Educational version of Primstar 2

Thanks to everyone who voted on the educational version poll!

The results are mostly split into two large groups, those who are happy with the way things are, and those who would like a free or very low cost version of Primstar 2.

Unfortunately, I've already proven that the donation model does not work for funding Primstar's development. Here's the donations we've received for Primstar 1.1.0 and the public version of JASS so far this year:

  January
               jass-2-pub  -  00015  -  L$1087
           jass-2-sources  -  00001  -  L$100
  February
               jass-2-pub  -  00189  -  L$18299
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00037  -  L$7126
           jass-2-sources  -  00001  -  L$5
  March
               jass-2-pub  -  00323  -  L$20912
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00077  -  L$3972
  April
               jass-2-pub  -  00244  -  L$16216
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00064  -  L$3473
  May
               jass-2-pub  -  00270  -  L$15964
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00074  -  L$2442
  June
               jass-2-pub  -  00229  -  L$15649
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00050  -  L$2197
  July
               jass-2-pub  -  00270  -  L$18993
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00076  -  L$3840
  August
               jass-2-pub  -  00256  -  L$22375
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00053  -  L$1613
  September
               jass-2-pub  -  00216  -  L$22068
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00049  -  L$2752
  October
               jass-2-pub  -  00172  -  L$15504
           primstar-1.1.0  -  00041  -  L$8426

There are a few small paypal donations not included, but as you can see, donations alone are nowhere near enough to fund the level of development we put into our products. Without the sales based model of Primstar 2 and the JASS Pro and Magic products, there would be no ongoing development at all.

Obviously, the challenge with providing a free educational version of Primstar 2 is in funding it. We'd have to change our entire financial setup to one where we'd charge for educational products such as tutorials, rather than charging for the software. And that would be a gamble as the poll showed people want educational stuff for free.

So after much discussion, we've decided to put together a no-script way of creating sculpties in Blender. This will be in the form of a blend file, with starter sculptie shapes and materials for baking the sculpt maps. Gaia is also planning a video on how to use this blend file.

This gives a product we can give away freely, that will allow all Blender related sculptie education to be covered. The only educational content that wouldn't be supported are Primstar 2 specific things. It also avoids the issue of trying to maintain two code bases and the additional costs involved with that.

Best Wishes, Domino