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MartinVi
Participant
March 8, 2017
Question

Exporting assets - what method do you use?

  • March 8, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 321 views

I produce and export heaps of assets for graphical user interfaces on a daily basis (games and software). I have been trying to hone the process of exporting assets for years - almost a decade now. I have tried it all in order to find the most effective way to create a sustainable and sane pipeline for asset maintenance and export. And I would love to broaden my skills.

I work with symbols and global colors - if you don't, I think you should give it a spin. Both techniques offer ways to dynamically deploy changes effectively across a design. Now getting those changes out of Illustrator, in wonderful assets, have always seemed like a drag no matter what internal or "plugged-in" method I have applied.

I once came really close with a plugin/script that batch-exported symbols from the symbols panel into individual assets. But it took forever and often Illustrator would stall after that. (If only Illustrator offered a way to export Symbols to individual pngs natively, my post would stop here...)

For a while I used artboards for exporting assets. That quickly became annoying since organizing artboards are frustrating in itself. (Not being able to select multiple artboards, and having very limited controls in the auto sorting through naming feature).

Then the Asset Export panel came along. But that has yet to conI am not really convinced. It seems like it has been welded onto Illustrator by a dude in overalls, while it could be fitted more gracefully into the pipeline...

I have questions for the Asset Export functionality:

  1. Why does a piece of graphic used used to create an Asset in the Asset Export not stand out from any other piece of graphics. This fogs navigation of assets within the design quite a bit, and force you to make some manual organisational choices that it seems the Assets Export panel should handle.

  2. Why is the forward link to the Asset in the Asset panel only working for the specific piece of graphics that was used to create the link? This is especially weird when using symbols - editing a different instance of the symbol than the one used to create the asset has no effect on the asset but it of cause affects the other symbols (as expected).

  3. Why cant I cut and paste the graphics used to create Asset in the first place into a new location in the document. If I do cut, the asset disappears from the Asset Export and do NOT reappear when pasting.

  4. Why does Asset Export not allow me to "Locate asset in file" or "Select asset in layers" in any way? I cannot even drag assets out from the Asset Explorer panel. This makes the Asset Export more of a dumping ground than an actual dynamic place for assets, If I anyway have to keep track of where they are located in the document manually.

//Martin

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Kurt Gold
Community Expert
Kurt GoldCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 8, 2017

I don't think that this is a pure Feature Request matter. You stated that you are interested in which methods other Illustrator users may use to straightforwardly do what you want. That used to be an exciting challenge in the past and I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be right now.

As there are a lot of possible, yet unknown conditions and structures in your files, it would be useful to provide a sample .ai file including detailed and razor-sharp instructions about what items you are going to collect.

Plus, when asking things like that it is more than appropriate to state which version of Illustrator you are using. As per your description it is obvious that you are probably using the most recent Illustrator version, but participants that are using older versions may be a bit irritated to think about your requests, just to realize that they can't even detect the functionalities you mention.

M
MartinViAuthor
Participant
February 12, 2020

Thank you for taking your time to reply to my post back in 2017. I must say I have not kept up with community, so you post completely slipped my attention. I am glad that you acknowledged the fact that I was trying to get an insight into a workflow I might not have approached from the most effective angle. I can see how a version number would help in the discussion, and you are right in assuming that mine was the very recent CC in 2017.

 

In the last two years I have almost all but abandoned Illustrator ever since Adobe rolled out XD. It is so clear after using XD that Illustrator is still not - even in CC2020 - clearly enough supporting maintenance and delivery of digital assets. The whole relationship between Symbols, Assets Export, Artboards and layers is as disconnected as it was in 2017 and seems ineffective compared to other professionel software alternatives.

 

I really hope that Illustrator will adopt a more streamlined production and maintenance of assets as components in master, child and even nested relationsships and more clearly defines a critical path to a good userflow.

Monika Gause
Community Expert
Monika GauseCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 8, 2017

Please post this here:

Feature Request/Bug Report Form

In the forums usually there's no discussion about features and why they look like this.

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