Drop3D is a plug-in for Illustrator CS3 - CS5 that reads 3DM, IGS and oddly enough VRML 2 files, and converts to vector and/or raster format.
It's does a good job with curves, (not quite as good as Michael's AI export) but supports hidden line removal or hidden line as dashed line for
custom line isolation.

I did a quick video to demo workflow in action:

http://vimeo.com/34016658

Here's some screen caps of results:

Great!

Wow that looks really quite useful, particularly since they are able to read in the actual NURBS data from the 3DM file and work with that!

- Michael

This looks very interesting indeed, thanks for showing this!

I couldn't find any place to try it/download though...

Marc

Ooops, forgot the link, thanks Burr!

They have $50 off until the end of the year, $149 is still quite expensive for a hobbyist,
particularly at this time of year, but it is useful and will help me until Michael tunes up AI export
in Ver3.

I had some problems with Win 7 64 bit install at first, something odd with my OGL version
but they figured it out and now it's working well.

P.S. it's Windows only for now, sorry Macinoids :/

This looks great, thanks a lot for posting it.

"P.S. it's Windows only for now, sorry Macinoids :/"
I knew there's a catch :-(

"Windows only for now"
For now? Is there hope?

There's always hope!! :)

Use the power of Email, tell them and they may listen!! ;)

I'll do. Thanks.

The plugin was obviously developed by a Japanese company
http://www.griffinds.jp/products/index.html

Have they sold it to Hot Door? Strange to see two unrelated websites for this plugin.

Hot Door is the distributor.

Thanks Burr!

The demo is quite limited, there is no way to check the results of the operation in vectors, just a tiny preview. :-(

I found the idea of bringing a raster "render" and vector information stacked very interesting, I do this a lot..
But yeah 150$ is quite a chunk for this functionality, especially when you can't see the quality of the output.

I think I'll wait to have it in Moi!

Marc

Neat! I have AI as part of my Adobe suite but never used it (my learning curve is invested with Corel Draw).

Anyway, I assume one could play with line styles in AI and get a sketchy, cartoon style of illustration?

I'm curious - what is the plan for MoI with regards to AI? How would it differ from Drop3D?

Ed

Hi ed,

> I'm curious - what is the plan for MoI with regards to AI?

I am planning on working on a hidden-line export to AI format for v3.


> How would it differ from Drop3D?

I'm not sure of all the exact details yet.

- Michael

Hi Michael I would be very happy with an .ai export that gives me three Illustrator layers:

1 Bottom Layer with all the hidden lines

2 A middle layer with all the visible lines

3 A top layer with just an outline path.

Seperate layers would make it very easy to hide and to select and alter lines.
This would be a great improvement over the current solution and would allow to quickly get similar or better results than the Drop3D plugin.
I prefer positioning the object in Moi rather than in a plugin window.

This was my official MoI Christmas wish for 2011 :-)

Does this program attempt to shade your model with gradients like Swift3D?

>Does this program attempt to shade your model with gradients like Swift3D?<

No, gradient shading must be done manually.

Hello danperk,

Thanks for the great find and the video. Are curves represented with actual curves in this application export or are they segmented lines? Can you share any sort of quality issues you see with the exported AI? Thanks.

Hi OSTexo,

No they're segmented lines, that's why I said Michael's AI export is better. I use VectorScribe's excellent plugs to do cleanup in Illustrator.

I'll attach a vector PDF of some primitives you can examine, they show the range from Super Fine to Rough, I haven't used the Filter Options
which include Connect Paths and/or Remove Fine Paths.

In the past I've used Acrobat 9 Extended's 3D Reviewer and ViaCad Pro 7 to output line work and Drop3D is better IMHO.

HTH

Hello danperk,

Thanks for the sample, the super fine settings look pretty good. By the way the VectorScribe plugin info is very helpful, I have CS 5.5 and that plugin might make me use it more, although I can still move more efficiently in CDX5.

Your welcome. I checked later and Fine & Normal have the same anchor count, so I'll have to let them know.

I had CD up to Vers.5, but haven't used it since, guess it's what you get used to. Illustrator is pretty
fluid if you learn the keyboard shortcuts.