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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The .json secondary link is the raw export — import it yourself with cli/gp_import.py (see the project README for the command line and options).
Tips
- Point counts around 1,200–2,000 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.