Hi Michael
when exporting or saving a model as an Adobe Illustrator file, choosing from a 3D Projection view, MoI 'renders' a wireframe representation or construction (i.e. there are no filled areas generated from the surfaces). Am I missing something, a setting, or is this the expected output? I tried importing this file into Xara, Inkscape and AI CS3, all with the same result.

Interestingly, the export from MoI as an SKP, and from there exporting as an EPS works as expected... but one should not have to recur to a third-party workaround, right? See attached.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

. Diego .

Hi Diego,


> Am I missing something, a setting, or is this the expected output?

That's currently the expected output - MoI's current AI export is only pretty basic and only exports simple curve data (including edges of solids and regular curves).

I do want to work on enhancing it in the future but it will probably be a while before that happens.


> but one should not have to recur to a third-party workaround, right?

In an ideal world that would be true, but I just have not had a chance yet to add in every kind of feature to MoI yet.

Also I'm not sure that trying to export a "shaded" AI file out of MoI is going to fit very well with how MoI works - SketchUp is based on polygons and not on smooth surfaces, so it is kind of more clear in there how the shading works, each polygon makes one 2D polygon in the output.

MoI has smooth surfaces in it, like a sphere is not just a collection of polygons, it is an actual smooth sphere.

I guess I could do something like a conversion to polygons and then make little shaded polygons in the generated file.... I'd have to think some about that, it may be a bit strange to do that.

The main goal for improving AI export in the future is actually more on generating a hidden line drawing and not really on trying to make a shaded drawing though.

- Michael

Hi Diego, so in your SVG file you only had simple planar surfaces.

What kind of AI export would you then expect to get when exporting something like this instead:



Something like thousands of little tiny polygons or something?

Would each polygon be a single color or would you expect something like a kind of gradient fill on each one?

Then you would want the curve outlines as well? How would those be connected into the thousands of little polygons, I guess they would not be connected and instead the curves be separate objects on top or something like that?

I'm just not sure how feasible that is... Producing shaded output like that is kind of getting more into the area of a renderer rather than a modeler really.

Once you are talking about actually baking shading into the output, that's really rendering it seems.

- Michael

Hello Dee3,

If you want shaded models I still think it's a good idea to use MoI's AI export as opposed to just SketchUp. If you want to make an image of a model once and reuse that image to zoom in on detail it makes sense to use MoI, and use the PDF export function in Hybrid mode in Layout 7 to create that raster background. Here it is in pictures:

Step 1:
On the left we have a file exported from MoI to SU, then opened in layout and saved in PDF (Hybrid layout, raster background, vector lines), then imported into Corel. The background beige color and lines are separate entities. On the right we have the AI file exported from MoI.



Step 2:
Here is one area where MoI will be a lifesaver. As you see when zooming in on the SU file, the exported image curves are really made up of line segments. It is a ton of hand work to connect and smooth these lines and to do cleanup.



Step 3:
Here we see the export from MoI, no hidden line removal but true curves, no matter how much I zoom in, and extremely easy to close if I want to add solid colors or gradients.



Step 4:
The best of both worlds... use the raster layer from SU, Using the MoI AI export image, clean up the back lines to create the inside line vectors and the thick vector outline in ~3 minutes (a segment delete tool speeds this up tremendously), and auto center the 3 layers to create the rightmost image.



Step 5:
Scale as you like, or drop the SU raster layer and color and modify as you wish, or leave it be as shown here.



If you absolutely need background gradients you need SU in the workflow, If you're after line drawings and solid, simple gradient images you only need MoI and a vector graphics package. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the questions and voicing of interest. Please kindly refer to the PDF attached; there's some tests and results and a hint of an idea I hope is a possible approach.

I'm using SketchUp as a means to test the output; in all cases the vector-data is achieved via EPS then each sample is imported into Xara for composing and exporting it all in a single sheet (the PDF).

It seems to me a solution for a 2D vector-graphic that includes shaded output (like the EPS from SkecthUp, the PDF or SVG) has to combine some form of hybrid - vector plus raster data; the vector data defines and provides the borders of the colored and shaded areas or gradient fills.

I understand this is not 'magic' - "I wish for it and it's done!", but, at least it's a direction to look forward to; I do hope it helps in this regards.

Cheers,

. Diego .

Hi Diego,

> It seems to me a solution for a 2D vector-graphic that includes
> shaded output (like the EPS from SkecthUp, the PDF or SVG)
> has to combine some form of hybrid - vector plus raster data;

Yeah, it seems like producing a raster part for the shaded area would be more feasible than trying to make individual vector elements for the shaded portions.

But producing raster shaded output is definitely getting into the area of "rendering" and not just exporting geometry.

Currently MoI is not focused at all on producing rendered output directly, all of MoI's existing file import and export functions are vector object based only.

Producing rendered output would possibly involve a lot of additional things just like producing any full rendered image may need a bunch of additional controls in the UI to control how the rendering is produced.

I do want to include some basic rendering in MoI in the future, but currently that is just not a focus area - to produce a rendering right now it is intended that you export your objects to a rendering program which then has a lot of things in it which are specific to rendering.

So right now I'd say that this kind of shaded PDF result falls into that same kind of category - right now it's expected that you would use some rendering program to generate that bitmap data.

- Michael