Printing out your 3d models

I remember a while back someone posted a free program that would unwrap your models so that a scale model could be printed flat and assembled with any ordinary printer… I can’t find the post in a forum search or google, anyone remember?

Cool!

though that would cost a helluvalotta paper and a couple days spent with scissors I think.

on anything higher than 50 polys that would be a huge amount of cutting and pasting and hard to put those tabs in.

I’m doing some searches now… look at this

http://www.page.sannet.ne.jp/jun_m/tenkai/index-eng.html

That is the one! Thanks.

… and others, I asked for a program, not the impracticalities of constructing a subsurf-3 mesh from paper.

EDIT:

Original threads:

https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20715&highlight=pepakura

This one mentions Tenkai and Pepakura
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14730&highlight=pepakura

Actually no I misread and assumed the software you were looking for was going to make “slices” out of the 3d mesh… like it would take ground level and give you the shape to cut out, then 1 level above that, and so on… meaning… like you’d need 2000 pieces of paper to make anything… hehe… an idea but not practical.

For an engineering student, actually… hmm…

Actually, no. I could handle the device engineering but not the coding yet.

If it were that kind of thing I’d just learn to carve!

i downloaded and there were nothing in the zip

Hmm sorry I cant help with the actual script, but check this out:

That is a site that has many animals and scene’s and motor-cycles that are VERY realistic and all built from flat paper printouts.

Also I’ve always wanted a “3d” printer.

From what I understand, it starts out with a tray of powder, which gets heated by a laser or other printer head to fuse together, and the thing does a layer at a time, building the whole object…

Anyway, it allows you to print out 3-d items and is GREAT for prototypes and model’s…

A couple thousand though… but always wanted one.

macounos link worked fine for me. i made a ball, a tower, and a dog head. it’s really incredibly fun. helps if you have a table and an exacto knife.

When I tried, erything came out really weird, and impossible to put together (everything except an icosphere and a cube). I saved them as .DXF files, because I didn’t want to use a python script.

R2blend, a note:
When using a complex mesh, use the ‘Y’ key to split the mesh into regions. I made a dragon bust yesterday, and it came out perfectly. I split the main part of the head, the ears, and the neck into different pieces, then just put my own tabs on and glued them together. It worked great. I’d show you a pic, but my nephews have it now. Just remember to save all the pieces in the same dxf file so they all come out having the same scale.

Another way to keep track of what is where,…:

  1. use the obj. import export script and export the model with the UV coords
  2. export a tga of the UVcoords and paint it in a paint program
  3. load the obj model into the program
  4. then go back to the save/open pulldown window and import your texture

    now when it unwraps the model, it also puts the UV texture on the faces, so it’s pre colored when you print it. :slight_smile:

better than printing in paper all though it cost money unless you win one of there comps
http://www.3darttopart.com/Contest.php

forum thread
https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25169

I’m not having any luck finding it, but I know my sculpture teacher back in college had a MaxScript that he wrote that would do what you’re looking for. I doubt it would be hard to convert to Python. I know a guy in my class used it to make a triangulated sculpture of some kind of mathematical knot. It was pretty cool. Anyway, the instructor’s name is Rick Paul, at Purdue University, so if you want to take the time to dig through Google looking for the script, you’ll probably be able to find it. Good luck.

Thanks.

It wasn’t hard to find him with Google. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~brendart/index2.html

:stuck_out_tongue: