How to create plush (stuffed) toy cutouts?

So I got a 3d model of a plush toy in Blender. Now I want to turn it into a real plush toy (a gift).

I know you create 2d “cutouts” from cardboard or similar material which you’ll use to draw the cutting lines on your textile to cut the toy’s pieces, sew them together and stuff them.

Are there any programs or Blender plugins which will allow to create those cutouts?
I’ve found one commercial chinese program which I can’t purchase and a freeware called “Plushie” with no official site and dead download links.

I found someone who makes stuffed toys for a living and he said that before making the cutouts, he needs to make a real model (aka a “last” used by shoemakers) of the toy from aluminium or wood and that alone costs only 400$, which sounds like a ripoff nonsense, right?

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Import-Export/Paper_Model

I ofund this on google, maybe it could help you with a little tweaking

Pepakura is the best one - the pdf’s can also be opened in a vector editor to polish the lines.
http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/

Thanks guys, but I’ve actually tried using papercraft tools for this (made some papercraft models long ago with Pepakura), but they work differently, though not very obvious from first glance. These tools are great for lowpoly, “edgy” paper model creation, but are not really great when it comes to highpoly, “smooth” plush toys, as

  1. The number of seams generated by tools like Pepakura are too much for plush toys, which usually only have them on the side of the body and on the parts connecting the joints and head to the body. Plush toy makers try to keep the seam count as low as possible and try to follow the structure I mentioned above, but in paper craft that’s not a rule and not needed.

  2. The edges which need connecting might be in different “pages” and when you have a highpoly model, they are just too much. A plush toy CAD would probably have the whole “edge loop” marked with numbers, not each edge individually.

  3. Papercraft tools don’t take into account the elasticity of plush toy textiles, so you end up with lots and lots of seams only there because the paper isn’t elastic.

Just to be sure I actually tried using Pepakura on my Blender model as well as a lowpoly version of it I made, both aren’t usable for a plush toy textile.

just make a really good uv map then add a bit round all edges for sewing/glueing if you want it in cardboard, just make sure you have no streaching on map, make more seams if you have to

I’m not sure if you got my point.

I think you didn’t get my point.

And btw, just using an UV map won’t work, like at all. There’s no limitation on the size of the triangles or in other words the positions of vertices on the UV grid. While in real life you can’t stretch the textile as much as you wish.
Your basically saying “well make the triangles in the UV grid the correct size”, which is almost impossible and extremely time consuming by hand, hence why people don’t do it by hand. You can get the UV map “almost correct” (still will be extremely long to do/impractical), but if you don’t mind ending up with proprtionally incorrect doll, because “almost correct” for each triangles will end up very incorrect for the whole mesh.

Well, if you need a ‘last’, you should look into 3D printing.

Triangle? Why not use quads in subsurface mode, and set up your seams manually? Are you sewing this yourself? And if you truly need a 3d model, why not sculpt in clay then?

You two clearly skipped the post. I don’t need a last. As I said I found someone who said he’ll do the job but he said he would need to make something like a shoemaker’s last for the toy to make it and would need around 400$ just to make that and that seems like he is lying. I’ve never heard people using lasts for plush toys. For shoes it makes sense as all of them have the basic shape of the foot, but each toy is different and if there’s a CAD tool which can generate the images of the “cutouts” that’s a pointless step.

So don’t use blender, go find a software that is used in plushy-making design firms. Go look at 3d printing and the cost for scale of your desired output, and re-assess the cost the bid was given to you.

I found someone who makes stuffed toys for a living and he said that before making the cutouts, he needs to make a real model (aka a “last” used by shoemakers) of the toy from aluminium or wood and that alone costs only 400$, which sounds like a ripoff nonsense, right?

yeah, I read it. Someone “who makes stuffed toys for a living” told you what is required, and you don’t want to pay for the service. Initial tooling costs money because it takes time, but multiples bring your overall cost to nothing when dealing in bulk.

You are right. Here is a tutorial. Good luck and have fun.

:smiley:

Craig, I just don’t know how to put this any nicer: can you do some research before making suggestions? Do you have any idea how plush toys are made?

Do you know what this forum subsection is called?
Even though you claim to have read my posts, just read this part:

Are there any programs or Blender plugins which will allow to create those cutouts?

You claim to have read my posts but you give unrelated answers.

go find a software that is used in plushy-making design firms.

Again, you give a bad answer by telling me to find a type of software which I’ve mentioned I can’t find.

Then you suggest being gullible and trusting everything and suggest to spend money on things you don’t even know is necessary.

The video is not helpful as the outlines of a very simple model are just drawn by hand, approximately. No cutouts are used not to mention how to create them from a 3d model.

Have a nice life.

draw a face on a pillow?

You too. .

Find someone who knows how to sew. Together, look at your model in Blender. Ask them where they think seams would be necessary. (This very much depends on the model and the fabric). Mark that seam as … a seam. Unwrap your model. You now have a pattern for your plush toy. Don’t forget to add seam allowances.
This is how I would go about it, but then I would also be the person who knows how to sew. (You probably need a female - mother? sister? gran?)

EasyToy : <a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g4FhESB31M” target="_blank">
https://youtu.be/G3fxC5DEnGo

EasyToy alone does not help. You need PatternImage too, which is not freely available.

see http://forum.cgpersia.com/f19/livesforce-easytoy-patternimage-9907/

Unfortunately plushie is pretty instable.