Publish to PDF - Black background to VP Renderings

[Grethe Connerth]

Dear VW lovers and VW nutties,

 

there is a reoccurring problem with Publish to PDF and I can’t find out why it happens and how to fix it.

 

I Publish to PDF resulting with the VP renderings being fine. But at times the file size is too large to email. 

So in order to reduce the file size I chose all pages in the 'Publish' window and select “Publish to PDF - Options” with for example Export Settings - Resolution changed from 300 dpi to 200 dpi. 

 

That usually that works fine and the main thing is that the VP renderings still have a good quality / resolution.

 

... now here is the problem ...

---> ever so often all rendered Viewports have a black background once the PDF is created out of VW - this happens when I changed the dpi within the Publish Options Settings. See screenshots attached.

 

I know I could reduce the dpi on each sheet layer, but in general this will result in lower res renderings which at times I can't sent to my clients.

 

Also if I publish as usual with no changes to the DPI settings and then alternatively reduce the file size within Adobe Acrobat “Save as Other —> Reduced Size PDF” then there is no possibility to set the DPI rate and the VP renderings lose a lot of their quality.  Plus it is a 2-step process which I'd like to avoid.

 

But why is this black background happening and how can this be prevented?

Has anybody else have had this problem?

 

Cheers,

Grethe

 

 

 

[Kevin McAllister]

Usually when you end up with black viewports its because Cinerender crashes. Do all the viewports re-render when you publish? (I think they probably do if you're setting the DPI lower for the PDF export than its set for the sheet layer DPI). I have the most trouble with Cinerender crashing whenever lots of viewports try and render at the same time. The crashes are caused by Cinerender running out of memory.

 

The workaround is to lower the sheet layer DPI instead and render the viewports individually so they are up-to-date when you publish.

 

Kevin

[PVA - Admin]

First, yes restart Vectorworks completely in case the black background is Cinerender becoming stuck as suggested above.

 

Disable the Downsample Raster Images setting entirely. Leave the regular Resolution DPI at 300, then try the export again, tell me if there is a change or not. (If you already have your viewports and any worksheets updated, you can uncheck the three boxes at the bottom to save time in some cases.)

[Grethe Connerth]

Hi Kevin, Hi JimW,

 

thank you for your fast replies.

 

Yes there is are multiple VPs in this presentation and they all turn out black when I down-sample the DPI in the export settings.

 

I always update all VP renderings before I publish, it’s just a step to double check the final results again prior. But I don’t know if a re-render happens in the background of the program itself when Publishing with lower DPI settings.

 

So I tested your suggestions:

... publishing pages individually works, but as you can imagine it’s an additional step then putting all pages into a presentation booklet together again, ... plus it does not help reducing the overall PDF file size ...

… reducing the DPI for the sheet layers with VPs renderings only --> that certainly does the trick, however the resolution suffers a tat, so I may have to tweak and do a few test runs which DPI setting in combo with Publishing in order to get then best results in quality as well as a smaller file sizes for the final PDF file ...

 

- disabling the Downsample Raster Images setting entirely

- leaving the regular Resolution DPI at 300

- uncheck the three boxes at the bottom

 

This was an interesting one. All VP renderings are clear of black BG !!! Yeah !!!

So everything you both suggested already helped a lot, especially to get rid of the black BG so I am very happy.

 

Now the final one to conquer ... the PDF file size is still at 27MB and the booklet has currently only 6 pages in total with 2 sheet layers having multiple VP renderings. 

 

... but I just learned that I actually CAN change the Settings in Adobe Acrobat for reducing the file size - but need to chose a different section of the program ...

 

So instead of choosing "Save as Other —> Reduced Size PDF” the choice should be "Save as Other —> Optimised PDF”. Here you can change DPI and much more. 

Plus these settings can be saved as a template and re-used for future PDF file reductions.

 

---> ... overall a combo of all the above worked and resulted in a PDF file size that is now only at 4MB ... AND at the same time the resolution of the VP renderings is very acceptable ... all in all you boys saved me many huge headaches and time consuming tests on future works ... 

 

Happy Happy Happy!

 

Sending lots of appreciation from Melbourne in OZ !!!

Grethe

[Kevin McAllister]

I'm glad to hear you had some success!

 

17 minutes ago, Grethe Connerth said:

... publishing pages individually works, but as you can imagine it’s an additional step then putting all pages into a presentation booklet together again, ... plus it does not help reducing the overall PDF file size

 

You shouldn't have to output the pages individually. If all of the viewports are up-to-date before using the Publish command then there should be no issue publishing all of the pages at once. Its only updating the viewports that needs to happen individually or in small groups. The black viewports tend to happen when VW tries to render many/all of them at once.

 

Kevin

 

 

[Grethe Connerth]

Hi Kevin,

thank you !!!

I agree, individual outputs are just time consuming and annoying.

 

Overall it's all resolved with great results - with a limitation to the amount of works, resulting in good quality renderings in PDF and still having a reasonable PDF file size.

 

In regards to Publishing renderings, I'll keep an eye on it and also ensure not to have any outdated VPs outside the print area.

Maybe I'll need to purge my files every once in a while also.

 

Cheers,

Grethe