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Papercraft with Blender
- pavel_lishin 9y agoThis means cosplay is about to get a lot easier for a lot of people. No more taking weeks to prototype things out of difficult materials; now you can model a character, and have a painted cardboard costume ready to go over a long weekend!
- chickenfries 9y agoI'm not involved with cosplay, but I do believe that this is already a common workflow. I know there's a papercraft plugin for Sketchup that let's you flatten objects, add glue tabs. Folding and gluing takes the majority of the time.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoI didn't know that, that's awesome - wish I'd known when I was working on a halloween costume this fall :/
- grokkable 9y agoKeep the animals off your plate, put them in your belly.
- mattdesl 9y agoTried this a few weeks ago to create generative papercraft lamps[1]. Really wonderful addon/script and flexible enough to be used with a pen plotter (ie: for printing the fold lines on thicker and larger paper that your regular printer might not support). [1] - https://mobile.twitter.com/mattdesl/status/934930674968035328 https://mobile.twitter.com/mattdesl/status/93493067496803532...
- jarmitage 9y agoBased on this addon script it looks like? https://github.com/addam/Export-Paper-Model-from-Blender https://github.com/addam/Export-Paper-Model-from-Blender
- eggy 9y agoI was working on a python script in 2004 for Blender to work similar to Pepakura [1] when I was making stitch and glue kayaks in order to prototype them in paper first. As the author says, I wasted many a weekend making all sorts of paper models. Then I got sidetracked writing a photoclinometry script in Blender to CNC bas reliefs into maple planks in 2005. Pepakura was/is amazing! Was the current plugin based on it I wonder. Paper work (origami, etc...) are big in SE Asia. I lived over there for 7 years, and saw some amazing things especially in Japan. [1] http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/productinfo/index.html
- agumonkey 9y agoThanks, I always forget the word "pepakura" ps: I'm also looking for pepakura based mechanics. If anyone knows anything, shoot me
- eggy 9y agoWhat do you mean by Pepakura based mechanics? There are deployable structure ala Hoberman linkages, and there are multitudes of papers on origami and math with examples of folding actuators and bodies. Recently MIT IIRC has been putting plastic origami in plastic bags that can be pumped or evacuated of air to create mechanical actuation. Very exciting times indeed!
- agumonkey 9y agoWell just the sort of things you mentioned. Except I didn't know about them :)
- eggy 9y agoGlad to have helped! Deployable structures are very interesting as a general category. I love how an art form like origami can create things of wonder and beauty, and then mathematics comes along to show there's even more to be taken in. There are even examples of solving geometry problems with origami instead of using compass and ruler.
- tombert 9y agoDamnit HN, why must you repeatedly post things that are destined to steal all my free weekends. This seems pretty awesome; this might be a cheaper alternative to 3d printing for certain scenarios.
- NortySpock 9y agoFriends of mine used papercrafting as a cheap alternative to plastic sci-fi spaceships for wedding table center pieces. I loved the low-cost of this crafting hobby and kept doing it almost 5 years later; I love assembling models and having a beautiful spaceships to show off afterward.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoCan you share some of the designs you use?
- cdevs 9y agoThe result looks awesome, it always feels great to create something software or physical.
- hbosch 9y agoThis is essentially what UV unwrapping is. Seems like a pretty neat auto-UV layout algo... Are people in the Blender community using this plugin for texturing game assets? Does it work well with high poly models?
- eggy 9y agoIt is, but Pepakura which I mentioned above works out the folds and cuts. Any development of 3D models with facets or low count polygons with paper can be done granted with lots of time. It gets interesting when you work in something with some thickness and stiffness, and you want curvature and not facets. I was tweaking 'unfolding' or 'developing' panels from Rhino models for my kayaks as mentioned in a reply up in this thread. The kayaks were made of 4mm Okume plywood and needed to have curved surfaces. The payoff was watching the 3D surface take shape as you "stiched and glued the seams of the 2D panels.
- santaclaus 9y agoThis seems similar, but somewhat different than UV auto-layout in terms of the restrictions on the map. For this mapping to produce a buildable object, each flattened face must have the same area as the 3D face, and the mapping from 2D to 3D must be globally bijective. In UV-mapping, given a set of artist-specified cuts, I do not think it is always possible to obtain an area-preserving and globally bijective map. Most industrial-strength UV tools also allow artists to rescale and deform certain faces (to make it easier to paint under fine geometry, for example), which would be wouldn't make sense given the end goal of this algorithm.
- thomastjeffery 9y agoThe difference is that all faces are proportional. UV unwrapping is almost always done with fewer edges, so the unwrapped mesh ends up distorted.
