Wow… that announcement on March 26, 2024 really took off and spread across every platform within hours.

In today’s post, we don’t want to dive too deep into the acquisition itself (Canva’s stake in Serif), but rather share our thoughts and what the decision could mean for the future.

A REAL COMPEDITOR

We’ve been using Serif’s apps for years. Their whole software lineup built its reputation on “independence” and the promise that once you bought the apps, they were yours — no subscription, no pay-monthly nonsense. Combined with their intuitive and accessible interface, Affinity became a long-awaited rallying cry for creatives who wanted a real alternative to the overpowering giant that is Adobe — and a clear message about software ownership.

Now, nine years later, Serif is flirting with a company that runs almost entirely on a SaaS model — browser-based, online-only, subscription-driven.
Wasn’t that exactly the kind of business model Serif used to criticize? For us, that carries a pretty bitter aftertaste.

As an agency and as freelancers, with established workflows both internally and with our clients, switching tools isn’t something we can just decide on overnight. Even the shift from Adobe Creative Suite to Affinity back then took effort, nerves, and time.

Back then, it was easy for private users — “If you don’t like it, don’t use it; just pick something else.” In a commercial environment, it’s not that simple.
And to be honest, the software landscape in this segment hasn’t evolved much. Yes, open-source tools like Gimp, Krita, and Inkscape are still around — and while we absolutely recommend them (and even use them for specific tasks), their stability and precision don’t always meet our daily needs.

FIRST SIGNS…

The first thing Affinity did after the acquisition was offer a surprisingly long trial period. When we activated it, we were shocked — 180 days! If we remember correctly, Adobe did something similar around Creative Suite 2, but their trial was only 60–90 days. And, well… we all know what Creative Suite eventually turned into.

If Serif/Canva follow a similar path, it could have massive consequences for their user base and their reputation. When your entire brand promise is “Pay once, own forever,” users will cling to that license for as long as they can (just like they did with Adobe) — before eventually jumping ship. The whole idea was always to push back against Adobe’s subscription model and the risk that software you rely on today might be unusable tomorrow.

BREAK — Up until here, this was the blog post we intended to publish back in 2024. Yes, we were already a bit late, which is why we never released it.

Exactly one year before Affinity/Canva surprised everyone again this year with another major announcement:

“Affinity is now free for all and forever.”

Looking back, we’re a bit annoyed we never published our original post — because many of the concerns we raised back then are now becoming reality (even if softened for now).

Yes, Affinity is free. For everyone. Forever. That’s the slogan.
But unsurprisingly, support for the previously paid V1 and V2 versions is slowly fading away.

So how do you fund a product that used to bring in steady income for years?
Easy — with a paywall inside the “free” app. We know this playbook all too well from mobile games and smartphone apps.

Step one: Canva’s AI features are locked behind a paid subscription.
And even though Canva stresses that the core features of the Affinity Apps will remain free, we have a hard time imagining that these AI add-ons will generate enough revenue to sustain development long-term.

Plus, Affinity’s community has always included a huge number of creatives who are skeptical of generative AI in general. At least that’s been our impression.

We do want to highlight one genuinely positive development:
Affinity has merged all parts of the suite into a single application. No more constant switching between Photo, Designer, and Publisher. Every feature is accessible in every document — made possible by their new file format: .af

Right now, we’re honestly not sure how to feel about all these changes.
On the one hand, making the suite available to everyone is great and opens creative doors for a lot of people.
But we can’t shake the feeling that the paywall will continue to grow — that new features will end up subscription-only, or worse, that existing core features might eventually require a membership too.

Let’s see together what the future holds for loyal and new Affinity users alike.

The post Af(finit)y – A big mistake BY SERIF? appeared first on CREBASE.

One light, a few white spheres without a texture and a little bit rigid body simulation. After our trial period of Cinema4D has ran out, we tried to achieve some comparable results in Blender.

For now, it is way more limited and the performance in Cinema4D is really impressive, but with some tricks, you can achieve some great results in Blender as well.

When it comes to art direction, the task is getting more complicated (what would we do, if Blender would have something comparable to fields ), you need to create many helper objects and force fields, to restrict/control the rigid body behavior.

Original on YouTube

The post Rigid Body Art Direction in Blender #b3d appeared first on CREBASE.

