Allegorithmic is joining the Adobe family (part 1)

[Jeremie Noguer]

What I would like to confirm is when will the merger take effect in a practical sense ie. when should I convert my subscription to a perpetual licence? The evasiveness of answers to questions surrounding the continuation of perpetual licences doesn't fill me with hope that it will continue.. At the very least can you please give us a heads up so that those who do not want to keep going with subscription based licensing can have the choice?

It's evasive because if a change ever happen, it's still pretty far away. When/if that happens, it will be plastered all over the place well in advance and you'll have plenty of time to weight your options.

[ShaderDave]

What I would like to confirm is when will the merger take effect in a practical sense ie. when should I convert my subscription to a perpetual licence? The evasiveness of answers to questions surrounding the continuation of perpetual licences doesn't fill me with hope that it will continue.. At the very least can you please give us a heads up so that those who do not want to keep going with subscription based licensing can have the choice?

It's evasive because if a change ever happen, it's still pretty far away. When/if that happens, it will be plastered all over the place well in advance and you'll have plenty of time to weight your options.

What are the chances that the price of switching to a perpetual license will increase by the time Adobe decides to let you make that announcement?

[ChrisWestland]

First time poster in this forum. Here's how I feel about this.

I've also been around, I'm 40+ years old and I know how the story goes. Thing is this...

People don't really share the same appreciation and admiration of Adobe and their business practices as Allegorithmic obviously does. The same pattern exists in the gaming industy. Big corporations can't innovate by themselves because they lack the love for the trade. It's just business, ....pure....cold....calculating....shareholders....suits....ties.... Get as many tick-boxes on your product as possible, make the product appealing to the masses, dumb it down if you have to, lock it behind a wall of monthly subscription, bundles, always online, spend TONS of money on advertising and PR, cut down on customer service... Acquire smaller studios and companies that DO innovate and DO have a passion for the trade or industry and bring them into the "family" and if things do work out we'll chop them up into pieces. You guys and girls know what I'm talking about. Look at companies like EA.... Ubisoft... Activision Blizzard....Autodesk...and Adobe... Not exactly consumer friendly. Total stagnation and lack of innovation. Their products are hollow, soulless and are sold over and over and over again with minor upgrades and reskins. They have no substance.... Like someone pointed out the owners of these companies weren't there when the company started... they don't care about the particular industry they are in like you guys did. If they fuck up they don't get fired they get a million dollar bonus and move on to the next company.

You see,.. that kind of behavior doesn't fly well with us "rebellious" artists, that's why we came to you guys in the first place.
I don't care if you could add more features and fancy bells and whistles if you joined Adobe. Your product was awesome. Very reasonably priced. Now it will be out of reach. Now it will be positioned in the Deathstar guarded by stormtroppers.

The dark shadow appeared and whisked the lovely, bright but naive little girl into the dark castle... "I'll be alright!" She was heard saying before dissaperaing. Later she was seen wearing a dark wedding gown for her wedding to a 2978 year old monster. She was expressionless, seemed empty of any emotion. She wore the kingdoms most expensive jewelry and attire. Many were envious...But many were not.... The bright, happy young girl was now transformed. Gone forever. But she had the most expensive and fancy dresses the kingdom could produce. But no friends. No love.....  Later she became a popstar on Mtv.

Nothing new under the sun here folks. I understand Allogerithmic want to push the envelope, but we don't want our tools to be held hostage by Adobe. ... In the dark Adobe Castle....

Another young, bright star has been corrupted. 

[Jeremie Noguer]

What are the chances that the price of switching to a perpetual license will increase by the time Adobe decides to let you make that announcement?

0%

[gigantoad]

Thanks Wes. You guys are so very optimistic, I hope it all works out for you and is not just a result of a dose of nativity and the negative aspects of capitalism today. Growing at any cost. Growing fast, too fast. We needed to grow you said, I ask why? Why was all the tremendous successes you had not enough? You guys grew to 150 employees? That's pretty insane already. How much more do you need? All the success you already had, not enough. You need more. We need to join a huge corporation that can give us more resources. Who cares if we break our necks on the way.

