Trace — image → SVG / ILDA
Drop, paste, or pick an image (PNG · JPG · WebP · SVG). Everything runs in your browser — nothing is uploaded unless you use AI line art.
- Mode — Contour outlines solid shapes and logos; Centerline traces the middle of drawn lines (sketches, line art); Edge finds edges in photos.
- Threshold bias / Manual separation — Auto threshold works for clean art. For small or low-contrast images, tick Manual separation (0–255) and dial the level while watching the Mask tab (same workflow as BEYOND's Separation level).
- Simplify / Min Line Length — fewer points vs finer detail; Min Line Length drops small specks and fragments.
- Laser point budget — caps the emitted scanner points. If the trace exceeds it, extra simplification is applied automatically until it fits; if the result looks too rough, raise the slider.
- Laser reinforcement — BEYOND-style anchor and blanking dwell points that stop flyback lines and corner overshoot. The defaults are tuned for 30k scanners.
- Colour from image — samples the artwork per point: black ink maps to a full white beam, colours are brightness-boosted. Light art on dark backgrounds is detected automatically.
- Download ILD — a single-frame ILDA file of the current trace, ready for BEYOND or any ILDA player.
- Download SWF (LC Flash) — the same traced geometry as a Flash file for BEYOND's built-in Lasershow Converter FLASH, which re-points it with Pangolin's own engine (see the Export Flash section below).
AI line art
Converts a photo into clean line art before tracing (uploads the image to the server; billed per conversion, repeat conversions of the same image are free). Minimal is the recommended style; Ultra minimal reduces to a single silhouette outline. Every style isolates the subject and removes the background.
With Colour from image ticked, the AI keeps the artwork's palette as stroke colours (lines only — never fills), and the normal per-point colour sampling carries them through to the .ild. Untick it for classic black-on-white line art.
SVG import
Drop an .svg on the Trace tab and its exact vector geometry (curves flattened at high precision) and its own colours go straight to ILDA — no raster tracing involved.
.ai and .cdr files work too: they upload to the server, convert to SVG (Inkscape), and come back into the same exact-vector path. Illustrator files must be saved with Create PDF Compatible File ticked (Illustrator's default); if a file won't convert, exporting SVG from Illustrator/CorelDRAW directly always works.
Rotoscope — video → ILDA animation
Access-code gated. Drop a video (max 100 MB · 30 s · 1080p-equivalent), choose Center/Contour mode and a point budget, and Upload & render. Each job card shows a looping preview (with the emitted points and blanking paths drawn), the frame/point stats, and the downloads.
- Temporal coherence (default on) — keeps the beam path consistent frame to frame, killing the frame-to-frame "pop".
- Colour from video (default on) — per-point colour sampled from the source.
- Re-render with current settings — after a render finishes, tweak any setting and hit the yellow button on the card: the server re-renders the stored upload without re-uploading.
Point Order — paint the draw order of an ILDA frame
Drop a .ild still frame and control the sequence the laser draws it in — write a word out stroke by stroke instead of in the file's arbitrary path order. Everything runs in your browser.
- Order mode — click paths one after another to number them 1, 2, 3…; the order applies automatically once every path is assigned (or hit Apply to keep the rest in their current order). Click an already-numbered path to rewind to just before it.
- Start mode — click a path, then a vertex: on a closed loop the loop rotates to start there; on an open path clicking the far end flips its direction. The green arrow shows where drawing begins.
- Select mode — click, shift-click, or drag a box; drag paths to move them, or use the numeric move/scale/rotate fields. Delete and Reverse act on the selection; Undo/Redo buttons (or Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z) step back through any edit, including joins.
- Auto-order / Auto-join — box a feature and Auto-order chains its strokes by nearest endpoint (closed loops rotate to start where the beam arrives). Auto-join welds fragmented strokes back together: selected open paths whose ends nearly touch merge into single strokes, and a chain that comes full circle snaps into a closed loop — ideal for traced outlines that arrive as dozens of short pieces. Wider gaps are never bridged.
- Groups — box-select a feature (nose, eye L, eye R, head…), hit Add group, repeat, then Order by groups: groups draw first, in the sequence you added them, each chaining on from where the last finished. Click a chip to re-select its paths; a path always belongs to its latest group.
- Join / Split — merge two open paths into one stroke, or cut a path (or loop) at any vertex — split a letter's outline to start drawing mid-shape.
- Colours — recolour selected paths, apply a gradient that runs along the draw order (by drawn length), or hit Rainbow group-by-group to give every group (or every path, with no groups collected) its own vivid colour — BEYOND's Recolor frame, in-browser.
- Animations — a multi-frame .ild keeps your edits per frame as you move through the frame picker, and the export writes ALL frames back out. Better: paint frame 1's order, then Match all frames to this order — every other frame auto-orders to follow it by matching each path to its nearest counterpart, direction and loop starts included.
- Write-out preview — plays the exact emitted point stream (1–15 s per full write-out) so you can watch the frame draw itself before exporting, and the scrub slider under the canvas steps the beam through the order by hand; pause anywhere to study a frozen half-drawn frame, scrub back to 0 to return to editing.
- Export — the downloaded .ild keeps your painted order internally, so BEYOND's draw/write effects reveal it exactly as previewed.
Export for Blender (Pangolin power path)
Every rotoscope job also exports the traced geometry as Blender Grease Pencil — Export for Blender (.blend) below the ILDA download. Pangolin's own point engine then does the laser conversion: AutoAnchor/AutoBlank, Keep Path Consistent, and Beam Brush driven by stroke thickness.
Requires on your PC: Blender 4.5 LTS, Pangolin's Lasershow Converter Blender (LCBlender) addon, and BEYOND. If you don't use BEYOND, the standard .ild download is what you want.
- Download and open the .blend — it opens in camera view with the animation ready to scrub (cube deleted, camera square-on, fps and 320×320 resolution pre-set).
- Render Engine → Lasershow Converter Renderer; Render Source → Grease Pencil. (These two are set manually — they belong to the LCBlender addon on your machine.)
- Optional: Beam Brush → source Freestyle and Grease Pencil for thickness-driven beam effects (centerline renders carry per-point thickness).
- Send Frames to BEYOND — the animation lands in your selected cue.
Export Flash (BEYOND shortcut, no Blender)
The Export Flash (.swf) button on a rotoscope job (and Download SWF on the Trace tab) builds a Flash file of the traced shapes right in your browser. Import it with BEYOND's built-in Lasershow Converter FLASH (Edit menu; Advanced and Ultimate licenses) and Pangolin's point engine does the laser conversion — for rotoscope jobs the shapes come from the full-resolution strokes (lightly de-jagged, stray fragments dropped), not the .ild's baked point budget.
The file is written as an old-school Flash 5 movie because that is the dialect LC Flash understands — modern Adobe Animate .swf files fail to import, ours won't. If BEYOND's Edit menu has no Flash entry, your license tier doesn't include LC Flash — use the .ild or Blender path instead.
Tips
- Point counts around 800–1,200 per frame suit a single 30k scanner; higher counts flicker.
- Busy backgrounds trace badly — use AI line art (it isolates the subject) or crop first.
- If the app looks stale after an update, hard-refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R) — it's an offline-capable PWA.
- Questions or problems: apps@zone.net.au.