Mike,

I think Michael wants to keep MoIs layer(styles) structure.
I find it usable as it is. I imported the PDF into Illustrator CS3 and by clicking on the circle in the layers palette I'm able to select all outlines or thin lines at once. I did a bit of cleanup (removed several rectangular clipping masks and renamed the three important layers).




This looks very promising Michael! I'm looking forward to silhouettes to give the illustrations the final touch.

Marc, did you open the PDF directly in AI? I had success by importing the PDF. See my previous post.

Hi Pilou,

> This is not a 3D PDF with rotation in 3D space ?

No, it's a 2D PDF, meant for printed output.


> Seems there is a little quirk! ;) (tested on Adobe Reader 8 )
> who seems not exist on your image!

Hmmm yeah like Marc mentions above that looks like a glitch with Adobe Reader 8 on the miter join between thick short segments. I'll see about setting the outline to have round miter joints which should then avoid that.

It seems to have been tuned up in later versions of Adobe Reader too.

- Michael

Hi Marc,

> Ive notice there is also an alpha black and white image in the pdf file.

Yup, the shaded part of it comes from that image with transparency for the background. The outlines go underneath that so that the shaded image also masks out the inside half of the outline too. One problem that I see now with this though is that the outline will be masked where different objects overlap each other, the outline will only show against the full background not against other objects.


> The layers shows up in Pdf reader and in Xara but not in Illustrator Cs6.
> Not that I mind, I use mostly Xara, but it's a strange phenomena being adobe and all!

Yeah unfortunately Illustrator does not read layers from PDF files. I guess what happened is that the PDF team made layers in PDF to be very flexible and can have all sorts of optional conditions for controlling visibility. They're actually called "Optional Content Groups" in PDF. But then with all that flexibility Optional Content Groups did not necessarily map 100% to the concept of a "layer" in Illustrator. So they seemed to have kind of just gave up on it. It would have been nice if they would recognized Optional Content Groups that were being used in a simple way to map to layers in Illustrator but they didn't.

According to Adobe here, officially it's Acrobat that is the main PDF editing tool and not Illustrator:
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/509192

But you'll be able to get layers to come into Illustrator if you use .ai format instead of .pdf . Can you test loading in this .ai file into both Xara and Illustrator to see if the layers here come in ok to both?

For AI format the shaded image part is in a separate PNG file that is used as a linked image in the .ai file, if you put the PNG file alongside the .ai file when you open it then it ought to be found when the .ai file is opened.

Do the images come in ok to Xara in both PDF and AI formats here?

Thanks, - Michael

Hi Mike,

> I noticed that there was one "group" in Illustrator, which included the bitmap and a clip for the
> exterior of it.
> I can also see where your thicker lines reside lower in order than the bitmap, and the thinner are
> above, but they all reside on the same Illustrator layer.

Yeah this is because Illustrator does not read in layers from PDF files.

But it will read in layers from AI files, so if you want to get layers to go into Illustrator you'll want to use .ai format for the transfer and not PDF.

Can you test the above AI file (download both the .ai and the background image which is a linked image inside the .ai file) and see if the layers come through ok for you using that format instead?


> Could you consider putting the different separate 'layers' of line types within
> actual groups, if it will let you do that?
>
> Then we could just click on the group of lines and colorize it or whatever if need be.

I may be able to do something with making groups too, but probably having the layers come through using AI format will do what you need as far as making them targetable.

- Michael

Hi Martin,

> Marc, did you open the PDF directly in AI? I had success by importing
> the PDF. See my previous post.

That's interesting - does using "Open" versus "Import" in Illustrator for PDF files do different things with organizing the PDF content?

Using .ai format should probably work better though, can you test the above AI file and see if it comes in with the expected layer structure ok?

Then only quirk about AI format is that the image is generated separately from the .ai file itself and it's placed as a linked image in the AI file. That was the only way I could find to make an image with alpha come through into Illustrator using the AI v8 format.

So when you save to AI format there will be this "companion file" PNG background image that goes along with it.

- Michael

>That's interesting - does using "Open" versus "Import" in Illustrator for PDF files do different things with organizing the PDF content?

Yes it seems so when I open the PDF directly everything is on one layer but when I import the PDF it comes in organized.


>can you test the above AI file

It is unfortunately the same mess as opening the PDF directly (Illustrator CS3) but I can select one piece of thin line then go to Select > Same > Stroke Weight and move everything to a new layer or change the stroke width for all selected lines.

A seperate PNG file is not bad because I could treat it seperately in another program e.g. convert it to line art.

>Can you test the above AI file

Yes, this works great Michael!

I would suggest not only making each type (thick, thin, bitmap) included within a simple group of its own, but then each group placed on separate PDF layers.

This way, the PDF or AI could also be imported into Corel. Or the PDF could be opened into Illustrator right off.

Aside from that, this is very promising! I already have a lot of uses in mind just for regular work, besides the new and wonderful possibility for 3D type.


Also, if you zoom in closer the butted outline caps, which are square are more evident.
To improve the look I'll often make the nib shape of the outline stroke round, but I will also leave a duplicate with the outlines with their original square ends.
This way, the ends and joined areas look smoother, but the corners retain their sharp squares (if they are joined).

The bitmap output, by the way, is simply beautiful... something near 600 dpi on this one.

One question, is the bitmap render quality linked to the Mesh Angle value for the vid card render?

I was able to open the .ai file with the linked PNG without a problem on Illustrator CC. Layers are fully intact: Default, Background, Outlines. Once again a really awesome addition to MoI's feature-set! Thanks Michael!