I don't understand the mentality of it all. You guys did your own thing with such success. But there you go, it's done now. Let's hope Adobe really treats as well as you're all hoping. Even in case stuff doesn't quite go as planned and shareholders are not so fond anymore of what you're all doing. Even when it turns out that Sébastien doesn't get along that well with the leadership in the long run, which sadly happens all too often.

[justnwaters]

Like a few have already stated they've created an "Adobe-less workflow" as have I over the years. This makes it hard for the future to avoiding this evil/greedy company. But thanks for your wonderful work allegorithmic, it's a shame you will be out-sourced to India in a couple of months.

[JLeeSoloDev]

What are the chances that the price of switching to a perpetual license will increase by the time Adobe decides to let you make that announcement?

0%

Jeremie, the reason why no one is believing you and you repeat yourself often is because you still have your old small company logo. You and your staff already speak like Adobe, so why not wear that billion-dollar logo. I mean you made it clear your Adobe so wear that brand proudly. No one from Adobe will yell at you, of course I can’t speak of your community. I have to say that past 2 years of Adobe being there have taught you guys well. You guys are fitting right in.

Remember you are not that company that your community use to love. You are a monster billion-dollar company now. Your bosses will get angry if you start saying stuff that don’t align with their values ($$$$$$$$$$$$).

PS: so enough of the sarcasm, sorry, now that I have to find an alternative I’m kind bitter. But really, change your logo so people start believing you guys. They won’t have a choice to not believe you because you have their logo and its plastered everywhere that you’re an Adobe Company.

[ShaderDave]

What are the chances that the price of switching to a perpetual license will increase by the time Adobe decides to let you make that announcement?

0%

Approximately how much time do we have left to convert our licenses into perpetual license?

If Allegorithmic is now Adobe, how much power do you, the team who built the company, software, and community,  have over the licensing of your product?

Will the leverage of being Adobe and not Allegorithmic allow you to REDUCE the price of the product?

If any deals are not met with good faith does Allegorithmic retain the right to remove itself and its original products from Adobe, since this is not a buyout.

Who in the Allegorithmic team has more power over the products than Shantanu Narayen?

Has anyone considered that the entire point of people using Allegorithmic's tools was to not pay Adobe any more for their what some people would call extortionist practices , lack of real updates, turning up and coming software into abandonware, and mistreatment of its user base by pricing-out its lowest income users?

[Xathian]

We needed to grow you said, I ask why? Why was all the tremendous successes you had not enough? You guys grew to 150 employees? That's pretty insane already. How much more do you need?

Note in that post they credit Adobe with being the reason they had and could afford that growth. That's the key to all this, friend. Adobe pushed the company to bloat itself and become reliant on further Adobe funding. If Adobe cut the funding they would be left with a fraction of the money, they'd need to cut staff and cancel projects.

It was all planned by Adobe from the start, it's the gentlest form of a hostile take over.

[ShaderDave]

I would feel a whole lot better if someone with the authority to do so would come in here and reassure us, specifically, that we will still be able to convert our Indie License subscriptions to a Perpetual License for the advertised $49!

The answer is yes, and Allegorithmic IS Adobe today, our word has as much power as any other spokesperson from Adobe.

.... I hate to tell you but... Adobe does not have a great track record with its " word" ...  You might wanna walk that one back a bit.

[AldoDelValle]

Ok, after the surprise, I have reviewed your comments on the current licenses. They assure us that those of us who have acquired the perpetual licenses of the 2018 version, will continue that way.

We have your word. That works for me.

I still believe in you and I hope things go well for everyone.
The best of luck, and thanks for Substance!

[ChrisWestland]

Yes, my workflow is up until now Adobe-free as well. I'd like to keep it that way. Unless by some miracle in the near future I can use, start and operate my Substance Painter with perpetual license exactly as before without having to log into some cloud service and app that runs in the background or being reminded that I should do like all the other sheeple and subscribe.

Unless I know for certain, I have to start looking at alternatives so I'm prepared when/if things go Adobe-shaped.

Been looking at 3DCoat and Z-Brush. They look interesting but come with a higher pricetag. Especially Z-Brush. Forget about Mari. 2000$?? get outta here.

For texture-painting and or possibly create or manipulate models for games specifically...
...which one would be the easiest, most robust, useful and somewhat future-proof product?

