[John Orban]

Joe:

My man – you have said in one freaking sentence what it took the Adobe forum to answer in so many posts I got dizzy reading them and I don’t think they really resolved the issue.

THANK YOU for being one of the few, the proud, the LUCIDS!

w00t!

John

[John Orban]

What’s the MAC solution? Mine still doesn’t work.

[John Orban]

You da BOMB, Matt!

Thanks, everything is hunky dunky now!!!

John

[John Orban]

I’ve got a sinking feeling that PA4.5.1 is NOT compatible w/ 10.6.6???

[John Orban]

I’ve got exactly the same problem. About a month or so ago PI started asking for an activation code.

Not only does it ask for an activation code, but then after a couple of minutes, the program crashes.

Running 10.6.6 Mac OSX – MacPro – 16GB RAM

I have an iMac @ home that works just fine. Only difference is a single processor vs dual-processors @ work (which is the machine that crashes the app).

No new hardware – regular software updates from Apple

Process: particleIllusion [5657]
Path: /Applications/particleIllusion 3.0/particleIllusion.app/Contents/MacOS/particleIllusion
Identifier: com.wondertouch.pIllusion_308
Version: particleIllusion version 3.0.8.1 (3.0.8.1)
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [161]

Date/Time: 2011-01-31 08:55:48.060 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.6 (10J567)
Report Version: 6

Interval Since Last Report: 493117 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 1
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 132 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 1
Anonymous UUID: 09B1A11A-456C-41EE-93EC-E17BD7BFAF3F

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

[John Orban]

Don’t know what your issue was, but today I’m suddenly asked to Activate my copy of PI. AND the program is crashing while waiting for me to activate (which I can’t because I’ve exceeded the number of activations). Jeez I hate copy protection. Does it REALLY work? (Other then screwing up legitimate users’ experiences?

Running 10.6.5 OSX

[John Orban]

After successfully moving (and using) this program to my MacPro, I did not use it for a month or so. Today when I opened the program it told me I needed to activate it. In addition, while waiting on the “Activation Window”, to find my serial number, the program just crashed.

Running OSX 10.6.5 – are there problems with that build of the OS?

[John Orban]

Yep that works too! Actually that’s pretty easy and VERY lucidly explained – something I need to get through my thick head. Thank you for your help!

John

[John Orban]

OK, figured it out…I guess you don’t need to support PNG.

I guess idiots like me aren’t intended to use software because I swear, some of the “tutorials” out there do NOT make freaking sense. It took me 2 hours to “interpret” this statement:

“add a layer mask, copy the alpha channel into the layer mask, delete the alpha channel”

Since the original document comes into Photoshop as a locked layer, you FIRST have to unlock the layer (thanks to an English dude who taught me the simple double click on the layer trick from his website).

Then you can create the layer mask.

However, if you don’t turn on visibility of the layer mask in the “Channels” tab, you can paste all day long and nothing happens. Took me 1 1/2 hours to figure THAT out.

Anyhow…in the Channels tab, select the “Alpha 1” channel by clicking on it. Command “A” then selects the layer so you can paste it.

Turn on visibility of the “Layer 0 Mask” (your Layer mask) – then PASTE INTO that layer what you copied out of the Alpha 1 channel. As soon as you do that, the RGB channels all turn transparent.

You can now move the Alpha 1 channel to the trash can.

Sheesh!

[John Orban]

I just want to reply to Ed’s last email because the folks @ ProAnimator resolved my issue.

I have to say, folks, this is Support with a Capital “S”. Wow!

During the interim, while I was getting this resolved, I was messing around with Blender and, boy, did I come to appreciate the elegance of ProAnimator. This is a remarkable program. I’m only now beginning to go through all the elements of the software but my hat’s off to you folks @ Zaxwerks. It’s really nice to have software that works and when it doesn’t have support folks who care enough to help their customers!

John