Illustrate's Improving Flash Output

By Michael Hurwicz January 1, 2002 Digimation's Illustrate! 5.2 is an amazingly flexible and sophisticated cartooning plug-in for discreet's 3ds max. It is on a par with 3ds max itself when it comes to giving the artist a range of options for customizing output, and that is saying a lot. It lets you put those little touches on your work that can make all the difference between "just-right" and "ho-hum." Flash (SWF) output, however, has never been one of Illustrate's strong points. Issues included: Artifacts Large SWF files Lack of shading capability Slow rendering speed Tweaking sometimes required to render intersecting geometry properly (For some examples of these problems, take a look at my review from November 2000). Despite Illustrate's admirable overall capabilities, it has been something I use for Flash output only when only when I can't get the effect I need any other way. In testing Illustrate 5.2 with 3ds max 4.2, I found: . Although I didn't do precise speed tests, rendering speed seems to be similar to other 3ds max-to-vector renderers like Vecta 3D and Swift 3D The intersecting geometry issue seems to be solved, too, although I did have one situation in which a particular line didn't show up, which could have been a remnant of the intersecting geometry problem. Illustrate now supports shading. Unfortunately, it cannot render smooth, rounded shapes with shading; smooth curves are approximated with straight lines. SWF files are still sometimes too large, but sometimes they're downright tiny. I encountered some artifacts. Illustrate is a great tool for raster output, such as PNG or AVI files. All in all, Illustrate is still not a good general-purpose tool for creating Flash output. However, it has improved significantly on the Flash front. I am looking forward to the day when I can use Illustrate to output to Flash and count on seeing something more or less resembling what I see in 3ds max, within the expected limits of vector output (e.g. bitmap textures get left behind ). There are too many unexpected problems and rough spots for me to use Illustrate for Flash output on a day-to-day basis. Still, I may try it occasionally for certain effects, when I am dealing with geometry that can be accurately rendered using only straight lines (e.g. boxes, pyramids, geospheres ). For instance, I don't know of any other Flash plug-in for 3ds max that could have produced this series of boxes, created using different options within Illustrate. No 3ds max setting were changed. All of them are either 1KB or 2KB! Nothing special (1KB): Dotted lines (2KB): Dashed lines with see-through effect (2KB): However, note the missing line on the orange box. A remnant of the intersection problem? Solid lines, see-through (1KB): Again, a line is missing on the orange box. Thicker lines (1KB): Green lines (1KB): Green dotted lines (1KB): Here are some examples of problems I encountered. First, for comparison, a raster graphic of three primitive shapes, created using 3ds max 4.2. Above, the graphic as a PNG (196KB), for comparison. Here's how Illustrate 5.2 rendered the same image: A SWF (6KB) created using the Illustrate 5.2 plug-in for 3ds max. Note that rounded shapes have been approximated with straight line segments. You can turn off shading, eliminating the line segments, but also eliminating any sense of 3D shading. Compare that to this version of the same scene, created using Electric Rain's Swift3D v2.0: The 1KB SWF above was rendered by the Swift 3D plug-in for 3ds max 4.2, using "area" shading, an intermediate quality setting that gives a less accurate rendering of the geometry, but still with some sense of shading and an extremely small file size. Illustrate's reliance on straight lines also explains the comparatively large files it often produces. The more curved faces the original 3ds max geometry has, the more straight-line segments Illustrate produces. One 60-frame animation of two bouncing balls came out about ten times bigger with Illustrate (479KB) than with Swift3D (47KB). By bringing the Illustrate version into the Flash authoring environment and exporting again, I was able to reduce the size to 295KB. (I also eliminated one frame with an artifact and several blank frames.) Here's the Swift3D version: Above: 60-frame Flash animation, Swift3D 2.0, 47KB. And here's the 295KB Illustrate version: Above: 60-frame Flash animation, Illustrate 5.2, 295KB. To sum up: A superlative product in the 3ds max environment. Overall, not ready for prime time when it comes to Flash output, but still with many interesting and unique capabilities. Digimation Web Site Macintosh System Requirements N/A Windows System Requirements For Illustrate! 5.2, you need 3ds max 4.2 Estimated Street Price $395.00 (US) suggested retail Copyright 2002 Michael Hurwicz, All Rights Reserved