here a screenshot of my test in R10:

it is an illustrator cs4 file and renders fine!
Here the same thing in R11:

I agree that when importing ai files as splines, i would have to save them in version 8 in order to work…
Anyway, that’s not the point… i cannot load any ai (or other vector format) file into a texture Channel in R11.
——–
Just for fun i’ve just tried to use an ai version 8 file in R10 and i get the same result like in R11 with any ai file…. black texture.
so maybe it was a lucky coincident that cs4 files worked in R10?!