Produce PDF of report directly

Our Windows system is running Crystal Reports. The viewer on the server works great, no issues. The viewer offers a print to PDF option and the PDF is generated, downloaded and all that works great.
What I would like to do is skip the viewer and get straight to the PDF somehow, some way - be that using URL manipulation, form post, whatever. I'm not quite sure what to search for or how to approach this problem as I have 0 experience with Crystal Reports.
To make things more interesting, the Windows report server is on a different machine from the (LAMP) web application.
I'm hopping someone can set me in the right direction.

Update:
I have done a lot of reading, researching and brain picking. I have found the .NET source code, installed Visual Studio Ultimate (30 day trial as VS Express doesn't work with Crystal Reports).
In the viewer.aspx.cs code I see the System.Web libraries and the following dependencies:
using CrystalDecisions.Shared;
using CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine;
using CrystalDecisions.Web;
using CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.ClientDoc;
using CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.DataDefModel;
using CrystalDecisions.ReportAppServer.Controllers;
To satisfy those dependences I installed the CR runtime version 13.0.9.1312 and I have been able to debug and build the original source without any issues.
In the default.aspx.cs file I have located the place in the code where the report is generated and also where it redirects to the viewer.aspx file using a session data; seen here
Session["rpt_"+gid] = (CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.ReportDocument)crReportDocument;
Response.Redirect("viewer.aspx?gid="+gid);
I'm thinking I need to do something like this (correct me if I'm wrong)
if (Request["format"]=="pdf")
    Response.Redirect("pdf-viewer.aspx?gid=" + gid);
else
    Response.Redirect("viewer.aspx?gid=" + gid);
What I think I need to do after that is to create pdf-viewer.aspx.cs, set headers for a PDF document, get Session["rpt_"+gid] into a PDF generator something/somehow (whatever that may be) and spit it out using something else like buffer or write file to disk and read that out? Not sure how this part works. Advice?
Also of interest: We are running Windows Server 2008, Crystal Reports 2011, .NET Framework 4. MySQL database, but I can / would like to update to whatever to whatever is currently best practices if / where it isn't a big time sink to do so.
Thanks for help.

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    Consult PDF spec, MeshLab and Asymptote forums (Asymptote is a 3D drawing tool for LaTeX,
    people there know how to integrate 3D pictures into PDF LaTeX way).
    Light and textures - make the material for the surface to emit white color and set diffusive and specular colors to black.
    Like at http://www.iaas.msu.ru/tmp/u3d/cloudq.pdf.
    Ideas:
    Writing an U3D exporter for Blender is not harder than a VRML one. If you have Blender programming skills it may be a way to go.
    I can consult you, just made an U3D exporter for VTK.
    If your data comes not from Blender/MeshLab/LaTeX are not tools internal for your regular toolchain
    but just a ragtag converter for data that comes from your program - consider exporting directly to U3D
    (there is a text intermediate format, IDTF, that is relatively simple).
    Tell more about your toolchain in use, what is at the beginning (before Blender) and at the end (how you utilize the PDF with just 3D model in it).
                Sincerely, Michail
    PS. Other wording:
    Transparent background - is it doable in Acrobat?
    If yes - look into PDF and see how (what elements of what dictionaries are set),
    having PDF spec at your side.
    Upload a minimal example of a PDF file with desired features somewhere to allow me
    and others to have a look at it.
    Consult LaTeX sources of information to see if LaTeX with movie15 package is capable to do what you want
    (Asymptote forum may be the best place).
    If they do not - they may be fixed (movie15 is in active development) or a separate utility may be used.
    But first - show and, if possible, describe in technical terms what you want to achieve.
    As to lighting - make the material of the mesh you apply texture to to emit white light and
    set diffuse and specular colors to black.
    If you have programming skills and know Blender well - writing an U3D exporter for Blender
    must be not that hard, there is an intermediate simple text format.
    I can collaborate (have just made a VTK exporter).
    And that may be also an option - use VTK instead of Blender
    and you are almost there (well, me exporter does not have texture support now,
    but I can add it if there is someone to test).
    Did you ask this questions on a Meshlab forum?
    If your data comes from your own program - it may be simpler to write
    into U3D immediately (via that text intermediate format, IDTF).

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