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From Adobe Illustrator to Blender

8

Robert Rioux writes:

Let's see how we can make a clean topology logo in Blender from an Adobe Illustrator file.

About the Author

Robert Rioux

I've been working in the VFX film industry for 25 years now. I've been using Maya since 1995 but with the release of Blender 2.80, I made the switch and I'm now fully committed to Blender! You can see the projects I worked on on IMDB. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0727947/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

8 Comments

  1. A few helpful things regarding Illustrator to Blender.

    Make your logo at the size you want it to be in Blender, if possible, or at some sensible scale - 10% for example, then scale to 125% and position the graphic at 0,0 on a page - page size doesn't matter.

    Save as .svg.

    When you bring it into Blender it will be at the correct size. Do the extruding as a curve, convert to mesh from there.

    Go to edit mode and select everything and remove doubles.

    These steps will save you a lot of time.

  2. With regard to scaling your artwork, the required scaling factor is 4/3, or 1.333. This is because Illustrator is so old-fashioned it has 72ppi hardcoded into its DNA forever, whereas the SVG standard is 96ppi. For this reason, to get correct scaling you need to select all, scale by 1.333 (i.e. 96/72), then save as SVG. This issue is unlikely to ever change, as Adobe does no development anymore and has assigned everyone to counting money.
    Inkscape is another excellent free program, specifically designed to support the SVG standard, and works to the correct 96 ppi standard. If you must use Illustrator, bring the exported SVG into Inkscape and save as "Plain SVG" for the cleanest possible file.

    • I’ve put together 4 project proposals using 125% this week.

      Came into Blender bang on correct size.

  3. How interesting - that indicates Blender assumes 90ppi scaling. As a Technical Writer, I have to export many AI files to SVG for use in other modern DTP software, which all work using the SVG standard of 96 ppi. I even have a script to upscale my entire AI drawing by 1.333x and then resize the artboard to fit just before saving as SVG. The SVGs then fit perfectly into documents at the correct size. I had a discussion about this issue with an Adobe developer a long time ago, and he seemed receptive to making the required update to bring Illustrator's wrongly scaled SVG output into the modern world... but of course it has never been fixed.

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