Forum Discussion
Svg files for SL360 on the roadmap?
Hi, wonder if and when you are planning to let SL360 support svg images?
Another 8 months have been added to the years... and still nothing.
I also find it insulting to my intelligence as a designer to call it "Importing SVGs from Powerpoint", as you are absolutely NOT importing the SVG, you are converting the SVG to a raster image. Which is patently unacceptable in the design world.
To add to that, if all the people that have posted workarounds would stop calling them "shapes", that'd be great. Because "shapes" implies they are vector shapes, as the default shapes within SL are. After trying all the multiple ways I've found people suggest to get their vector shapes into SL, all I'm left with are raster images, not vector shapes. Furthermore, depending on the technique, you may or may not retain transparency. So instead of a triangle covering half the stage, I get a full-stage image that is half triangle, half white (where the transparency was.) How ANYONE has found this acceptable to this point is beyond me. Each passing day brings yet another example of frustration when it comes to basic features not included in SL. No one is asking for anything over the top. Just the same basic features that almost every other design app includes in their "beginner level" features. And yet, not even the decency of an explanation as to why these requests are simply rejected, year after year.
At the risk of trodding on TP's toes and corrupting his excellent walkthrough, I'd like to illustrate his methodology with some images that do show that the end result is an imported SVG shape and not a rasterized image within Storyline.
This is a logo in Illustrator. Simplified to four shape paths. The text and lines are compound paths and the star and its outline are simple shape paths that don't need to be 'compounded.
This is the exported SVG after being imported into Powerpoint. As you can see it's looking good (awesome design).
This is the voodoo-ish part. After the Powerpoint slide has been imported into your Storyline file you will end up with an invisible mess like this.
But don't worry, the logo is there, as you can see from the Timeline. There are 4 layers corresponding to the 4 paths within the SVG file.
Yeah, this is the weird part I don't get myself. 90% of the time the SVG imports perfectly, but sometimes there is a distortion, as TP mentions. This is easily rectified, as he explains, by referring to the original dimensions of your vector file.
Once we correct the dimensions the logo is in Storyline and looking pretty good. But we want it to look like the original so we just select the shapes, because they are shapes, and fill with whatever colour we want.
And here you can see I have decided to make the middle star white and the 'outline' shape red. It looks awesome and is full of vectory goodness.
Diarmaid... I wanted to make sure to thank you for your replies as well. The visuals are always helpful.
Perhaps you can try the artboard suggestion I made in my above comment to see if that fixes the distortion issue for you. I feel like maybe they're using the overall stage dimensions as their guide when importing PPT slides. So if your artboard is not exactly the same dimensions as the PPT or SL stages, we get the distortion. But with no artboard space outside the overall size of the shapes you're bringing over, there's nothing to try and line up... and the shapes appear as they should.
Maybe this is just in my case, with the shapes I used. But it sounds plausible.
Anyway, thanks again!
I know you are showing an example, but simply with the Shapes tools in Storyline you could just create that same logo in Storyline directly.
I don't wish to over-labour the point here but again, yes, I am clearly showing an example, and yes, a simulation of that example logo could easily be created within Storyline, but not if the client wanted a 7 pointed star or a rounded-edged star, or anything else even remotely not within the basic shape palette that is woefully bundled as if it's somehow an acceptable assortment of 'shapes' everyone loves to use.
The draw tools are beyond lamentable and trying to create anything beyond the basics is laughable. One cannot join shapes (without grouping) or knockout chunks. Or draw 'accurate' squiggly lines.
As a graphic designer, I am appalled that ANYONE, but most especially Articulate, consider any of their built-in shape tools as being worthwhile.
