I’ve seen around for a while a discussion about the things Blender should accomplish to make a step forward in the market. One of the points, if I recall well, was having a good illustrator or vector parser. That was more then true!.
I know, there’s a script to import the svg and ai files, trust me this script simply doesn’t work well. It’s always a pain, the paths are messy, sometimes they’re doubled or they overlap, and I export the vectors from Illustrator as clean as possible. Or you should try to import a vector and right after another one and you’ll see other weird things in the 3D Viewport.
This is an incredible gap and I really really hope that will be addressed in the 2.5.
No workarounds for this, we actually need a good importer.
Amen.
…
Also, what is the best vector image editor?
I’ve never had a problem importing paths from inkscape.
Is this really a major feature though? Not that I’m sure people can’t think of plenty of cool uses for it (I’ve done a tutorial on using inkscapes bitmap tracing feature to create curves from an image and import them into blender) but I mean in production terms does it actually come up that much?
we can now export UV maps as SVGs! woot!
hasn’t it been there for a while?
Yes, it’s very important.
A lot of times clients comes with their logos and 3D version of those logos is needed, among some other vector stuff that may be useful to simply extrude starting from a vector file. There are always 2 or 3 workarounds. Now, if I would sitting at home most probably I would go with some of those workarounds. But no way when you’ve got a crazy tight deadline and you’re fighting with overlapping paths, with strange behaviors (like when you import the AI or SVG from illustrator and one time it seems working the time right after absolutely not!), and the 3D step is just one of the steps you’ve to accomplish before the time is gone.
Today I’ve ended up to import the illustrator file in Cinema and export the obj to Blender. That’s not a good solution, I don’t have to switch to another 3D app just to import a vector file.
As for other graphic software, it’s something personal. From my personal point of view I use Adobe Illustrator, but I don’t like it. Someone still uses Freehand and as far I know they are more than satisfied with it. Inkscape looks really good to me, but unfortunately the screen refresh it’s pretty slow on windows. I don’t know about Xara, from what I’ve heard the users are enthusiast. If you’re on Linux probably you should go with Inkscape.
Aha. Fair enough.
Also, what is the best vector image editor?
Illustrator is I believe the most widely used by professionals. Inkscape has an ok feature set, but as phoenixart says it’s very slow to work in - many times I’ve actually ended up doing vector stuff in blender using curves instead!
Illustrator is standard in Germany at least. I don’t know anyone in one of the german C4D forums who uses the old Freehand instead. You have to save for Illustrator anyway.
Well for examply if you have the die cutting plan for a packaging and the client needs a visualisation of the packaing. How the single parts are put together, etc.
We can?!?! Holy crap we were trying (unsuccessfully) to do this last week using: Lightwave, Blender & Modo.
(sorry if it seems I’m hijacking this thread. :o)
I’m also in this camp. I’ve been using Illustrator for several years now and it’s my vector app of choice, but I can’t say that I like it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever used another program whose interface has so thoroughly and consistently disappointed me.
It’s the only software I use on a daily basis which I can still find the time to swear at.
Yes, Illustrator is widely used today. By the way you’ve to save in the old illustrator format even from Illustrator as well to import the file in Cinema.