I found an old thread that said an Illustrator file needed to have a line, “Houdini forever” commented in before importing.

-was that a joke that went over my head?
-was it true before, but now isn't necessary?
-was it true then and is still true now?

Whatever the case, what type of AI file does Houdini prefer? Illustrator 3, 8, or 10? Or EPS v. 3, 8, or 10?

Finally, what do you get with your imported file, if anything? I.E. Splines, “placed” reference art, polygons, etc?

thanks!

I'm not sure about the “Houdini forever”, but I believe Houdini will correctly read EPS 8 files to some degree. Check out the ‘geps’ (it ships with Houdini) which will convert your eps file into a .geo file. You should also be able to simply type in the name of your eps file straight into the File SOP.

Take care,
George.

illustrator files are definitely not going to work and i've never gotten an EPS (any version) to work with either a file sop or conversion through geps.

the only thing i've gotten to work are autocad interchange files (.dxf). And that seems to only work in dxf version R13/95 and must only contain corner points (no tangent interpolation handles).

anyone else have better experiences? wish it was a lot better then it is.

deecue
anyone else have better experiences?

Save artwork as “eps 5.0”
Try to load it into houdini (File SOP)
No luck???
Open it in text editor and add the following line
to %AI3 tag section:

%AI3_Note: I hate this bug

Push “Reload Geometry” button.
Delete strange primitives from 0 to 45

EPS loading in houdini is fussy. You have to remove all your fills. Only outlines in the file will work.

Success!! Thanks everyone!

I'm assuming AI import doesn't come up too often?

Here's what worked (and this was an extremely simple test file):

Remove all fills
Save as eps v3 (Illustrator CS only has options for v3 and v8.)
Open in text editor and add the comment line (contents don't seem to matter?)
Load or reload geometry in File SOP
Delete strange primitives 0-45

With the test file, only the above order worked. No other combination or missing steps would do it.

For such an otherwise elegant application this process seems….uh…inconvenient.

I have written an CS2 script for Illustrator to export paths as geo files:
http://www.preset.de/2007/0704/illustrator/ [preset.de]

Not all shapes can be imported without errors, though.
I am not sure if I mess the geo format or read the wrong stuff in illustrator.

Georg

if it's a one-time thing and there's a Max station somewhere Max has a pretty solid AI importer but I believe it needs to come in as a legacy ver 3 or something.

From there you can clean it up and export to various file types

http://preset.de/2007/0705/illustrator/ [preset.de]

For predictable results convert type to outlines first.

I ‘analyzed’ the eps files.
The garbage shapes are the default fills in eps files for printers.
I wrote simple exporter wrapper that adds the needed %AI_Note and removes the fill patterns from the file.

A python version might be handy for platform independece.
Would just require to check for the Illustrator Version as the content of the files differ from version to version.

Georg

Has anyone tried using this script with CS3 or Houdini 9.1? I'm not having any luck and wanted to know if its just me. Even removing all fills and adding the %AI3_Note: by hand doesn't seem to work.

Can someone else try this real quick for me?

Thanks!

Any luck? I am having problems as well. Let me know if you figured anything out. Thanks.

I haven't opened my illustrator cs3 yet.
But I can take a look, maybe it's just smal fix.