Make your own Papercraft!!

Hey folks!
I'm back with some SUPERB info for all you papercraft fans!!!

Papercraft is art, but even more so, its logic. The bends, the folds, the dimensions, its all quantifiable in terms of geometry. So who gives a damn? Not this highschool dropout! But it is an interesting part of the hobby, so lets give it a minute to shine eh?

Any object in real life can be broken down into dimensions, width, height, angle, area, circumference, etc. What happens with 3D imaging is that all these dimensions are input into a PC program and a model is created. Now animation aside, you can get away with very few dimensions on almost any object in real life.

Take a Cube, it has 6 sides (not counting "indside" and "outside" of course)
, top-bottom-left-right-front-back. This is the realization of the image of a box in 3D. But in terms of papercraft, it becomes a tad more complicated. It becomes a cross of squares with tabs to glue to the sides. Example "companion cube" from the "portal" games (btw, the cake isn't a lie):

 Now the cube at the bottom is a more complicated version, but you get the idea.

Now, you might be content with downloading and buying your papercraft model plans from premade sources, but if you're like me, you'll eventually want your own creations, and I'm here to tell you how to do that!

First of all, you need a few programs. How you get them is up to you, some are free, some are not, but I'm not going to tell you what to buy or what to download.....legally of course. What I will tell you are the programs that I use.

Blender and Pepakura. Blender is a 3D modeling program that you can use to render any object you can create into 3D models for export in various formats. Pepakura is a papercraft specific program that unfolds your 3D models and lets you print them out just like you print out your downloaded papercraft models. I've found through my limited experience that these are FREAKING AWESOME programs for papercrafters.

I've found a few tutorials for Pepakura on youtube, most of them suck, but there was one pretty good one:


This tutorial wont give you step by step directions, but I've found with Pepakura you won't really need them, most of the help you need you'll find on the Pepakura website HERE, and this vid will show you the extreme possibilities inherent in the hobby.

Now Blender, its a bit more complicated. It's a full on 3D rendering program. You can use it to make animations, prototypes for products, papercraft models, or anything else you can imagine that's in 3D. I can't understate this, IT'S FREAKING AWESOME, but it's a lot more difficult to use, and it's the way you make your models SO LEARN IT! That being said, I've found some really kickass tutorials from this great guy super3boy on youtube, check his channel HERE. Here is the first of the Blender tutorials from super3:



So basically, you use blender to create a 3D model (say the companion cube) then save the file, then you use pepakura to open the file you just created, and it will "unfold" the 3D model and turn it into a printout (like the "cross of squares") that you can print, cut, and build. :)

 Now you have the info you need to get the tools for creation, so create! I'd love it if anyone who creates a papercraft with these would send the files to me. Email me at Zombie_slag@basslayer.cc.