Website Content

Here, you will find articles on topics such as high-performance laptops, computer hardware for creative work, and specialized software solutions. The emphasis is not just on traditional reviews but on how technology performs in daily professional use—whether for graphic design, video production, 3D modeling, or music production.

Practical Insights

Instead of simple product tests, real-life use cases take center stage. The content helps you make well-informed decisions by showcasing which solutions work in practice and what challenges may arise.

Tutorials & Own Projects

In addition to experience reports, we regularly publish tutorials focusing on the use of specific software in the creative field. We also showcase our own projects to provide inspiration for your creative work.

Community & Exchange

This platform encourages interaction—readers can share their experiences, ask questions, and discuss current developments. We look forward to active participation from the community. Soon, we will announce a public section for discussions. Additionally, some content will offer a comment function for engagement.

The post Welcome to crebase – A Platform for Creative Technology appeared first on CREBASE.

And that’s the reason we decided to release our newest entry in our brand family as merch.

But what is MIMI.MAL all about? As a short teaser, crebase is all about minimalism. And we love the song “Cry me a river”.
Beside that, the short word mimimi has become pupular in Germany within the last years. And we’re totally into it. Basicallly, it says: “don’t be such a drama queen”!

We’re excited to share, that you can order “BASIC” Edition right now in our Spreadshirt Shop!

The post New Sub Brand // MIMI.MAL appeared first on CREBASE.

UPDATE 2: The Laptop returned after 3 weeks. I would describe the RMA process as okayish, but ASUS really can improve on that. I’ve never received an answer about what was causing the issue, but they replaced the entire mainboard, and everything is working great again.

UPDATE: After 8 month as a daily driver and heavy use, I recently had to send it to ASUS Service for RMA. The CPU was running very hot on idle. After a rough start with really back and forth communication, the service team finally agreed to open a RMA case. 7 days after sending in the laptop, I received the information, that the whole motherboard needs to be exchange. Fingers crossed the device is returning in good condition after the repair. I initially thought it has something to do with the liquid metal application.

A few weeks ago, I released my thoughts on the 2022 ASUS ROG Flow x13. This little beast, combined with the XG mobile was driving my daily work for office, video editing and 3D modeling and rendering. From time to time some light gaming.
As I described in my article, it was checking all my boxes, when it comes to a creative companion when I’m on the go. Especially size and weight, are the most important points for me.

Now, after 12 month of ownership and daily use, I decided to jump on the hype train for the ASUS Zephyrus G14. As with the Flow X13, I decided to write my initial experience about this machine, especially with creative work in mind.

First, let me introduce the technical specifications of my purchased unit.

• ASUS Zephyrus G14 (2023 model)
• white color (I’ll talk about this topic in a bit)
• 32GB DDR5 Memory
• 1TB NVME
• Ryzen 9 7940HS
• NVIDIA RTX4090 mobile
• 14″ mini LED display (165hz G-SYNC)
• dimensions
• 240W charger

Why I’ve picked the 4090 version, especially, when every Reviewer is pointing to the performance “issue” in regards of the TGP of 125 watts. My main usage of my laptops is always work. Especially for 3D related workload, the video memory size and bandwidth is relevant. So that’s why I’ve opted for the top tier model.

I don’t want to write an article, that is only reusing already existing technical information about this laptop. My main goal is, to clarify some of the pros and cons, mentioned by reviewers, from the perspective of someone who is using this device on daily basis and who has bought the device from the own earned money.

Confusing differences in global configuration possabilties

Especially in the European region, it seems to exist a difference in possible configurations available at resellers, compared to international configurations, available in the us for example.
I was looking from the beginning for the high-end model, RTX4090 and MiniLED. Because the system is mainly used for work, I would look for the eclipse grey version. It seems like, this version is only available with the IPS AniMatrix (which is completely useless in my opinion). So I was stuck with the polar white version, which is fine, but I would prefer a more stealthy look when it comes to a more production focused system.

