Importing vector graphics

Agreed!!!

Hi John! Those feature requests can be shared here.

I agree #John Black!  I just put in the same request!

Hi everyone,

I know this thread is old. I signed up just to comment. I may be late but here's how I managed to work-around importing vector into AS2 without raster conversion or compromising the quality of my vector images. This will not allow me to manipulate the shapes and colors after I've brought it into AS2, however. This will only preserve the integrity of my image regardless of how much I scaled it within AS2.

Note: You will need Illustrator, Powerpoint, and Articulate Storyline 2. This was done on a Mac with AI installed native on OSX, PPT on Windows 7 of Bootcamp, and AS2 on Windows 7 of Bootcamp. You may find better or different results depending on your rig. There is a possibility this method may not work if you are running both AI and PPT native on OSX, though. Just a theory I haven't the luxury to test out. Chances are, however, if it works on mine, it should definitely work on yours.

1. Design your shape (or even your entire scene/slide) in illustrator with as many art boards needed. Each artboard will represent different slides if you choose to do the majority of the designing in illustrator. Avoid clipping masks if possible... you'll thank me later. Save your work as AI (for backup).
2. Save your art boards as EPS. Be sure to check the size of your slide (art board) and convert your pixel measurements to inches before saving it to EPS. This will save you some headaches later when jumping into Powerpoint.
3. This step may take awhile for the app to process. Import your EPS file to a Powerpoint slide via drag and drop (be sure to adjust the size of your slide to match the measurement of your art board). You will notice that your images will look a bit jagged. That's just how Powerpoint is interpreting your file.
4. Size up your image to the desired dimension. If done correctly to this point you should only just need to center your image to fit snuggly into your slide (give or take a few hundredth of an inch).
5. Select your image, right-click, and choose "edit image". A warning appears telling you Powerpoint will convert the image to something more native than EPS. Accept it and you should now see the wonderfully clean vector-type image you had been expecting.
6. Select your image, ungroup, clean up bounding boxes accordingly. You should be able to adjust fills, strokes, and whatever else within the constraints of Powerpoint to each and every object you ungrouped.
7. Group any objects you will want AS2 to interpret as a single object such as logos and outlined text. Repeat steps 3-7 for each art board you want on their respective slides.
8. Save your work as a Powerpoint presentation (.PPT).
9. Start a new project in AS2 and adjust your dimensions accordingly.
10. Click on the INSERT tab, click New Slide, click the Import tab, click on the Powerpoint logo, select your PPT file, click Open, click Select All, and finally click Import.
11. Grab a beer. It may take awhile to load. Once it's in you'll see you have objects stacked up on your timeline ready to be triggered and sized to your liking without worrying about image quality.

There you go. I hope this was helpful and I hope I didn't explain anything that was already mentioned. As far as importing actual text/font is concerned... you're on your own and I'm definitely all ears. Anyone else see the irony in having to learn so much about an eLearning software?

Cheers

No problem, Brett.

I would love to hear back about your results.

Great finding Kay!

On my end it's working fine for all rectangle shapes that are carried seamlessly from Illustrator to PPT to Storyline, but anything freeform is still showing up as rasters.

Hi P,

There shouldn't be any rastering with the method I described. It sounds to me you're either importing your files incorrectly, missed a step, or you are trying to change the fill and/or outline color of the objects you imported to storyline and realizing you just can't outside of rectangles (inability to change color was also explained in my intro/disclaimer in case you missed it). Understand that SL2 places all imported images into a rectangular bounding box. Although you may have imported a vector-like image into storyline, you are only able to make actual edits to that bounding box.

Without further details of the problems you're having, I don't know how else to respond. I would like to help but you're going to need to narrow it down a bit.

I've tried all of these methods (and more) to no avail ... maybe I will try on a different windows machine.

Hi Sherridon,

Are you having difficulty importing them in general or just as a part of the published output? It's worth noting that objects aren't vectored in HTML5 output. As a result, they may not appear as crisp in HTML5 as they do in Flash if you set the player to scale to fill the browser. To avoid scaling and reduction in image quality, we recommend locking your course player at optimal size. Because objects aren't vectored in HTML5 output, they may look blurry or pixelated in zoom regions.

Please feel free to let us know if you need anything else. 

I just spent an hour saving an original vector graphic in a variety of formats trying to retain the crispness of the original image. Finally managed to arrive at one that was head and shoulders above the rest (even though once pasted into Storyline, I'm sure it was converted to raster.) Out of Adobe Illustrator (CC) I selected: Export\Export As... then .png file format. When you click "Export" again, it brings up a dialog box where you can set your resolution to High Resolution 300 dpi, Anti-aliasing: None. Transparent background.

Bring this into Storyline as a normal .png image. This will give you a larger file size, but the image quality is FAR greater than anything else I have tried.

Hope this helps someone.