
Papercraft with Blender - wvlia5
https://matiasmorant.wordpress.com/2017/12/23/papercraft-with-blender/
======
eggy
I 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

~~~
donquichotte
Do you have blog posts or other info on your kind of kayak design workflow?
How did you join the maple boards? Were they just ribs and you put composite
over it? There's a completely insane maker on youtube called Jamie Mantzel, he
did some composite kayaks.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n01cY3jOl0c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n01cY3jOl0c)

~~~
eggy
I was doing two different things: wooden carvings from photos on solid maple
boards, and stitch-and-glue kayak designs and building. I used DelftShip (IIRC
it was FreeShip at the time) to design the hulls. I tried a few others,
including Rhino and trying to develop one in Blender, but the NURBS were a bit
hacky then for what I was intending.

I would eventually use Rhino to develop the 2D panels to cut on my
ProgressiveCNC rack-and-pinion router table. Along the edges to be joined, you
would drill a very small hole, 0.0625" (~1.6mm) diameter, 6mm from the edge
and 100 to 150mm apart. Using bare copper wire, you would fish it through and
twist the ends to bring the edges into contact, hence 'stitch-and-glue'. You
can look the process up online. The inside and outside would be glassed with
epoxy resin from West Marine and fiberglass resulting in a beautiful glossy
wood after much finishing and sanding. We would incorporate the carvings into
the coaming around the kayak's cockpit. The kayaks were made from 4mm marine-
grade Okume. I also made traditional strip and strongback kayaks and a
Greenland kayak with bamboo and canvas vs. seal skin. I didn't mean to go on.
Seems like a lifetime ago!

The photoclinometry algorithm I utilized for the wood carvings from photos was
adapted from NASA/JPL research to be able to get more information from the
thousands of black and white singe lens photos taken by the various satellites
and spacecraft. I wrote it in python for Blender. Now there are much more
sophisticated geometry extraction algorithms with machine learning to guide
the resulting mesh 3D creation without the use of laser scanners.

There are a lot of 'inspired' boat builders out there. I formed a wooden boat
company called Franklin Boat Works with my partner, and we made all sorts of
water craft in the small category. A design I never built was to be a lake
ferry for about 8 to 10 people with an electric pancake motor for the shaft
and long benches running fore and aft. All steampunked out with brass
trimmings and gauges for fun.

The bottom line in all of this is that Blender's python API even in 2005
encouraged breaking out of the 3D program to make all sorts of stuff and push
the limits for what could be done with it. I donated $50 (I think that was the
amount, maybe $25) to the original drive to buy the Blender code to create the
opensource Blender, and now my donation has been returned a 100-fold and I am
amazed at what Blender has become! Keep making and coding!

~~~
donquichotte
Wow. Answers like this are why I come to HN. Thank you.

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pavel_lishin
This 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
I'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
I didn't know that, that's awesome - wish I'd known when I was working on a
halloween costume this fall :/

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tombert
Damnit 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
Friends 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
Can you share some of the designs you use?

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SuperPaintMan
Next 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
Cricut supports dwg import. I've been itching to try it out, but haven't had a
chance yet. Bought mine over Thanksgiving weekend.

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mattdesl
Tried 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/93493067496803532...](https://mobile.twitter.com/mattdesl/status/934930674968035328)

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oasisbob
Neat. 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.

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uptown
Wintercroft has a great collection of plans for these for anyone looking for
some premade plans:

[https://wintercroft.com](https://wintercroft.com)

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mistercow
I 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.

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kakarot
It'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
"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
I 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

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oelmekki
Well, 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.

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jarmitage
Based 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)

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oceanghost
Any 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
Author 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
Thank you kindly. I'll give this a shot :)

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hbosch
This 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?

~~~
UncleEntity
Blender 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.

~~~
knolan
I’ve dont something simple but similar to this with UV unwrapping in Blender
directly. You can even export the UV map to SVG.

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quanto
looks 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
I think curvature modeling would be a great extension to the plugin.

~~~
quanto
i 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?

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cdevs
The result looks awesome, it always feels great to create something software
or physical.

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jordache
the 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
Author here. The plugin doesn't simplify the model. They don't match up
because they are pictures of different pages.

~~~
app4soft
You are author of blog or of add-on?

~~~
wvlia5
Blog

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rotten
Now he can apply paper mache and paint.

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adamzk
Gingerbread. Houses.

