>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.

Hi Martin,

> 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.

Does the folder happen to be the Temp folder?

Do you get different behavior if you use File > Open inside of Illustrator to open the file rather than double clicking the file itself?


> I also can't place the .png file into Illustrator.

That's also kind of strange, I just tested placing the png over here in CS2 and it works ok for me. Somehow a system specific issue in Illustrator?


- Michael

Hi Michael,

>Does the folder happen to be the Temp folder?

No they're in a folder called outline test on the desktop. Isn't the temp folder a Windows thing? Never saw one.

>Do you get different behavior if you use File > Open inside of Illustrator to open the file rather than double clicking the file itself?

Tried everything. My Illustrator CS3 doesn't like the large PNG file. Although dragging the .png file into Illustrator worked but it came in way too large. We need another one with CS3 for testing.

Hi Michael,

Some feedback, concerning the AI file:

Illustrator CS2 (win7) and CC (Mac OSX 10.8.5): Working nicely. Got 3 layers, stacked in proper order, easily selectable. Can place/import the PNG file. Fantastic!

Illustrator CS4 (Mac OS X 10.8.5): Not working, at all: says it get an error and do nothing, it just ignore it. Also can't place or import the PNG file into. In my personnel case its not important 'cause we don´t use CS4 anymore. Maybe it affect some other user. Its better to let you know. Or maybe its something on my end, don't know.

Concerning the PDF file: It works, in every of the above setups, but don't have layers as it make hard to select. From my experience i got several no layered PDF files from others, but i think its a case of not tick on 'Perserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities' when saving as PDF, otherwise it export with layers.

Concerning the PNG file/render image:

Photoshop CS2 (win7) and CS4 and CC (both Mac OSX 10.8.5): Working nicely, its in 1 layer with transparentcy, but no AntiAliasing, so it's stepped/jagged on the outline.

The AA issue can be solved with a slight Blur Filter in Photoshop. Its a pretty big image, which is good for print work.

Overall, well done. Thanks.

One question concerning the rendered image: Looks the material main color is a Grey. It will be possible to pick 1 different color on export? It could help on the readbility. Anyway i could do it in Photoshop.

Carlos

Thanks for all the feedback Carlos!

> From my experience i got several no layered PDF files from others, but i think its a case
> of not tick on 'Perserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities' when saving as PDF, otherwise it
> export with layers.

That "Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities" thing makes Illustrator save a big chunk of private undocumented information in the PDF file that contains illustrator specific data. Illustrator uses that method for making layers come in through PDFs but it only works for PDFs saved by Illustrator itself, not from any other method of PDF file generation.

Since that Illustrator specific data is not documented there isn't really any way for a separate program (like MoI for example) to get layers into Illustrator by PDF import only since Illustrator does not read them in from the regular PDF data.

But it does read them in from the AI v8 format, so that's the format you'll want to use for the transfer if you want layers to come over.


That's pretty weird that CS4 does not work. That's good to know though.


> One question concerning the rendered image: Looks the material main color is a Grey.

It just happened to be in this case since all the objects were using the default style. The shaded colors will come from the style assignment and look the same as they do in the regular MoI viewport display.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> The shaded colors will come from the style assignment

That is is great, it will be very helpfull to have different colors on different parts, visually communicating some functions or how something have to be constructed.

Its great to comunicate with others.

Thanks.

Carlos

Hi Michael, the AI file works great in Illustrator CS6 64bit.
The bitmap doesn't import in Xara but I don't care since it works so well with a layered PDF.

Maybe adding a bitmap option in the export dialog would be nice?
Those who don't know the viewport export scripts or can't work with PDF might find it handy.

On the other hand the export dropdown list will start to be crowded.
Some programs have 75 choice in the dropdown, having to search each time for the right one is somewhat annoying.
An idea would be to separate export types; Solids, Polygonal, 2d.

Marc