VectorStyle

xenopticon

I'm curious to know whether VectorStyle is still a viable add-on for Carrara.

Does anyone use it?

When was the last update?

How well does it work?

Does it work with Carrara 8.5?

Anybody got renders to share?

Any feedback at all greatly appreciated.

Thanks--

Xenopticon
 

wgdjohn

Xenopticon,  I bought it but just recently... haven't yet tried it. I'll let you know when/if I do.

wgdjohn

Ok... I have just tried using it to export an object.  Unfortunatly it requires a serial number... I've tried various ways to enter it without luck so far. I've opened a Help Request ticket in hopes of getting it to open so I can give it a try.  I'll know something by Monday or Tuesday I hope. Perhaps someone else has had better luck than I have tonight.

John

Diomede

@wgdjohn - if you go to the store page and make sure you are logged in, go to your account (icon in upper right next to your cart) there is a tab to see all of the serial numbers for products you own that require them.

I can't comment on Vector Style because I don' own it.  Sorry.  But I'd like to know more about it.

xenopticon

Thanks for the fast responses, wgdjohn & diomede! I'll be interested in the results.

I'm particularly interested in knowing more about the type of render shown in the bottom right corner of the promo image--the one with the reflections, etc. I'd specifically like to know whether these are sufficiently well-organized renders to send to a commercial printer or not. That is, are the shapes layered in a reasonably comprehensible and consistent way? Or are there a bazillion tiny, ragged, oddly-overlapping, inconsistently-layered shapes?

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, in Illustrator, try auto-tracing a reasonably complex, bitmap image, containing a fair number of continuous tones and small highlights or patterns. You'll see that colors are not trimmed precisely to the right shape to abut each other, and if you try to gather all of the shapes that are close in color onto a single layer, the shapes change, because they were initially relying on higher-layer shapes to occlude them, rather than being shaped correctly, themselves. Commercial printing houses hate getting such files!)

Anyway, thanks again for the timely responses. I look forward to learning more!

X.

wgdjohn

I'm curious what are you using to gather the shapes with? Illustrator, Photoshop or other.

That pic looks a bit like some Toon renders I've seen Carrara 8.5 Pro make.

3drendero

Some more info here:

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/9974/vectorstyle-2-for-carrara

 

cdordoni

Xenopticon, The last update for Vectorstyle2 was in 2010, version 2.0.2.231. It does work in Carrara 8.5.

I made some examples which I cannot attch here since the file type is not allowed. I'll message you about how I can get the files to you. I could not get reflections to show in the area gradient example. The file was unreadable ... not sure if this is an Illustrator or Vectorstyle issue.

I saved the examples as SVG (with one exception), since the area gradient is not available as an option with EPS, AI and SWF. Also, I could not get any readable file in AI format but I did create one for you to test with your illustrator version. Since I believe I have used AI from vectorstyle previously, I think it is an Illustrator issue.

As for how well it works, thats harder to say. You would really need to use it for yourself since it sounds like there might be some specific issues that the product description or my quick examples do not address.

I can tell you that complex objects really slow it down, so at some point you might be wondering if it crashed. There is a % bar that shows when its exporting but sometimes that stops for a while, although it may still finish exporting if you wait long enough.

wgdjohn

Thanks diomede,  I'd tried that yesterday with no luck.  Today was a different story... it allowed cut and paste of serial number.

Below in first a pic of a simple cube exported from Illustrator and imported into Pagestream... I broke it apart and messed around draging it's lines around which explains it's strange look.

In the 2nd pic is the box before saving the box as an older version of Illustrator.

Simply put... it works... it works!