Cut down version of the mobile RTX 4090 / TGP

Initially I was a little bit confused about the many “negative” comments about the limited TGP of the mobile RTX 4090 in the G14. I thought, this could impact performance a lot in most scenarios, as mentioned in so many reviews. And true, if you’re only looking into synthetic benchmarks and gaming, it is true, that the 4070 mobile could be just a little bit under the 4090 or will not justifying the huge price increase. But only a few reviews are outlining an important aspect for users, that are not only looking for the latest high-end model of hardware.
Most of my applications are hungry for VRAM, like Blender for example. And with that, memory bandwidth is an important factor for a seamless work pipeline. Working with large textures, handling a very complex preview, real time rendering (CUDA cores).
And what can I say. I’m driving a desktop 4090 in my stationary PC at home and I’m very happy, being able to continue most of my current projects on the go, without being forced to shrink any function or sacrificing to much performance. I don’t think, looking at the raw numbers, that the 4070 could deliver this amount of productive performance.

But if you’re only looking for a great gaming laptop, the 4070 should be the right version for you! This is were I agree with all the other reviewers of this device.

Noise and temperature

To make it clear upfront. The Zephyrus G14 is per definition not mend to run quite and cool all the time. If you’re packing that much performance into a small chassis, it will be tight to the physical rules.
With that in mind, yes you can reduce all sort of performance within the system, to let it run nearly quite. But is this really the focus for users, that are looking for the most powerful 14 inch laptop? I don’t think so.
For me it was obvious, that this work horse will run hot and loud at times.
Just to give you a short example. If you’re setting the system to silent mode and you’re only reading through a simple website, you will not be able to hear the system at all. But if you’re starting any demanding operation or application, the fans will kick in and introduce noise. With the nature of modern cpu and gpu, boost behavior is only limited by some values like temperature and power consumption. This leads to the maximum performance possible (of course, this can be optimized by cpu boos limiting, undervolting and other optimizations). But again, is this really the focus of someone who is using the laptop for productive tasks? If you want to use a laptop for high school or studying and you’re most of the time sitting in quite rooms with many other people and don’t want to fiddle around with the mentioned optimization steps, you should probably look for another system. If you’re working in an office or at home in the living room, I think it is worth, changing noise level with performance. The same thing goes for gaming. You would like to get all the benefits of the beautiful QHD+ 165hz MiniLED HDR screen, you have to sacrifice some points against noise and temperature.
And just to make it clear, the G14 is one of the most powerful laptops I’ve ever used and it is not close to the noise levels of some of my older gaming laptops like the Lenovo Legion 5 with a much less powerful hardware.

One thing we’ve to agree to most of the reviews. The keyboard area, especially in the middle, is getting really hot under heavy load.

Overall build quality

Price vs. expectation is a key thing here. If you’re like us and you’re willing to pay 3.500 EUR for a laptop, you’re expecting not only the latest technical internals, also build quality should be something you’re looking for. Especially if you were before in the Apple ecosystem for workhorses.
To make a clear point right upfront, do not compare a gaming focused device to a premium product with a lot of love for design and build quality coming from Cupertino!

Is it bad, not definitely not! The chassis and in peticular at the bottom feels “cheap”. It flexes a lot and it makes sounds when lifting the laptop for example one handed, if you’re walking with the lid open to the next meeting desk. But if the complete chassis would be made out of aluminium, the heat transfer would be worst in my opinion. So for me it is fine, that the top of the keyboard is made out of plastic. One positive, you don’t have to take care of fingerprints the whole time! In my case, I was forced to buy the white version (looking at you Asus and a not really clear vision of different international versions of your products!), after a long period of usage, I’m not able to see any coloring of my hands on the surface of the laptop!

The display // Who is this OLED?…

It is a great display, with stunning color accuracy. And, like for most productive laptops (I know, Apple is using glossy screens for years) it is matte. Of course, this can be different from user to user. But I think, most people are not willing to sacrifice the possibility, to use the laptop in direct lighting conditions. My last system had a glossy screen and I wasn’t able to work comfortably outside and when light sources in the background overshooting the content visibel on the screen.
Next to that, the display offers the option from multi zone dimming (most usable for media consumption like movies or YouTube videos, and single zone dimming. The second option is great for content creation, office work for example. So it is preventing any difference in visual representation of each pixel in each zone. (Be careful with the windows HDR settings, this could prevent switching from multi to single zone).
We’re not only working on this laptop, so being able to have a great display for color representation, my main plus for this screen is the native G-SYNC function. I know, there are a lot of Freesync laptops on the market, but maybe it is only me, for me the both implementations seam to work differently. With the RTX 4090 mobile being able to drive most games on 1600p on high refresh rates (especially when introducing frame generation), the smooth visualization of game play is so pleasing to look at.
Beside this, in our opinion, a fluid display with high refresh is also beneficial to productive workloads. Only in power saving scenarios, the 60hz mode has a valid point.

