Origami

Three headed dragon design by John Montroll

Hedgehog design by Yudai Imai

Spiral Shell design by Toshikazu Kawasaki

I'm looking for a community where I could find advice on origami but also other type of paper craft. Is this the right place ? Do you know any other community on these theme ? The ones on lemmy.world don't have a single post.

Mine is probably the crane or the jumping frog at this point, but I'm probably overlooking a ton of other cool traditional models. Anyone else have any they like to fold?

This was one of my first attempts at using a repeating base pattern to create a more complex model. In other words, I basically folded a bird base in four smaller sections of the paper, which left me with several little subsections that I could fold in a way that added a more sculpted look. Since I was coincidentally using black and white paper and realized that I could fold the rear portion to look like a tail, I decided to try to fold a very oversimplified Orca. It has no dorsal fin, no anatomically-accurate underbelly, and little in the way of intrigue. Still, this is essentially my second design, and I think it's an interesting concept. I'm still not super happy with it, so I think I'll scrap it until I can create something better. Still, it's fun to share photos of folds like this, even when they aren't perfect.

ORIPA is the closest thing we have to CAD for origami. It's based on Java, although it does have binary builds for several major platforms. I couldn't get the Windows build to work, so I installed the OpenJDK and used the .jar file. The program is essentially based on editing a crease pattern, allowing you to visualize the final model in 3D. One of the killer features is that you can export the 3D view as a mesh, which means you could potentially edit it for 3D printing or create nice renders of your origami designs in Blender. It has many fold options available and should accommodate various origami styles.

I think one of the more promising ways to use this is to use it in tandem with a physical prototype for designing origami, as this gives you a clean template when you arrive at a design that you like. Some people have also mentioned that they design origami in this program before they ever fold it, which seems fairly difficult to me. Still, it's the closest thing I've found to a CAD program for origami, and it has a lot of features that make it genuinely useful. It's a bit rough around the edges, but it is a true little open-source gem that I imagine is easily overlooked for people new to origami.