This thread is for people to let others know what older WWG sets they are working on converting to Craft Robo format (so we don't all do the same 2 or 3...).

I am working on Mayhem Rail.

Squirmydad is working on Swampworks.

Shinohara is working on Wormhole.

Alexio

And I'll be working on showering you with WWG swag for the effort!

Sincere thanks to those undertaking this.

I'm very much interested in RoboCraft formats for all the Fantasy sets. I just received my Silhouette today and would love to start rolling out ...., well lots of everything, from every Fantasy set!

Are there any Robo-friendly WWG sets we can download already? I'm ready to Robo!!

Thanks for the details of your process. It definitely gives us a place to start from for consistency's sake.

I'm a web developer IRL, so I work with Photoshop all the time, although not with PDFs so much. The process you've outlined sounds pretty straight-forward to me. Once I get my cutter and can reproduce it consistently, I can make a web video of the process for non-nerds.

One question, though: doesn't it hurt your printout quality to save the PDF as 72dpi instead of 300dpi? I thought the newer sets were in 300dpi natively. Seems like you'd be introducing some compression artifacts, blurriness, and whatnot by downgrading the resolution.

I'm switching to your plan, it sounds MUCH easier.

Alexio

Hmm my workflow seems to be a little different to others, (this will be double up post for some ) I might have to try the above. I haven't converted any WWG stuff yet mostly complex 3d models and organic shaped stuff, some from Mel and some from elsewhere.

~ Create the layout in Gimp/Photoshop using a 7x10 area
~ Export a grey shadow BMP for robomaster
~ Import to robo master, auto trace outline and then move it back into alignment (seems to be low and right for me, but some paths need manually moving a little more than others)
~ Save gsd file then print the whole document from robomaster using a pdf print driver creater (been using bullzip). then delete the shadow layer and resave gsd.
~ Open the pdf in gimp/photoshop which has all the nice reg marks on it and grey shadow copy the colour image to the pdf and align it over my grey shaodw layer, re-save the pdf
~ Pdf and gsd file should be the same

I've also been sticking a small black box 2cmx2cm on my pages and setting that as a different cut colour, so I can test cut the alignment on a small square before I cut the whole sheet, this allows me to fine tune after the auto trace without having to manually trace all the vectors. that'd be a nightmare on a couple of models I've converted.

I've stopped using the autotrace as much, I was noticing too many little flaws in the tracing, places where it wouldn't get all the way into a corner, or lumps along what should be a smooth curve...

I started doing speed tracing instead. You use the spline and polyline tools to go around the model fast, just tack tack tack at the corners and curves. Once you're done, you zoom in and drag the edit points to match the model better. On these models it's faster for me than setting up a silhouette and doing autotrace.

Alexio
(I do still use autotrace for complex organic shapes like OneMonk's figures)

I think the best way to handle it would be to create a dedicated thread to each modelset which is being worked on. So format it something like this:

Topic: Mayhem Rail Conversion

Pages being worked on:

* "Page name and number here" include folder name.



That way you're clearly stating what it is you're working on and it gives you a launching point if anyone wants to jump in and help.

Sadly, I've done so much color tweaking on everything I've worked on that my files aren't really appropriate for any printer but mine I'll start saving a layer with the original un-retouched artwork from here on out.