Acrobat 9 Pro Extended - how to output smooth graphics?

Most of the gallery images aren't directly generated by Acrobat, but come from either 3D Toolkit (shipped with Acro 8.3D but not 9), or external 3rd-party renderers such as Deep Exploration or the one inside the original authoring package. If you're looking to render 3D files to bitmap images rather than embed them into a PDF, APEX9 is not the way to go - stick to dedicated renderers.

It's difficult to advise on how to improve your specific example without seeing images of what you've produced and what about it is 'wrong'. If you can upload some (i.e. without breaking copyrights or confidentiality) and post links, it'd help.

So, are you saying that Acrobat 9 shipped with the ability to capture CAD drawings, but not the ability to make them usable outside of Acrobat? (with the exception of imbedding them in Word, etc.)

Unfortunately, I cannot share the images. However, you should understand what I mean when I say the resulting jpeg files are "jagged." It's the obvious difference you always see between raster and vector images.

Thanks for your help.

I suppose I am. Acrobat can import a 3D mesh into a PDF, and display that PDF like any other, but the 3D annotation is only expected to be used for on-screen interaction. The Acrobat 3D engine doesn't include things you'd need to make a "realistic" rendering, such as global illumination, soft shadows, etc. as they're beyond the abilities of the direct-draw graphics system. It's generally assumed that you'd be using the original creation software to do any production-quality rendering, and given engines like Vray and Final can cost close to $1000, there's no hope of getting them bundled with Acrobat anytime soon.

Acrobat 8.3D did have a decent renderer, but as an accident - the 3D Toolkit application bundled with 8.3D had the ability to render a good-quality image at any resolution you wanted, and line illustrations in vector (3DT was an old version of Deep Exploration and nothing really to do with Acrobat, but something had to be bundled with 8.3D to convert meshes into the formats Acrobat could read). 3DT is a much-lamented omission from APEX9, but as Adobe don't own it, they can only do what Right Hemisphere lets them. 3DT couldn't cope with newer CAD files, and the current version is sold as a competitor to APEX9 so you can't blame RH for keeping it to themselves.

Wow, thanks for the history. That explains a lot, but is also very disappointing.

From my own personal experience, I've noticed that Acrobat 3D will display graphics at the resolution of the original source files. In that regard, your output will be only as good as your input.
However, even if the data is as you intend in the file, your graphics card in your computer does not always display it as intended. Many graphics card include settings to optimize performance by using low resolution versions of 3D texture maps. Before you make final judgment on the quality of Acrobat 3D display, be sure your graphics card is set to it's "maximum quality" setting.
If you have access to a Mac, you could view the file there to see it's default quality. This is because Macs don't have any ability to adjust graphics card quality setting and, for better of for worse, always display 3D textures at maximum quality.
I hope this helps.

Joshua

Thanks for the comment, but we aren't talking about the quality of the rendered graphic onscreen. We are talking about the quality of the conversion from the CAD data to a raster image.