PoTrace

[James Lehman]

ok if that is set to 6.00 and i "h,k" my art, am i OK?

Nope. That setting is just for rendering arcs from abstract ideas like circle, arc, ellipse, elliptical arc, etc.

What you are looking for is

[Tab] system settings
option '1' insignificant angle in degrees.

If the simple angle found in the span of three points (of the same color) is less than or equal to the "insignificant angle in degrees" then the center point of the three is removed.

This is how LaserBoy reduces a string of vertices (all on the same line) down to a single vector.

This is a tricky thing. It can really eff things up!

Have fun!

I should rework the code for this too! It should go forward, backward, every other, every other backward and compare for best results. Or something.

James.

[absolom7691]

Is this proggy free?

[keeperx]

yes.. potrace is what it is called.. it traces bitmaps.. so convert whatever into a bitmap and then trace it to an EPS, then i import the EPS into corel draw and export it to DXF, then open it in laserboy to mess with it.. FYI james, i think potrace is open source

[absolom7691]

Thanks! I wonder if Illustrator will open EPS files as I don't have corel. Oh well, I can play around with it.

[keeperx]

Thanks! I wonder if Illustrator will open EPS files as I don't have corel. Oh well, I can play around with it.

adobe says, YES WE CAN ! !

[absolom7691]

SWEET!!! I will have to try this out! Thanks for the recommendation.

[James Lehman]

If you like to draw vector with a mouse, I highly recommend

http://deltacad.com

Make your screen background black, use all the colors you want. Save it as DXF. Open it in LaserBoy.

POINT
LINE
POLYLINE
LWPOLYLINE
CIRCLE
ARC
ELLIPSE
TEXT

Enjoy!

PS Stay away from those freakin' SPLINES !

James.

[drlava]

Good suggestion to check out!
I have a strong feeling that laserboy will eventually support EPS in the not-so-near future. In the mean time, there must be a free/cheap program to convert eps to dxf?

You want your point count at 1500 or preferably below for smooth animation at 30kpps, when you reach 2000 points in a frame, you're down to 15 frames/sec which IMO has some annoying flicker.