Starting January 6, 2026 , Reallusion will introduce newsubscription-based licensing options , giving you greater flexibility to choose the plan that best fits your needs. Alongside the existing perpetual licenses, these subscription plans significantly expand creative possibilities across Reallusion ecosystems for Character Creator, iClone, and Cartoon Animator. All subscription plans provide the same rights and privileges as perpetual licenses under the Reallusion Software EULA , ensuring a fair and consistent experience for all customers.
Subscription Model Benefits
Available with monthly or annual renewal options, subscription licensing offers a flexible and budget-friendly solution for short-term projects and creators new to the Reallusion family of products.
Same EULA Rights
Enjoy the same commercial-use rights and features as perpetual license holders, fully covered under the Reallusion EULA.
Stay on the Cutting Edge
Always access the latest software versions—including major upgrades (e.g., iClone 8 to iClone 9)—at no additional cost during your active subscription.
Full Ecosystem Access
Get unrestricted access to plugins and content purchases that integrate seamlessly with your existing pipelines and third-party tools, including Blender, Unreal Engine, Unity, Maya, ZBrush, and more.
Upgrade Perks
Receive an exclusive member discount when upgrading your subscription or switching to a perpetual license. Transitions are seamless, with no service interruption, and discounts are automatically applied at checkout.
Reallusion offers seven subscription plans, available with both monthly and annual billing options. Get started with Character Creator for as little as $8.30 per month, or iClone for just $16.90 per month. For detailed plan information and comparisons, please visit our official website.
Perpetual Model Benefits
Reallusion continues to support perpetual licensing for creators and studios that value the reliability and long-term stability of permanent software ownership.
Pay Once, Own Forever
Make a one-time purchase with no recurring fees, securing a lasting production tool for your pipeline.
Stable Production Environment
Ideal for long-term projects that benefit from consistent version control and a predictable, uninterrupted production environment.
Collaborative Synergies
Perpetual licenses remain essential for teams requiring advanced software management and allocation, including floating license control, shared content and project purchases, and seamless collaboration with external clients and partners.
License Recommendation
Perpetual Licenses are ideal for users who prefer permanent ownership, and for companies, studios, or educational institutions that need multi-seat licenses, team-based content sharing, floating license, and seamless external collaboration via Workgroups. We recommend purchasing our two most popular bundles to get started and save over 35%, or you may visit our Software Store to mix and match your own custom bundle.
Subscription Licenses are best for personal use, short-term projects, or budget-conscious creators. The Reallusion 3D Suite 365 plan is the premier option for a complete CC & IC toolkit. Choosing the Annual Plan provides the most cost-effective value to get started.
License Types
Perpetual License
Subscription License (365)
Best For
1. Permanent use 2. Content sharing, team collaboration 3. Studios and businesses
1. Personal use 2. Short-term projects 3. Budget-conscious creators
Common User Rights
1. Commercial use rights (EULA) 2. Access to full content and add-on platforms 3. Pipeline support for 3rd-party integrations
Unique Benefit
1. No recurring fees 2. Multi-seat licensing and workgroup management
1. Access to most up-to-date versions 2. Flexible upgrade options
Payment
One-time Purchase (No recurring fees)
Recurring Payment (Billed monthly or annually)
Refund Policy
14-day money-back guarantee
No refund, Cancel anytime (next billing)
Limitation
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Personal license only (Not suitable for workgroups or educational licensing)
Actually, the subscription prices are fairly reasonable If you only needed the software for a short-term 3 or 4 month project.
To be honest, there was a time when I would have found the cartoon animator 5 subscription prices very tempting.
Had I not already migrated over completely to grok AI for my 2D animation production.
@AutoDidact I hope you get your projects done before xAI runs out of money. Grok apparently costs them $1B per month without generating any significant revenue at all.
Grok which is part of XAI has just been purchased and merged into SpaceX.
For total company valuation of 1.25 trillion dollars.
And there is about to be an IPO that’s probably going to raise its value even higher.
Spacex has major US government contracts that will keep them flush in revenue .
As It is the only private American company capable of launching human beings up to the international space station.
And and this does not even take into account the revenue that is likely going to come from the sale of the optimus robot line that is about to be introduced on the market.
And finally, there are many AI services that can produce types of 2D animations that l prefer
My AI animation method consists of multiple creation tools with grok just being the service that actually animates the images that I produce via other AI systems
So no… grok is not a single point of failure in my plans for future AI generated animation and graphic novel production.
Reallusion stands out as the only company I sincerely wish was acquired by Maxxon, Autodesk or Adobe just so some semblance reasonableness comes to the EULA with respect to usage restrictions of the created output.
If this would happen, this would either lead to us users needing to pay massively higher prices or having to pay for subscription only (of course with yearly price increases). As a user of Zbrush and Substance Designer and Painter I’m directly impacted by what Maxon and Adobe did to these softwares.
Maxon (and it users) have no interest and character animation for games or films so I don’t see them having any reason to acquire Reallusion.
Autodesk has Maya, which is far superior to anything Reallusion offers regarding character animation for games and films
Particularly with non biped, non humanoid characters and creatures.
Adobe has sunsetted their to 2D animation program into “maintenance mode” to pursue more AI tools.
I don’t see them as having any reason to acquire Reallusion and have to provide support for another 2D animation software (CTA 5)as well as Iclone/CC3
and it’s numerous collection of plugins for the game engines & 3DCC’s
This would be a complete disaster. I really liked Substance and it was affordable, but after it was taken over by Adobe, users were confronted with ridiculous subscription rates. Because that is what it would mean: subscriptions for everything and an uncertain future for the product line, which large companies can easily dump if it suits them. Neither Maxxon or Autodesk are that great either. There should be an easier way to amend the EULA without disenfranchising users that have no interest in that.
At least you can still purchase Substance Designer and Painter on Steam as a perpetual license. But under Allegorithmic the price was only about a quarter of what Adobe now wants for it. And development slowed down massively, of course. The original founder of Allegorithmic left Adobe about a year ago. I think that says it all.
It’s surprisingly the current version by Adobe. They release each year a new version on Steam, which gets about 12 months of updates. After that, no more updates, but the software license stays in your Steam account.
At the moment they still sell Substance 3D Designer/Painter/Modeler 2025 on Steam.
Technically, now in March or April, version 2026 should release. If you buy the 2025 versions you basically only get a couple of weeks of support and that’s it. But the advantage is, once you own them, Adobe can’t take them easily away from you.
Of course, you never know what Adobe is up to. They might release version 2026 on Steam, but only as a subscription. Or they might decide to pull it from Steam. For example they also sold Substance Alchemist/Sampler and Stager a couple of years ago on Steam, but those aren’t available anymore.
Discussions with the developers on Steam indicate that they don’t plan to stop the Steam releases, so it looks good for now, but nothing official. So, you could play a game of luck and wait until version 2026 comes out. If you wait a couple of weeks for version 2026 you should get updates until early 2027. This might be even worth the price if you haven’t updated it over the last 4-5 years.
