The Open Inventor PDF3D export is available on Linux and Windows platforms only.
The Open Inventor format and the Universal3D (U3D) format used in 3D PDF, are slightly different. There are some limitations due to these differences.
Here is a summary of what the Open Inventor PDF3D export does and does not support:
The Open Inventor scene graph hierarchy is maintained.
The names of the shapes and separators are exported (if specified in the Open Inventor scene graph).
Shapes are exported with their current transformation.
Camera perspective and viewpoint are used to create the default view.
Multiple cameras are ignored, only the main scene graph is exported (so no legends, logos, etc...).
Point, directional and spot lights are exported, but will light the entire scene regardless of their location in the Open Inventor scene graph.
Materials (diffuse, specular, ambient, emissive and transparency) and lighting are supported on triangles, but only basecolor and precomputed lighting are supported on vertices.
Two-side lighting is not supported, so incorrectly oriented normal vectors will result in black triangles.
Back-face culling is enabled when shapetype is SOLID and vertexordering is set (using SoShapeHints), and disabled in other cases.
Per-vertex coloring and lighting are not supported on lines.
Coloring is not supported on points.
Drawstyle is ignored.
Background color can be set via an SoGradientBackground node.
2D textures are exported, but only the MODULATE and REPLACE texture models and REPEAT and CLAMP wrap modes are supported.
Multitexturing is not supported.
Textured text3 and text2 are converted into polygonal text3.
Dragger shapes are not exported.
Engines are ignored.
Modeling clipping (SoClipPlane) is ignored.
VolumeViz slices are exported as RGBA textures as if the useRGBA field is set to TRUE. This affects the quality of the rendering.
VolumeViz slices are exported with the same resolution as the resolution they are rendered in OpenGL.
Lighting is not supported on VolumeViz slices.
VolumeViz volume rendering is not supported.
SoIndexedTexture2 nodes are exported as a RGBA texture.
SoVolumeSkin is exported as a textured cube.
SoROI is taken into account during export.