
Read Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown" to see how this hacker dynamic has played out in the past. I have had that discussion with them and they totally admit that they are happy for people to use and learn their product. When I am working in studio I am using the site licence, when I'm working from home I run the RLM tool bc the licence fees are stupidly high and they don't have the resources to chase down individuals, actually it's in the foundry's best interest that more people are fluent in their product. Just get proficient, and when you are good enough to actually charge or get a job, you will be licenced. If you have no actual paying clients and just want to learn and experiment, don't worry about a licence.

If you want to learn nuke, need to get the rlm tool that will spoof the nuke into working. If you want to surgically dissect a motion picture shot and re-assemble it in a new way, leaving no trace behind and are needing to put dozens or even hundreds of hours of work into getting all the details right and completely covering your tracks, nuke is the tool built for that kind of work and AE can't replicate many of the tricks we use to do seamless photo real in every circumstance. If you want motion graphics or design with lots of text and you just want to crank that shit out every day, After Effects.

Depends on what kind of vfx you want to do.
