I have a educational/personal license since v3 (upgraded for cheap to v4 after numerous of free updates that introduced a lot of new features) and never found it limited. It is perfectly fine for a hobbyist imho.
The price settings is also very nice if you compare it with other commercial 3d software and it should be applaud.
Buy a subscription to blender cloud for less, so we can all benefit from better tools in blender sooner!
Vote with your wallets
I donated some amount for project gooseberry as the cloud offerings doesn’t seems targeted to people like me.
I live today and even donating money won’t mean that the tools will improve at the same level that I don’t need to use 3D Coat anymore. They will improve but thinking that every tool in Blender will excel the strengths of 3D-coat “soon” is rather naive.
Even after all the improvements regarding Sculping in Blender, I still prefer the much older Sculptris (feels more natural) and that is ok as I like to use Blender for other stuff. The combination Blender + 3D Coat is a killer for me.
I’ll have to demo it myself to understand the layers limitation, I want to think this is not an issue for a hobbyist.
The statement that you cannot use it for commercial work is what I’m more concerned about. Is there a physical restriction here, for example some software physically prevent their restricted users from exporting their work, You can do all that a licensed user can do but you cannot export or render your work. Some allow exports that have a water-mark on it, and often its so obnoxious you may as well not export it. OR can this restriction be just a legal restrictions, meaning yes I can export and sell stuff I produce but I’m doing so illegally based on the licensing terms. I’m a 100% hobbyist, so this would be the best scenario for me.
What is my interests? I have Sculptris and like someone here said, I also much prefer using it to Blender’s sculpting tools. Now does 3D-Cost provide a better work flow for retopology or better yet …a better environment for both sculpting and retopolizing (then I don’t have to jump form app to app).
Finally, when it comes to Blender I’m happy with it as my main tool, and I contribute to it’s endeavor by purchasing the stuff they sell. I know nothing is …“free”…but I keep hearing arguments from Blender that sounds like a commercial product and I wonder.
@blenderman75 there is no “physical” limitation on the EDU version that prevents you from using it for commercial work but you are technically not allowed to. There is no way to tell that you used the EDU version as far as I can tell so it’s more of a trust thing. With the full version you basically just buy the right to make money with the software.