johnharley Posted October 8, 2002 Share Posted October 8, 2002 Is there a way I can bring a raster image into Vectorworks (or Renderworks)so the background is transparent? I would like to be able to layout blocks of color behind the image with the line-work on top. Just started using VW 10. Quote Link to comment
TiTaNiuM sAMuRai Posted October 8, 2002 Share Posted October 8, 2002 Set the attrib to 'no fill'. Display should be fine, but printing to a PostScript device won't work that way, though. Quote Link to comment
johnharley Posted October 9, 2002 Author Share Posted October 9, 2002 Thanks TS this worked beautifully. I was able to do exactly what I was looking for. Do you have any tips for working with large raster images. These are tiff files that are 30"x42" (at 100%) that were done at 300 dpi. So they are pretty hefty. I have a 2.0 ghz dell, with 512 mb of ram and a 64 mb video card - but I still experience some delay when move around on the drawing. Quote Link to comment
Guest Posted October 9, 2002 Share Posted October 9, 2002 A PNG image file is alot smaller in size and still gives you good quality images. This will keep the delay down also. Just about any image program supports this file type. Tiff and BMP images are large in size before importing them into VW. After they've been imported in VW, the size of the VW file gets huge in most cases. Using a more compressed image type such as PNG, will keep the file size down tremendously. Quote Link to comment
C. Deel Posted February 28, 2003 Share Posted February 28, 2003 Actually, I just prepared two docuements with the exact same image (one image saved in TIFF (LZW compressed) format, and the other with the same image in PNG format). The PNG file was a little smaller before importing, but after importing to VW, the files were the exact same size. I suppose this is because VW stores the images in a completely uncompressed form, so the superior compression of PNG doesn't help after import. Unless I've missed some setting, there is no way to compress bitmap graphics in VW. So it doesn't really matter what image format we use; it seems the only options are to use vector graphics formats (i.e. vector PICT) or deal with massive file sizes. Quote Link to comment
Matthew Giampapa Posted March 1, 2003 Share Posted March 1, 2003 Yes C. Deel, you hit the nail on the head. I try to stick with EPS files (without the preview) if I really need to keep file sizes down. Otherwise I just save to a compressed directory on Windows 2000. I think with all the new image based features introduced in VW 10 (Better texturing, 2D Image fills, Prop Objects and RenderWorks Backgrounds) that better built compression is probably in the works for a future version. Quote Link to comment
Guest Posted March 3, 2003 Share Posted March 3, 2003 Images become bitmaps once imported into VW. If you look in the OIP, the object type is Bitmap. This is why images are the same size when imported into VW with different image types, but alter when exported. Quote Link to comment
johnharley Posted March 4, 2003 Author Share Posted March 4, 2003 Thanks Katie, that does explain quite a bit. I agree with Matthew, I would hope ways of compressing the images are on the horizon. I use alot of images in 2d rendering. I consider it one of VW's strong points. I would like to see greater image compression in the file and also, faster processing of the overall file for plotting. Quote Link to comment
Guest Posted March 4, 2003 Share Posted March 4, 2003 I will add it to the wish list. Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.