Toon Boom to Illustrator

Hello,

I am using Animate Pro 2, and I need to export one image in any vector file for opening in Adobe Illustrator. I have been using Toon Boom for years, and this has always been an issue to me. Does any one know a way better than exporting an SWF format (which will spoil line quality and won’t understand effects, such as Tone and Highlight)?

Thanks in advance,

No way to export vectors to illustrator (SWF format can´t be opened or imported here). Only renderized images can be exported. These are the export formats that Animate Pro 2 can done: QuickTime movie, SWF movie, FLV movie, OpenGL frames, Image secuence including “with transparency” option as PNG4 or PSD. Others optional image formats are in the write module properties. Regards.

Yoryo

I have been a TB user for a long time, and it’s always been my first choice in terms of workflow. There is no other software I enjoy most drawing and animating.

However, I think it’s a very very very big fail of development it does not offer exporting neither to EPS nor to AI. As the software is mainly projected to attend to the entertainment industry, many intelectual properties are drawn with the Toon Boom tools.

It’s really an absurd I am not able to export a decent vector format (since SWF has several limitations) if I want to provide high quality vector images for licensing publishers, as licensing is one of the business cores. I have to print a 2m high banner, and there is no way I can export in any of the Bitmap formats an image with such size, once it takes a lot of memory and the software crashes. And when it comes to export a single vector image, we get into all these limitations.

I have found a solution, though, which is more like a cheat. The image I was trying to export had Tone and Highlight effects, so I had to disable the effects. As the final output needed to have the Tone and Highlight look, I adapted the drawing with colors and shapes to keep the same aspect/look. Then I exported in SWF. Then I imported in Adobe Flash. For some reason, when you export something in TB in SWF, sometimes the SWF messes with the line quality, so I had to fix some of the shapes in Flash. As Flash doesn’t export Illustrator images either (wtf?), I exported the frame in an image file format named FXG (Adobe FXG is the proper name), which is a vector alternative format Illustrator recognizes. Then I opened the image in Illustrator and saved as AI. Ouch, it’s very lame, but it works.

If Juho or any of the other developers are reading this, and if it helps Toon Boom to improve the quality of their products, here is my feedback:

The softwares are great, but I find it is very necessary for users to have vector filmes exported from Toon Boom in a format other than SWF. I really suggest implementing a funcionality of exporting in EPS or AI.

I think at the very least it should export (and import!) SVG files, for which many different vector apps have support (AI, Inkscape, etc).

Yes, it would be desirable that this very important software could share your vector graphics with the rest of the software market leaders (Adobe Illustrator, Corel Graphics, Xara as example). What think Toon Boom developers, on this issue?

Thank you Lilly for the quick answer. I made a .PDF export test with my Studio 5, that has this capability, but when I opened the .PDF in illustrator, vectors were broken or distorted compared to the original vectors in Studio 5. I don´t know the .PDF result with Harmony, but I think in this case must be very good result. I make you a “crazy” question: is not possible write a new script for Animate Pro 2 for add a .PDF export capability? (without effects, of course). Thanks again Lilly.

Yoryo

We have added the export to PDF to Harmony. The only thing is, when it comes to effects, we handle effects differently than other packages. We always try to export as much as we can, but if other packages or file formats don’t support that type of effect, there’s not much that can be done.

~Lilly