There’s something so cool about Dualstrusion.

The winner of the Engineer vs. Designer iPhone design competition, aubenc, has just added a cool kind of mashup. Rather than mashing up two kinds of shapes, he alluded to two animals by adding a zebra pattern to his Paper Bird model.

Now who’s going to add a cheetah skin to cushwa’s Owl statue?

Zebra Paper Bird by aubenc

Paper Folding Models by aubenc

The recent news of a process for creating balloons of any shape using 3D printed molds and sophisticated balloon deflating modelling, reminded me of two really cool ways for creating paper models.

First is TreeMaker by Robert Lang, an engineer and world-renowned origami master.  Lang’s free and open source program lets the user specify the number and ratio of major “flaps” and it designs a base that should collapse into a model with that number and ratio of flaps.  When folding an octopus, one uses a base with 9 flaps – 8 equal flaps for the eight legs and 1 shorter flap that forms the head.  A giraffe would probably use five really long flaps (for the legs and neck) and one very short one (for the tail).

The second is a type of software that assists with creating papercraft models by exploding a 3D model into a flat pattern that, when cut out and assembled using glue and tabs, would create a physical paper version of the 3D model.  There are several different programs that do this, but I’m not aware of any that are free or open source. ¹

If you know of any versions that are either free or open source – please share!

Untitled by aubenc

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1. The wikipedia article provides several suggestions and links if you’re interested. [↩]

Paper Folding Models by aubenc

Thingiverse aubenc has shared his amazing origami-inspired OpenSCAD designs.

Few ages ago I was using a piece of paper “quite a 2D thing” to get 3 dimensional models, so this is a tribute to a couple of my first ever “made things”.

Aubenc’s analogy of likening origami to designing 3D printable models is an excellent one.  I also find it especially interesting that there are so many people interested in origami who are also MakerBotters – George Hart, Chris Palmer, and Chris Connors to name a few.

Untitled by aubenc

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Orchid by renejsanchez

I did a double-take when I saw this amazing orchid by renejsanchez.  All of the pieces are printed flat, then glued together.  I would think that it would be feasible to bend some of these parts to give them a more realistic look.

If you’ll forgive the digression, peeling parts fresh off a heated build platform and carefully curving them into a life-like form reminds me of the advice of Akira Yoshizawa, an origami grand master:¹

“[G]rand master Akira Yoshizawa encouragists origamists to fold in the air so that they can surround the paper and breathe life into it on all sides.”

Renejsanchez’s orchid is so realistic that I like to think that he breathed life into it by folding in some air.

Untitled by renejsanchez

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1. The quote is from Jeremy Shafer’s excellent book, “Orgami to Astonish and Amuse.”  If you enjoy origami even a little, this is one of the most whimsical and enjoyable books you will ever purchase. [↩]