I use Blender for my 3D modelling and animation needs and SP for texture-painting and the final output is Unreal Engine.
It looked like both 3DCoat and Z-Brush had retopology features and UV unwrapping... That looked interesting. I always struggle with retopology and at times UV unwrapping. I like sculpting in Blender too but its far from perfect, maybe these 2 programs can do it better?

Z-Brush looks difficult to learn though, some say the UI is annoying...
How about 3DCoat?

Which one would you recommend? I don't think Allegorithmic will answer this question though. But feel free to do so if you wish. Not saying I will abandon you just yet, but we will see how integrated you will become in the months and year ahead. As soon as CC comes up and I smell subscription or I cant use my SP like before, I'll switch.

[cjwidd]

Has Adobe offered any opinions regarding the position of Substance Trebuchet, Substance Source, or Substance Share with respect to the Adobe CC service?

[JLeeSoloDev]

Yes, my workflow is up until now Adobe-free as well. I'd like to keep it that way. Unless by some miracle in the near future I can use, start and operate my Substance Painter with perpetual license exactly as before without having to log into some cloud service and app that runs in the background or being reminded that I should do like all the other sheeple and subscribe.

Unless I know for certain, I have to start looking at alternatives so I'm prepared when/if things go Adobe-shaped.

Been looking at 3DCoat and Z-Brush. They look interesting but come with a higher pricetag. Especially Z-Brush. Forget about Mari. 2000$?? get outta here.

For texture-painting and or possibly create or manipulate models for games specifically...
...which one would be the easiest, most robust, useful and somewhat future-proof product?

I use Blender for my 3D modelling and animation needs and SP for texture-painting and the final output is Unreal Engine.
It looked like both 3DCoat and Z-Brush had retopology features and UV unwrapping... That looked interesting. I always struggle with retopology and at times UV unwrapping. I like sculpting in Blender too but its far from perfect, maybe these 2 programs can do it better?

Z-Brush looks difficult to learn though, some say the UI is annoying...
How about 3DCoat?

Which one would you recommend? I don't think Allegorithmic will answer this question though. But feel free to do so if you wish. Not saying I will abandon you just yet, but we will see how integrated you will become in the months and year ahead. As soon as CC comes up and I smell subscription or I cant use my SP like before, I'll switch.

I make games too and have used ZBrush for years and 3D Coat. 3D coat does the painterly style very well and that's what I use it for the most. They have Smart Materials for more realistic results but only dabbled a little with it. Its very robust though. I'm mostly a Stylized Character Artist so painterly style works for me. I was going to try stylize characters with a realistic PBR style. Heard great things about Substance so that is why I'm here. Unfortunately, I am not to fond of Adobe so back to learning 3D Coat fully. I use Modo and retopo there but 3D Coat has a pretty good retopoing tools and you can sculpt in there too. Some actual transition from ZBrush to 3d Coat for their Sculpting needs. I actually started out in ZBrush and in love with the software. I bought it when it was like $495 (I think that is right, sorry, been a while). Zbrush is the only software I recommend buying. I don't know how, but all their updates were free and I'm up to date. Even if they start charging I would pay for it. They have treated their community well and I have not seen so many informative tutorials for free and its right in their site. Its frankly better for visual artists. Don't worry about the interface. You can totally customize the interface and create your own shortcuts pretty fast. This leaves you with just the creation process. 3D Coat from my experience have been great. Try it out and see for yourself. They have a good community their also.

[Matthew Dixon 0]

I am wondering if I have a one-year educational license then will that be affected when Adobe decides to place Substance into a new "offering".

In an article from slashgear.com by Chris Burns, he quotes, "'Adobe will announce an update on new offerings that'" will bring the two tools together. I get it that Adobe and Allegorithmic have worked together before on the standard PBR and this is great if you guys want to do more like the integration of Substance SDK, but please don't force people into crazy subscription packages.

I have been paying for the creative cloud for a year now under the student discount. It costs me $20 plus tax, but after one year it now costs me $30 plus tax. So, I was considering canceling because I only use photoshop and I can just use the PCs at school for that. I don't need it. Please don't force me to pay $30 a month just to use Substance, and waste the rest of it.