[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

It works fine here.
Tried repairing permissions?

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

[beenyweenies] “That said, Adobe really, really needs to get their act together when it comes to staying fully compatible with Macs. This BS of patches and updates 6 months after major OS releases makes me wonder if they even remotely take their Mac user base seriously. “

[Darby Edelen] “Me thinks maybe Adobe should visit https://developer.apple.com/ more often.”

This is from an Apple knowledge base article posted this week:

“On computers running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Master Templates (templates created in Motion) do not display in Final Cut Pro 6. If you open a Master Template in Final Cut Pro, it may appear in the Viewer and the Canvas as blank or black on a computer with Leopard.”

Would you say that Apple should visit their developer site more often, or take their Mac user base seriously?

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Jerry: I understand that Encore BR authored folders are currently not suitable for replication. At this point, it’s for home-made, small runs.
Also bear in mind that BR replication can cost like a luxury italian car 🙂

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Hey, Jerry!
How are you, dear friend?

Many BR players (like the Playstation 3) will need a firmware update (unless they are very recent) to handle recordable BR media. But players with newer firmwares seem to handle it well…

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

You mean AE7, right?
There’s no editable layer style support in AE 7. For most cases, it brings a “baked” version of the layer styles as a separate layer. But not always.

Please post exactly what you need to do, and we’ll figure out something that works in AE 7.

You just need a visible stroke in the object’s contours?

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Yes, you have to copy the shape’s path attribute and paste into the other shape group’s (or layer’s) position property.

So, you would have to disclose the dotted line’s shape path property group. Target the path property (not the property group, but the enclosed property inside) and copy it. Then you can choose if you to paste it to a shape object (parametric shapes only!), shape group or shape layer.

Each shape group has a transform properties group. Select position inside that transform group and paste your path there. If you select position for the whole layer (instead of a shape group) the whole layer will follow that path. You will probably need to adjust the group’s (or layer’s) anchor point afterwards.

Is it clear?

Shape layers are terrific, but of course they are a whole new world and it takes some time to get used to all the possibilities.

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Did you try (in AE CS3) Layer > Layer Styles > Convert to Editable Styles?

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Amazon says November 19…

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

Next month, an all-new edition for CS3 of Trish and Cris Meyer’s Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects is coming out. For the fist time, it will come as a single volume.
As far as it’s…. motion graphics in AE, there’s nothing better IMO.
If you’re interested in the VFX/compositing side. Mark Christiansen’s AE Studio Techniques (a new edition for CS3 also coming soon) is excellent as well.
I would get these two, if possible.

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

You can use any layer’s content as particle cells. You have to select it in the layer map menu.
You can use shape layers as sources for particle playground, and thus easily get circles, ovals, rectangles, etc.
If you use a solid, remember to set the size to the actual content. If you want to use the output of an effect as particles, you’ll have to pre-comp the layer.