Is everyone content with the Megascans subscription model(s)?

[vkiuru]

First off, they offer great scans and atlases. The price is not high, it's just that it's not every month that they release stuff that's useful to me.

So if I get billed monthly and one day decide to stop for a bit because they're going in a direction that offers little or no concent that is useful to my region and I'll have to wait a month or two until they're "back on track" from my prespective, the credits that I have left on my account cannot be used until I pay to get my account active again. Also the Bridge becomes inactive if I take a month off. Am I out of my way thinking it's morally a bit off, even if I consider their pricing model to be fair otherwise?

I mean, if I've already paid 139 dollars I should at least be able to rest assured that my money is there to be turned into assets whenever I want to? Their current model is kind of like a bank freezing your account if you refuse to deposit another $139 in the turn of the next month, which I'm unwilling to do because I've already paid and am waiting for the right kind of material to pop up, and for the last x number of weeks they've been dropping off stuff that is of no value to me.

Also I can understand the Mixer being something you need to pay monthly to get access to because it's a tool and an awesome one at that but the Bridge? It's an export process, making it unusable/manual labor for your existing models, atlases & textures if you decide to  take some time off since there's nothing useful among the new stuff feels almost like extortion (I know - too harsh a word but can't think of a better one at this moment).. I mean it's an export option for assets I already have, not like I'm investing in something I haven't paid for.

I know they have their own support but I'd like to hear opinions from others - am I seeing this all wrong or asking too much for the price?

[Juraj]

They recently changed their policy, but it's not ideal. I think I will write them as well.

The biggest benefit from changes, as that we can continue downloading our assets with frozen/cancelled payment. Hurray ! Because I spent...terribly huge amount of money just because...I don't even know why. Now I finally cancelled it and can at least download those 1000 points I have accumulated :- ).

But the fuck...Bridge is now unavailable ? I can understand Mixer...but Bridge ? A stupidly simple asset collector ? This is issue I will contact them about. Because what can I do with my points now when I can see them in catalogue.

Now we can pay for Bridge&Mixer but I just want the Bridge.

And don't get me started about the content. It is huge disappointment. Totally random, one leaf of palm in January....then second leaf of palm maybe in August. In between 50 shades of Mud. The arch stuff is super poor quality, tiles terribly (the 2x2m is joke).
For all the scanning teams they claim to have the output is terribly slow and nonsensical. The only consistent stuff they output on regular are rocks and muds. OK.


Do you want to see high quality scans ? Textures.com. It's not even in same league. But it's one guy so.... the library is tiny. But every single scan is brutally fantastic.

[Juraj]

I wrote on their support, FB, and to Ronen. Will spam few more of their channels because this actually pisses me off. Bridge is worth 5 cents not 10 euros, they should look at billion times more advanced (and free) Connecter.

The Bridge is basically necessary because of their stupid automated naming conventions. I have no idea what I even downloaded without Bridge. So nice but thanks for nothing.

Highly DON'T suggest Megascan.

[vkiuru]

Oh f*ck thank god, so I'm not the only one and the first one to chime in happens to be someone who seems very rational from all I've gathered!

Thanks for taking the time writing them - I didn't know they'd changed the model re: frozen assets. I first wrote about it when the site was quite new and I had been a customer for.. 6 months? The response was just silly - basically they saw nothing wrong with the model because some stock photo sites used something like it as well. I'm not even sure if I wrote back, it was just so against common sense.

I agree the quality of the scans is subpar at times - I might be less picky, though. You have a more keen eye to detail than me. And, unless they've changed it too, the deal where if you pay to get 8k px resolution, they charge 2 credits for 8k surfaces? can't vouch for this since I haven't paid the the last month or two, but IIRC even if all they have is a 4k res surface they still charge 2 credits for it because, well, you've bought a subscription that allows 8k px surfaces which comes with the cost of 2 credits per surface :D

I like playing with Mixer but it stresses me out some day I might need it and it's not there for use unless I pay for it and/or the mud surfaces and palm leaves you mentioned. They've had about two years to think the subscription models through.. I wonder how much feedback they get, how things like these can still exist when they indeed claim to have processes that cast a long shadow against competition. Easy to use, sure, at times, but what on earth are you charging me for with the export-thingie. It still crashes half the time, ffs!

Also, I'd never have wasted my time or money getting the surface maps if I'd guessed they're gonna start charging for Mixer as well. I can understand there's reasoning behind it if you're only serving large studios but the small 0,34m "scans" of concrete are quite useless for a one man shop by themselves, and to pay a price just so I can mix a dozen of of them every now and then is a bit "meh."

