I’m new to the scene; first time designing with lasers and first time using Liberation.
I’m a designer creating a laser assisted aesthetic for a narrative driven dance show. Laser (modules) will be directed at a black cyc, as well as towards the stage to create an immersive volumetric world. At least, that’s the goal.
To this end, I’ve been trying to learn Liberation, starting with importing SVG files to see how designs created elsewhere will translate to the stage. I’m not sure how to interpret the results that I’m seeing, and I’m also not sure how to preview those results on the emulator/canvas provided.
I’ve included a couple images by way of example; one is the original PNG (converted to SVG) and the other is a screenshot of the result in Liberation. Any advice or insight would be appreciated!
you need to also familiarize yourself with vector image formats. By the look of it, the converted PNG file still has the background (black) included…
The laser just draws lines, so we need just that.
Get inkscape (or take illustrator if on hand), load the png in and use the line tools on another layer to replicate/trace the lines of the png. It would be probably smart to create different layers for different colours/intensities/objects at this point, so you can export and that way control them individually in liberation. When exporting, hide the png layer.
You should get clean laser lines now in the Liberation preview window.
Tom’s explanation is exactly right, anything that starts life as a PNG will almost always convert into a very messy SVG unless it’s traced manually.
Automatic PNG-to-SVG conversion tends to produce thousands of tiny shapes and nodes, and it will treat even thin lines as filled shapes - the laser will attempt to draw the outline around the line, rather than just the line itself as a “stroke”.
You’ll almost always want to trace the artwork yourself in Inkscape or Illustrator - usually using the pen tool to redraw the shapes as single strokes. That also gives you control over colours, brightness and grouping when you bring the artwork into Liberation.
Once you have a properly optimised vector image, the preview in Liberation will make a lot more sense and you’ll get something much closer to what the laser will draw on stage.
If you get stuck or want to sanity-check a file, feel free to post it - happy to help!
