Drawing a mask using illustrator full screen

HenryForma

Hello,

Is there a way to use adobe illustrator inside millumin to draw a full screen mask for videomapping like with after effects plugin for millumin?

I need to draw a complex vector mask (with round corners and bezier curves) for videomapping. I can easily do it in AE using the millumin plugin, but it seems I cannot export AE to Illustrator for further animation production needs.

Opening Illustrator in full screen mode does not work for me either as Illustrator is not really full screen like in photoshop (leaves scroll bars at the bottom) which offsets the mask after putting it back to millumin with unpredictable amount of pixels depending on the mask resolution.

I tried a workaround by drawing with SURFACES option in Millumin and exporting it to SVG and further converting it in illustrator - but the limitation is that surfaces do not provide round shapes or bezier curves which I need for my specific projection area.

Any thoughts?

Kind Regards

antoineM

Hello @HenryForma, 

In Millumin, you can create a mask in a layer and export it as SVG, then open it into Illustrator. 

See the attached screenshot. 

Hope this helps. 

Regards 

-- 

AntoineM*

HenryForma

Dear @antoineM

Thank You for Your message. It does help a bit with some limitations.

The MASK feature in Millumin does have circle shapes which makes it possible to mark round surfaces on the building.

However the shapes drawn in mask do not have colors which makes a multi layering shape drawing a bit difficult on a complex building. But also the MASK in Millumin adds a 3 point stroke upon exporting it to SVG and importing to Illustrator... while SURFACES does not add a stroke when exporting to SVG ...

SURFACES work OK but they don't have the possibility to draw complex or round shapes. a possibility to draw ROUND shapes in SURFACES or even better a PEN VECTOR tool with bezier curves would be a killer helpful feature for videomapping - are there plans for introducing this functionality?

Alternatively a plugin which would allow a real full screen feed from ILLUSTRATOR to Millumin (without the scroll bars ILLUSTRATOR has while in full screen) would also be great...

Or perhaps there is some other option that does not come to my mind...?

Thank You and Best Regards

Millumin

Hello @HenryForma,

Antoine being in holidays, I'll reply.

First of all surfaces and masks have very different purposes :

- surfaces are "mapping presets" (mapping means perspective correction with 4 corners, no more, no less)

- masks are free shapes that hide (or show) pixels on an image

From what I understand, you want to use the "masks" : to draw all the architecture of the building you want to map, then create all your content based on these lines.

To ease this, you could use several layers, each with a different "color card", so you could see the different masks you're drawing more clearly. Then, click on "Board" from the menubar and select "Export to SVG" (to export the whole project as a SVG).

I don't see the problem with the "3 pt stroke" : you can remove it in Illustrator, and just keep the "fill" to have plain shapes.

Best. Philippe

HenryForma

Dear Philippe @Millumin

I did not think of using the Board Export funcionality and Board Layers in this way Thank You - it does solve a few practical problems I had

Kind Regards