The Origami Forum

I am experimenting with google sketchup (free software from google) to see if I can animate origami diagrams.

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You can create a step by step animation - easily rotate the model and view the animation at a different angle - You can also move into and view the inside of a fold with section cuts.

Has anyone else out there been using Sketchup?????

I've used sketchup a lot in the past to design papercraft models, but I never thought of using it for origami....

I have used Sketchup aswell, but never for anything other than making random buildings. But, that's a very interesting usage for it, Firstfold. Good luck!

Ty for this idea, only used Sketchup once for a project for school, never thought of it for using it for origami animation

Interesting...

I use SketchUp all the time for making CPs of my models. It is probably the best tool out there for that. It is incredibly intuitive and predictive of where to connect points and lines.

There is one major problem with it for creating diagrams, though. It is the fact that you cannot change the line style to get, for example, mountain or valley fold line markings. The most you can do is change all of the lines together for the entire file to another style -- you cannot have one line style for the border of the model, one for creases, and another for the current fold step.

It is really really unfortunate, since the program is so incredibly easy to use. However, their focus seems to be 3D drawings still at the moment -- they don't seem to want to focus too much on 2D drawings as of yet.

I checked about a month ago for new features in the newest version, but it's still lacking the capability to have multiple line styles within a drawing. I am still hoping that at some point a new version will come out that will have this feature ...

I've come up with a solution for representing the doted and dashed lines used to represent folds in origami diagrams,
This video shows how the animation with lines might have some promise.

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In my next discussion here, I will outline the process of making the "Mountain" and "Valley folds" in Google Sketchup and bit on how to speed up the animation process.