[Juraj]

They weren't even honest about those 0.28x 0.28m scans :- ) Apparently it was all "1m" scans because they didn't write it. And then you would look into JSON file...and what the hell is this.

Teddy replied to me, apparently Bridge will retain basic functionality to browse even if you don't pay. But not integrations. (Corona scripts were done by Dubcat for free ! Not them).

Maybe I am spoiled by the heavily manually retouched scans from Textures.com. But seriously, it's night&day, go compare it :- ).

[Jpjapers]

They weren't even honest about those 0.28x 0.28m scans :- ) Apparently it was all "1m" scans because they didn't write it. And then you would look into JSON file...and what the hell is this.

Teddy replied to me, apparently Bridge will retain basic functionality to browse even if you don't pay. But not integrations. (Corona scripts were done by Dubcat for free ! Not them).

Maybe I am spoiled by the heavily manually retouched scans from Textures.com. But seriously, it's night&day, go compare it :- ).

Someone could easily write a third party integration plugin if necessary. All that exporter does is generate a maxscript file from the texture paths and the json file and then im guessing the script in max watches that folder for the file and then runs it to import the texture.

But i agree their pricing is odd and they seem to post similar looking scans constantly. They should be covering the basics off before sending me scans of angkor wat.

[vkiuru]

They weren't even honest about those 0.28x 0.28m scans :- ) Apparently it was all "1m" scans because they didn't write it. And then you would look into JSON file...and what the hell is this.

Teddy replied to me, apparently Bridge will retain basic functionality to browse even if you don't pay. But not integrations. (Corona scripts were done by Dubcat for free ! Not them).

Maybe I am spoiled by the heavily manually retouched scans from Textures.com. But seriously, it's night&day, go compare it :- ).

Oh, really? lol @ the ,28m scans :D

Thanks for the insight - I wasn't fully up to date it seems. Some time ago when I installed the then-latest version of bridge and the connection between Max stopped working and now guess I falsely believed it to be a case of activation issue because my account was inactive and it kept nagging about something. And then I was busy busy busy, and it left a bad taste. Just now I downloaded the latest Bridge client and export worked well, and I might add it is faster and lighter than before now that they have some Max integration there as well. So there's that, at least.

I'd still like an option to just gain access to Mixer and only pay for the library assets when I see something that would suit my needs. Mixer may not be the fastest editor, at least the version I last tried, also it still made my GPU fans yell loud as hell and Windows almost grinded to a halt when I exported something with many layers and at 8k px, but I like it still.

Textures.com is great. IIRC it started as a completely free service way back before 2010 even. Maybe it had some sort of bandwith limit per month but yes it's awesome and has come a long way since, of course, with PBR and scanned surfaces and the like. But to think how long it was just pretty much absolutely free (as cgtextures.com) with some very nice base textures is astonishing, even without the crafted scans you mentioned. Glad to support the site - didn't know it was one guy. That's impressive :O

But i agree their pricing is odd and they seem to post similar looking scans constantly. They should be covering the basics off before sending me scans of angkor wat.

Yes the pricing is still inconsistent. Also if I understood you correctly, I agree some tutorials would have been nice from the start. A big thank you goes to Juraj for that one screenshot that demonstrated how leaves could easily be cropped from an atlas in Max Slate Editor :-)

[Juraj]

But i agree their pricing is odd and they seem to post similar looking scans constantly. They should be covering the basics off before sending me scans of angkor wat.

Exactly my sentiment :- D

They are super inconsistent. 200 shades of mud and gravel....then 3 palm leaves, not enough to even make single palm, then 30 varied unnamed leaves (what trees are these even from?), then 50 shades of mud, then 5 bricks, then 20 Icelandic rocks, then another single palm leaf, but this time flattened and dry(so I can make dead palm or what?), then 6 random pieces of some scottish castle, then 4 Angkor Wat pieces ?

I know they have like 6000+ assets there but I don't understand their methodology at all.

[danio1011]

I have similar frustrations about Megascans and would happily cancel were it not for Bridge (we have a zillion credits).

One question about Textures.com.  Sometimes when setting up scanned materials from them I just reuse a shader from a similar Megascans material generated by bridge, just swapping the bitmaps.  Am I the only one that does that?  Is there an accepted 'PBR setup' workflow for going from scanned textures.com > Max?