Hi Martin,

> It is unfortunately the same mess as opening the PDF directly (Illustrator CS3) <...>

Hmmm, over here with Illustrator CS2 it seems to be working as expected... Can you please double check that you're opening the .ai file and not the PDF since they have the same name?


> A seperate PNG file is not bad because I could treat it seperately in
> another program e.g. convert it to line art.

Yeah probably some people will like to use this just to harvest the PNG file and use it instead of the .ai file.


- Michael

Hi Mike,

> Yes, this works great Michael!

Great!


> One question, is the bitmap render quality linked to the Mesh Angle value for the vid card render?

Nope, for each surface it generates a new render mesh on the fly, and that mesh gets refined until the screen space projection of it deviates no more than 1/4 of a pixel on the render screen.

So it should always look really smooth regardless of what your display Mesh Angle is set to.

It's easier to do this kind of view dependent mesh generation when doing something like a "full render" where it's ok to take a bit more time to generate something screen related to high quality instead of focusing so much on speed like the regular display does.

- Michael

> I was able to open the .ai file with the linked PNG without a problem on Illustrator CC.
> Layers are fully intact: Default, Background, Outlines.

Thanks for testing it Fabien!

- Michael

Hello,

I've found it is an additional time saver to just load up the hidden line AI file right back into MoI for minor cleanup using Trim and Blend commands in case things don't line up quite exactly or if there are some little stray line segments that aren't needed. Once that get's put back into AI or Corel It is a bit easier to have those curves closed up. I'm not sure if MoI repositions points on the secondary save or not, but it would be helpful if it didn't. Awesome progress in such a short time.

>Can you please double check that you're opening the .ai file

Sorry I must have been confused. I was now able to open the .ai line drawing and I can see a wonderful clean layer structure! Thank you!!

But I have to ignore the linked PNG file. When I try to open both ai and PNG it just doesn't open. My Illustrator CS3 software on Mountain Lion is behaving very strange at the moment.

>Nope, for each surface it generates a new render mesh on the fly, and that mesh gets refined until the screen space projection of it deviates no more than >1/4 of a pixel on the render screen.
>So it should always look really smooth regardless of what your display Mesh Angle is set to.


So Michael, this begs an unrelated but burning question for a future request :::

For normal UI Viewport manipulation, would it be someday possible for MoI to wait until the mouse/rotations/etc is idle, then spend a little idle CPU time to render a beautiful, ultra-smooth, virtually anti-aliased UI image that would replace the active card-based image (hopefully near-seamlessly).

I mean, moving around would be the same fluid speed as usual, but wait, don't move.... ahhh. surely the best Viewport image of any 3D modeler on the planet!

;-)

Just a thought.

Hi OSTexo,

> I'm not sure if MoI repositions points on the secondary save or not

It shouldn't unless you're exporting it out using the 3D view that has perspective.

On export it has to refit curves that are rational or have a degree higher than 3, curves that are already degree 3 non-rational ones (like you'll have with AI import) should not be modified if they're exported from the Top ortho view.

- Michael

Hi Martin,

> Sorry I must have been confused. I was now able to open the .ai line drawing
> and I can see a wonderful clean layer structure! Thank you!!

Great!


> But I have to ignore the linked PNG file. When I try to open both ai and PNG it just doesn't open.

You should only open the .ai file - the PNG is already inserted into the .ai file as linked placed art, so it should be in place already right when you open up the .ai file only. But you do need to have the PNG file placed in the same folder alongside the .ai file so that Illustrator is able to find it.

- Michael

Hi Mike,

> For normal UI Viewport manipulation, would it be someday possible for MoI to wait until
> the mouse/rotations/etc is idle, then spend a little idle CPU time to render a beautiful,
> ultra-smooth, virtually anti-aliased UI image that would replace the active card-based
> image (hopefully near-seamlessly).

Maybe in the future someday, but it's unfortunately quite tricky to do a really good job of that.

The hard part is that it would not be very nice if there was any stuttering or lag when you just by chance happened to pause for a moment and actually want to continue to move around right away. It tends to be difficult to get a CPU intensive task to instantaneously stop.


> I mean, moving around would be the same fluid speed as usual, but wait, don't
> move.... ahhh. surely the best Viewport image of any 3D modeler on the planet!

Yeah, but unfortunately it's also very easy for something like that to go more like: move around, stutter, get nice image, run out of memory, ....


- Michael

Looks good Michael! Tested AI file into Illustrator CS5 & CS6 (3 layers). Tried PDF into Inkscape on Linux (Ubuntu), no layer separation but all elements were there and selectable. Nice Work, hope to see a new Beta soon!

>You should only open the .ai file

Hi Michael,

sorry I wasn't clear enough. I have both files in a folder. When I double click the .ai file nothing happens. It just doesnt open.
When I delete the .png file and then double click the .ai file I get a warning that a linked file is missing. If I push "Ignore" in that window the .ai file opens and I can see the lines.
I tried this on a second computer with the same setup and same result.

I also can't place the .png file into Illustrator. There seems to be a problem with large png files and/or transparency according to http://forums.adobe.com/thread/478570 or http://forums.adobe.com/thread/668668

This works:
I opened the .png in Photoshop and saved it as .psd file. Then I deleted the original png file. When I double clicked the Illustrator file I chose replace in the missing file warning window and then chose the .psd file. Now it opened fine.

I'm very happy with the result and the extra conversion doesn't bother me.