- UncleEntity 9y agoBlender has a pretty advanced UV layout algorithm builtin for all your texturing needs. This plugin would probably have problems with n-gons which the UV layout tools handle without too much problem.
- jordache 9y agothe paper folds doesn't match up with the polygons from his screenshot. I wonder if the plugin further simplifies the 3d model when exporting into fold patterns.
- wvlia5 9y agoAuthor here. The plugin doesn't simplify the model. They don't match up because they are pictures of different pages.
- kakarot 9y agoIt's worth checking out Treemaker by Robert Lang. He is an origami master and his is the first of such programs. It's great to see paper-folding algos reach Blender 2.79, but I have immense respect for pioneers in the field. http://www.langorigami.com/article/treemaker http://www.langorigami.com/article/treemaker
- app4soft 9y ago"TreeMaker" mostly created for paper folding aka origami modeling, and its little different from '3D model -> papercraft'. "Pepakura Designer" & discussed Blender add-on are different from "TreeMaker". But for origami there is also cool "OrigamiEditor3D"[0] [0] https://github.com/ba-sz-at/origamieditor3d https://github.com/ba-sz-at/origamieditor3d
- kakarot 9y agoI understand, that's what I meant when I said "the first of such programs" because there has been a good bit of evolution in the scene. But Treemaker remains notable for being the first of its kind. In a lot of ways, papercraft is an easier problem to solve than origami. Pepakura Designer is still a cool project and makes me wish I were more into papercraft than origami. The link you provided could really use some screenshots so I could compare its feature set to others at a glance
- quanto 9y agolooks fantastic! does the Blender functionality have curvature modeling as well? in other words, if I want to do a cylinder, would it have polygons or a large sheet rolled? Also, I think it would be great to have a solid-filling functionality as well. If a part of model needs extra-support, it would generate a honeycomb-like structure inside the specified solid.
- wvlia5 9y agoI think curvature modeling would be a great extension to the plugin.
- quanto 9y agoi would love to contribute to the Blender plugin for this feature (curvature modeling). Is there a computational geometry reference that could help me get started?
- themodelplumber 9y agoI think there's a plugin for Rhino that does curvature modeling. Not sure about Blender right now but last I checked some time ago, no. Back when I was designing my own paper models, I purchased a little sheet metal design book from the '50s. It was just as effective as software and very fun to have around as a reference. Polygonal models can have a polygonal look that can get in the way of a really graceful appearance[1] on some model types. 1. http://i-am-modelist.com/2011/10/10/mig-21/ http://i-am-modelist.com/2011/10/10/mig-21/
- uptown 9y agoWintercroft has a great collection of plans for these for anyone looking for some premade plans: https://wintercroft.com https://wintercroft.com
- oceanghost 9y agoAny ideas for very large prints? Tried to make a mask 3 years ago that spanned 12 sheets of cardboard (eventually had planned to do it in fiberglass resin). Predictably the seams of the paper made the mask too weak.
- wvlia5 9y agoAuthor here. The goat was about 10 sheets of A3 cardboard. Solved the seam issue with paper tape. The larger the tape area, the better. To give cardboard more rigidity, you can paint it with vinyl glue
- oceanghost 9y agoThank you kindly. I'll give this a shot :)
- SuperPaintMan 9y agoNext step is to wire this up to a Cricut [1] or similar device to never have to worry about finicky cuts! [1] https://home.cricut.com/ https://home.cricut.com/
- froindt 9y agoCricut supports dwg import. I've been itching to try it out, but haven't had a chance yet. Bought mine over Thanksgiving weekend.
- mistercow 9y agoI had the idea a while back for a project that would involve something similar to this, but for sewing patterns to make stuffed animals. It seems like you could do that with this with maybe some minimal modifications.
- oasisbob 9y agoNeat. I wonder if this could be adapted for sewing patterns. The open-source options I've seen out there seem to be lacking (abandoned, or compatibility issues), and the commercial options are very expensive.
- oelmekki 9y agoWell, this is a serious regression from 3d printing :) More seriously, this is genius. I can hardly imagine how challenging it must have been to build something that automatizes finding which parts should be glued and act as joints. This could also have impact for all early age kids schools. Is there any way a teacher could easily generate a model from a few pictures and make it some papercraft for kids? Or if not, are there limitations on which models can be used, or is it possible to use a 3d scan? Just imagine the awe of kids who made a paper model of the school's pet or something. Also a good way to create some interest for DIY in them.
- rotten 9y agoNow he can apply paper mache and paint.
- adamzk 9y agoGingerbread. Houses.