Conclusion / Final thoughts

Where should I start. If you’ve the right expectations of an consumer grade device like this (I think it is difficult, to compare it to brands like Apple for example), you can have a great time, with the powerful G14 (especially with the 4090 configuration). And of course, I don’t have the 4070 nor 4080 version on hand, but for my use case, it is the perfect fit and I don’t regret buying it.
If you’re looking for a small notebook, with the “most” powerful mobile GPU available right now, I’m not seeing any alternative on the market right now. Do I regret picking up the G14 2024 with the OLED screen? No, at least from the look in videos and pictures, I don’t like the step to the all aluminum chassis. At least, this step led to a mostly non upgrade able, hard to repair situation on any MacBook since years. And for me personal, I don’t like the color mismatch from body to keyboard. With the Mini Led screen, I don’t need to be as much worried about burn in effect on the display. Color accuracy is great for digital creative work. Only complains, the temperature, if you’re using this device on the couch, it can get really hot on your legs. And second, the battery life, but this is in my opinion mainly due to bios and performance modes and windows power profiles inconsistencies!

The post a creative tech dream… appeared first on CREBASE.

As a part time freelancer and part time gamer, I’m always on the hunt for new tech, gadgets and tools to make my work life, hobby’s and other activity easier/more fun.
At home, I’m working at my workstation with mid to high end hardware to get my things done. When I’m on the run, I have been supported throughout the last 1 1/2 years by a 2021 Lenovo Legion 5, with a Ryzen CPU and NVIDIA dGPU (RTX 2060). In general, I was really happy with the laptop, the only thing that bothered me from time to time was the weight. With 2.1 kg, a 15″ screen and a 230w power brick, this wasn’t always fun to carry around. Waiting at the airport, being on side inspection, walking through really long hallways in hotels.

With this things in mind, I knew, it is time to look for a more portable Ultrabook. The following list has been used to start searching the available offerings.

• max. 14″ screen
• lightweight
• enough processing power for creative work (i.e. Affinity, Davinci Resolve, Blender 3D)
  • AMD Ryzen CPU
  • 32GB RAM
  • 1TB NVME SSD
  • discrete graphics (preferably NVIDIA)
• sparetime gaming performance
• non-flashy design (RGB everywhere)
• efficient cooling solution

As a nice to have bonus, I was also considering a 2-in-1 unit with good pen support. But this feature was not mandatory.

With the requirements described above, there is not much choice in the ultrabook category. After some research, these units have made it to my watchlist:

• Razer Blade Stealth 13
• ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 (2022)
• ASUS ROG Flow X13 (2022)
• ASUS ROG Flow Z13 (2022)

To don’t waste too much time on the decision process, I’ll try to make it as simple as possible. I tried to compare each of these systems by difference in specs, what is visual most appealing to me. But then I realised, that the Flow ecosystem is extendable by the XG Mobile connector. I was aware of that feature, because I recently bought an ASUS ROG Ally, which houses also this connector. With it, you can connect an eGPU from ASUS with a lot more bandwidth compared to Thunderbolt 4. The idea of a super portable laptop, with the option to attach more power on the go, has thrilled me.
So I focused a little bit on the ASUS lineup. The Z13 couldn’t convince me to be real laptop and compared to the X13, the pricing is for it’s features way to high in my opinion.
So I decided to give the X13 a chance. At the time, there were only sometimes deals for the laptop itself, not for the bundle. After 2 weeks, I was reviewing my Amazon wish list, and by my surprise, the Flow X13 4K 32GB RAM version with a dedicated NVIDIA RTX 3050ti in a bundle with the XG mobile 2022 RX6850xtm was on sale. So I took the chance and pulled the trigger for 1.900 EUR. The bundle was also equipped with the ASUS Pen and a bag for both, laptop and XGM.

