I just stumbled across Blender by accident, and I must say I’m quite impressed with it. I’ve used Adobe Illustrator 11, but for 3D objects it’s a joke. I knew there had to be something better out there!
However, I am on Mac OS X, and I do technical illustrations for books, so I am wondering if Blender can output images in vector PDF format instead of JPEG bitmaps? True, unflattened vector CMYK PDFs are what the publishers want.
If Blender can’t do this, or if it can only convert a JPEG bitmap into a PDF formatted file, then I might have to go the Maya route – which I really hesitate to do, as the learning curve is steep, and so is the cash outlay! :o
sorry, i have to disappoint you - no vector output (yet) for blender - except an experimental flash output-script, which probably won’t suit your needs. rendering high-res for printing is not an option for you?
instead of maya, you could use blender together with the standalone of swift 3D - it’s some 199$, scheduled for release middle october (infor on website). you don’t have the tight integration as in maya, but for stills it should work perfectly.
let’s see what blender offers in a year - maybe the integrated vector renderer will be there, too.
marin wrote: rendering high-res for printing is not an option for you?
Unfortunately, the publishers need “infinitely scalable” images. In this way, they can, at their choice, select the same image for a postage stamp rendition or for a movie-poster sized ad, without loss of resolution. Rendering each image at very high resolutions would make each prohibitively large and difficult to deal with – even if I could convince them to use them.
I just thought that Blender likely already did things internally vector-wise, and that it might not be much of a stretch to provide PDF output. Hopefully in the future!
yeayea, i know those arguments abt. vector graphics. i do a lot of DTP myself, and one thing that i always know is the final size of the image. i never need “infinte scalability”, unless i have no clue what i’m supposed to do.
however you’re right abt the file-sizes, dealing with 20 - 30MB+ files is a pain if you need to swap files via mail.