When I do a drawing in Inkscape it imports perfectly into Blender. However, I would prefer to do my drawings in Photoshop and convert to .svg in Inkscape. The simplest method is to export from PS as .pdf, but when I import the .svg, all I get is a holder with the file name, but no drawing.
There is clearly some step in Inkscape that I’m missing - tried everything I can think of an searched the net, but no luck.
Inkscape is able to import ai format from 8.0 and bellow.
In photoshop, did you stroke the path before you saved as pdf? And or when importing pdf set embed images?
@ skuax - I/m using PS CS6 - don’t knowwhat version of ai it exports, but obviously not one that is compatible with Inkscape - I simply get a message that it failed to open.
@RSEhlers - I have tried stroking and not stroking, and embedding as well as disabling embedding, makes no difference, the pdf’s import into Inkscape just fine, but the export is problematic.
Thank you both for responding{)
This may be a silly question but are your drawings in photoshop still vector-based? If they’re raster drawings, then that’s a whole different thing which will need to be converted with extra steps.
I’m quite new at vectors, so can’t reply with absolute certainty. I have done exports from PS with just a path, a filled path and an empty stroked path and in every case they were still showing as paths in PS at the time of export. As far as I understand it, this means they were still vector-based.
Since posting i have had success in converting a simple pfd by tracing bitmap in Inkscape, deleting the original and exporting as svg. I’ll have to see how this works out with a more complex drawing.
I “export paths to Illustrator” which saves .ai files. You’re right, I’m not sure what version of .ai this is, but most software rejects it. It’s not the most recent version that’s for sure, because recent Illustrator files are actually pdfs. You can just change the .ai to .pdf and they open as pdf, but not these. I thought they were a very old version, like 1 or something. I opened one in Notepad and found this,
%!PS-Adobe-2.0
%%Creator: Adobe Photoshop™ Pen Path Export 7.0
%%Title: (labels copy.ai)
%%DocumentNeededResources: procset Adobe_packedarray 2.0 0
%%+ procset Adobe_IllustratorA_AI3 1.0
So, anyway, I found this website that will convert them to SVG for you for free. It worked for me.
Hope that helps.
P.S.: if you’re saving a PDF out of Photoshop, it may not be a vector file. PDF files can be only images with no vectors. I can’t rightly remember offhand, but I think there are settings to save the vectors too if you have them.
Thank you - that is very helpful:)
I’ve also discovered a method of installing Ghostscript which allows Inkscape to use eps files. Haven’t tried it yet; still need to wrap my head around the quite complicated installation.
Also discovered a Blender plugin, Add Curve: Extra Objects which looks to be good enough to replace arm-wrestling the hairy worm! If this works out as expected, I’ll just do the drawing right here in Blender.
Really? Surprising: there’s even 3d capabilities inside PDF, so I’m a bit shocked.
Yes, PDF, portable document format, was developed as something everyone could open and read, even if they didn’t have the specific software that was used to create it. There was no intention of use in 3D software. In the beginning, it was mostly used for word processing documents and desktop publishing, so it had support for images and text as well as vector art. Later on, Adobe decided to make Illustrator’s file format compatible with PDF, so .ai files are basically PDFs.
That’s why I’m surprised it can’t display vector images… which seems to be incorrect:
Google “can pdf files contain vector images” and there are plenty of hits saying PDFs do display vector images.
Only skimmed above, but Affinity Designer is my wingman with much of my vector stuff these days (has all but replaced AI), and its SVG import/export is second to none. Every SVG I’ve imported into Blender from Designer has been perfect. I do a fair amount of tracing bitmaps in Inkscape (which it rocks at) and copy/pasting into Designer, where I tweak and export my SVGs. I’m sure Designer will eventually have excellent tracing in the near future. For now, Inkscape and Designer go hand-in-glove. I have not tried the new Inkscape 1.0 yet. Oh, and Designer (and Photo) is still 1/2 off at $25. That is a deal friends!
Oh, you misunderstood me. Yes, they can certainly contain vectors, but they don’t necessarily have to. There can be PDFs that only contain images, which aren’t vectors. The file format doesn’t automatically mean that it’s a vector file. It could be, but you don’t know unless you look at it closely. I frequently request vector PDFs from clients only to find they’ve sent me a bitmap image wrapped in a PDF document, which is of course useless, and most times, I know the art was created in a vector format, which is frustrating.
Gotcha.
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