Beside a horrible delivery issue by Amazon, the package made it way to me after 2 weeks. As usual, I’m really excited about the unboxing experience and felt like a child on Christmas Eve. That’s the reason why I mostly skip the unboxing part of new gadgets of most of the techfluencers. No spoilers!

Everything is well packed inside a giant black box. All parts are packed separat. The experience was comparable in quality to the ROG Ally. After inspecting all of the content of each box, it was time to fire up the system.
I was remembering the process for the ROG Ally, so I thought it needs to be plugged into the wall for the first boot. If I remember correct, there was no hint, that some device versions are only equipped with a single USB-C charging port. So I tried to plug in the device on the right side. I was getting a little bit nervous, because after one minute of waiting for the status LED to become active, nothing happend. My inner child was crying, and the adult was going through the tidies process of sending back a device doa. So I did some research and after hundreds of reddit posts and official ASUS help pages, it became obvious to me, to disassemble the protective cover of the XG mobile port and plugged in the USB-C charger there. And e viola, the LED lighted up and the system began to boot.
From that point on, I went the exact same update path I already learned from my first ASUS purchase this year. And yes, it took hours. And I really mean, hours! This day I was not able to test anything. The laptop constantly switched between, “Hello enjoy your device” to “There are no updates, please reboot”.
After the first minutes of real usage, I thought the system doesn’t feel snappy, like it was held back by something. This impression still was present, after attaching the XG mobile for the first time. The process was clunky and not really working. Next shocking moment. I remembered the many negative feedback in regards of the device combo. Not connecting, not disconnecting… You have to reboot so many times… and so on.
So again, deep dive into the wonderful world of reddit. By the way, most of the ASUS communities are really helpful and a great place to share experience and ask for help.
Knowing I don’t want to be that guy, that is asking questions again and again, although there are many answers already out there. This research process also took a hole night, without enjoying the new product.
After many attempts to fix the clunky system by manual installing drivers, updates and firmware in a non specific order, I finished my unsatisfying project and left it on the table in the living room.
Next day after work, I finally decided to give a Cloud recovery a go. The process is well documented and not hard to run (I know, I’m more IT related, then most users out there, but it is really easy to achieve). The only thing that was driving me crazy was, I knew, I had to get over the hole update process again. But it was worth. After re-installing everything, the system booted up, and I was able to enjoy laptop, the way it was supposed to. Not only windows navigation felt way more snappy, also the process of plugging in the XGM was working flawlessly!

Finally, here we are. My opinion about the ASUS Flow X13 + XGM.
This thing is awesome! Not only the size and weight makes this one of the most portable workstation laptops. The all aluminum chassis feels so well made. The keyboard and track pad are not the best I’ve ever used, but they’re doing the job fine enough for my liking. I like that ASUS decided to keep the system as no “gamery” as possible.
For both, working and gaming, the 4k screen is really great. The max brightness is good for highly lit rooms and outdoor usage. Color accuracy is so on point. In some scenarios a little bit to saturated but overall fine.
The cooling solution keeps the system under normal load quite, which is great, if you’re working in noise sensitive environments. Although many users on reddit complained about Armory Crate, I have nothing negativ to say about it. With the addition of G-Helper, an open source tool to control most hardware related teaks of ASUS laptops, all features work flawless. I use G-Helper for disabling and enabling CPU boost if needed for example. Which brings me to topic battery life. In my experience, the battery was able to power the device in mixed scenarios, for at least 3-5 hours. Compared to my old Lenovo Legion, which is a heavy 15″ laptop, only was able to last for 1-3 hours, depending on the status of the MUX Switch. Speaking of which, there are 4 profiles for the dedicated NVIDIA GPU, the “Ultimate mode” is enabling the full potential of the dGPU, and a reboot is necessary to activate it.

If I had to describe one bad thing about the X13, I would pick the non existing upgrade path for RAM and Hardrives. So I would recommend to go with the highest equipped model with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB NVME drive.

Conclusion

Would I recommend the X13 especially in combination with the XGMobile? Yes, but it is heavily related to your use case. If you’re just looking for a portable gaming device, then I would seek for options like the ASUS Zephyrus G14. But if you’re also into creative workload like video/photo editing, 3D modelling and rendering, than absolutley!

The post ASUS ROG Flow x13
A mini TECH Beast… appeared first on CREBASE.