

Just in time for Halloween here's an ancient zombie head for your enjoyment. 🧟‍♂️

Based on concept art by Eric Yan.

🎨 metinseven.nl

#zombie #3d #b3d #horror #halloween #3dmodel #3drendering #illustration #artwork #illustration

A loving tribute to the once revolutionary Commodore Amiga 1000 computer, released in July 1985.

You can earn a (higher) place in my coolbook if you can guess the game. 😎

🎨 https://metinseven.nl

#commodore #amiga #retrocomputer #retrocomputing #retrogaming #retrogame #illustration #illustrator #vector #artwork

🧛‍♂️ A zombie goblin vampire reanimated by Frankenstein.

Based on a great drawing by Kevin Keele.

I departed from my usual cartoon-style comfort zone for this 3D sculpture. It was an interesting endeavour. 🙂

Used Blender's new Cycles (X) version for rendering. Love the addition of anisotropy and IOR to the SubSurface Scattering.

🎨 https://metinseven.nl

#zombie #goblin #vampire #frankenstein #horror #3d #b3d #blender3d #3dmodeler #rendering #artwork #art

Nightly coder graphic logo design.

🎨 metinseven.nl

#logo #icon #design #logodesign #computer #coder #programmer #night #moon #illustration