#Help: Bitmap import 3DS
7 messages in this thread
Can anyone help ? We have been scanning logos and manipulating them for some
time as bitmaps. We now need to find a way to import these bitmaps, or trace
versions of them, into the 2D shaper in 3DS.
There doesn't seem to be a Autodesk answer to this problem, is there any
software out there that will create a vector from a bitmap file ??
Regards,
Andrew Candler
Director – The Creative Engine.
Andrew,
I haven't seen it in a while, but Corel had a product called CorelTrace that
traced raster images and saved them as .CDR(CorelDRAW!) files which you could
then export as .DXF's. It's probably still part of their CorelDRAW! suite which
I believe is on version 5 or 6 right now. You can get it for around $300 to
$400.
Jh
BTW-These programs(especially CorelDRAW!) create an enormous amount of vertices
that can exceed 3DS's upper limit of 10000.
Thanks for your help – you were very prompt!
Andrew:
Jeremy offered the answer I use for creating vector format .dxf files from a
scanned logo, CorelTrace. For clarification the process involves using one of
the trace algorithms which will give you a file which you would then save as an
eps file. To get to .dxf you must import the .eps file into CorelDraw and save
as a .dxf file. Along the way you can set parameters on how precise the
vectorization will be so you may be able to avoid problems with 3DS and vertice
count. I've not run into any problem so far with too many vertices but I can
image that one could hit the wall.
The best results I get are a result of converting the logo to a black and white
tif file before tracing.
Having said all of that you can do what you want to do without leaving 3DS but
it does require manually tracing over the bitmap which you set as a background
for use in the shaper. The manuals cover this but I figured you were after
some
'autotrace' method, right?
Bob
Thanls for your response too, I will get straight onto it!
Andrew,
The others are right about using Corel Trace, this part of the Corel Draw!
Bundel first reared its head in v3,0 and is still with it, you can reduce the
vertices problem if after you tace the Bitmap you use the Node edit function
under corel draw to join all the relavent verticies together, the main problem
with trace is that it doesn't like to connect verticies where they change
direction using the above method can reduce the number of verices from hundreds
to tens, good luck
David
Got the idea, it is working fine now !