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  #11  
Old 11-14-2016, 03:33 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by papercruise View Post
I use Rhino 3D, but not for graphics. It's expensive but I won mine in an art contest.

I use illustrator to get the basic side view down, then import to rhino and build my model, then I manually unfold or unroll each part, make tabs, then export the lines back out for illustrator.

In many cases I will of some of the "graphics" in Rhino as simple lines, which act as guides for illustrator
That's what I do. I project the panel lines and markings in Rhino, then either color in the lines in Photoshop, or use the lines as guides for new text or image placement. That's how I assure that everything lines up, even in complicated paint schemes. Especially camouflage.
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  #12  
Old 11-14-2016, 08:48 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by papercruise
I use Rhino 3D, but not for graphics. It's expensive but I won mine in an art contest.

I use illustrator to get the basic side view down, then import to rhino and build my model, then I manually unfold or unroll each part, make tabs, then export the lines back out for illustrator.

In many cases I will of some of the "graphics" in Rhino as simple lines, which act as guides for illustrator

Aaron said,
"That's what I do. I project the panel lines and markings in Rhino, then either color in the lines in Photoshop, or use the lines as guides for new text or image placement. That's how I assure that everything lines up, even in complicated paint schemes. Especially camouflage."

This is why I would like to find one program to do everything. Less chance of messing up the graphics, and stopping going from one program to another, which always induces the chance for messing up.

Mike
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  #13  
Old 11-14-2016, 10:32 PM
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Tragic I know Mike, but as already pointed out this is only currently possible with ease if your design is limited to conic and flat surfaces (of whatever complexity you want) in which caseTurboCad can do all you are asking.
Where there are non-conic developable surfaces in the design then you can use traditional manual technical drawing techniques in TurboCad to obtain the development, but, as you must already know, this can be a bit/very laborious.
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  #14  
Old 11-15-2016, 01:59 PM
jleslie48 jleslie48 is offline
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the only working solution I can use is a combination of the 3d software AC3D (look it up on youtube for tons of examples,) and pepakura designer for unfolding. there are two key elements of AC3D that make it ideal for paper modeling:
1) polygons are true polygons and not just hundreds of triangles. When you unfold a pepakura shape you end up with a minimum number of sides to unfold. this greatly increases your success ratio.
2) the ability to "skin" a model" you take a picture of your object, and it doesn't even have to be straight or square, but you include that picture as a photograph, and you map model sides to the picture and move the vertex's to correct alignment. Imagine printing a tattoo on a stocking and then having the girl pull the stocking over her leg. the stocking stretches and bends to follow the leg. AC3d takes the same approach to applying a photograph to a model.

Pepakura respects pretty well a .3DS file that is the export of a AC3d model (make sure your filenames are less than 8 characters!) and unfolds them quite well. I needed a building recently and there was a cool one here at work that I liked. So I took 4 pictures from all four sides, combined them with some photoediting software (whoops there is a 3rd program I use: paint shop pro.) and used that as my texture file. The entire model I built in about an hour, and it took me about 20 minutes of pepakura work to layout the parts on a single sheet of paper. The model was printed and built an hour later.

Here are some pics (below)

AC3D is about $100, pepakure is less than $50, and I still use paint shop pro from 1999 version 6.0 that I got as freeware back in the day.
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Which Program: Draw 3d, paint 3d. unfold?-b79.jpg   Which Program: Draw 3d, paint 3d. unfold?-ss_image02.jpg   Which Program: Draw 3d, paint 3d. unfold?-ss_image03.jpg  
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  #15  
Old 11-15-2016, 02:14 PM
jleslie48 jleslie48 is offline
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and the finished model:
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Which Program: Draw 3d, paint 3d. unfold?-ss_image04.jpg  
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  #16  
Old 11-15-2016, 10:00 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jleslie48 View Post
the only working solution I can use is a combination of the 3d software AC3D (look it up on youtube for tons of examples,) and pepakura designer for unfolding. there are two key elements of AC3D that make it ideal for paper modeling:
1) polygons are true polygons and not just hundreds of triangles. When you unfold a pepakura shape you end up with a minimum number of sides to unfold. this greatly increases your success ratio.
2) the ability to "skin" a model" you take a picture of your object, and it doesn't even have to be straight or square, but you include that picture as a photograph, and you map model sides to the picture and move the vertex's to correct alignment. Imagine printing a tattoo on a stocking and then having the girl pull the stocking over her leg. the stocking stretches and bends to follow the leg. AC3d takes the same approach to applying a photograph to a model.

Pepakura respects pretty well a .3DS file that is the export of a AC3d model (make sure your filenames are less than 8 characters!) and unfolds them quite well. I needed a building recently and there was a cool one here at work that I liked. So I took 4 pictures from all four sides, combined them with some photoediting software (whoops there is a 3rd program I use: paint shop pro.) and used that as my texture file. The entire model I built in about an hour, and it took me about 20 minutes of pepakura work to layout the parts on a single sheet of paper. The model was printed and built an hour later.

Here are some pics (below)

AC3D is about $100, pepakure is less than $50, and I still use paint shop pro from 1999 version 6.0 that I got as freeware back in the day.
Just checked out their site. AC3d lists for $89. The photo mapping is a great feature as Jon mentions above. They use this mapping for games and such, including my favorite "X-Plane". Looks like all you have to do is have a photo of what you want to map onto the model surface, like a wing of a B17.

Might have to check this out, minimum size as well, download won't take very long.

Mike
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  #17  
Old 11-16-2016, 08:07 AM
jleslie48 jleslie48 is offline
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Originally Posted by mbauer View Post
Just checked out their site. AC3d lists for $89. The photo mapping is a great feature as Jon mentions above. They use this mapping for games and such, including my favorite "X-Plane". Looks like all you have to do is have a photo of what you want to map onto the model surface, like a wing of a B17.

Might have to check this out, minimum size as well, download won't take very long.

Mike
It does have a small learning curve, but if you go through a few of the tutorials, you'll see this program is very intuitive, and I actually enjoy working with it. I have still yet to be able to figure out sketchup, its just not fun and it is not intuitive. sketchup models also do not translate well to unfolding: they do not respect the need for minimum polygons that we need for paper models. This is not a fault of sketchup, the fact is most 3d software is trying to do the exact opposite: go for as many polygons as possible to effect the maximum realism of a surface in a video fashion. Our application is very unique: we want to accomplish reasonable realistic rendering, but with the utmost concern for creating flat surfaces with a very low poly count.
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  #18  
Old 11-16-2016, 08:27 AM
jleslie48 jleslie48 is offline
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here's the Norwegian Gem built the same way only with more complex shapes. I used the deck plans from a brochure to give me the out lines of the hull, and built the ship up deck by deck, and then applied the profile photograph to the sides, fine tuning the alignment of the vertex's of each deck so that photograph aligned and good seams with the decks and everything was straightened out.
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Which Program: Draw 3d, paint 3d. unfold?-gem_image13.jpg  
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  #19  
Old 11-16-2016, 12:42 PM
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While they have fundamentally different approaches to modeling, AC3D and Wings3d can both map photographic textures to a model, export it to *.3ds or *.obj which can be imported to Pepakura and unfolded.

In fact, I've managed to bypass Pepakura completely in my Zeppelin model. Though, it took some programming time and there's no doubt it is labor intensive. My long term project is to write a tutorial on how to do it but I think I want to get a few more test models designed before evangelizing.

--jeff
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  #20  
Old 11-16-2016, 04:03 PM
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murphyaa murphyaa is online now
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The only problem I have with photomapping is that your graphics are only as good as the photos you have. Not a problem if you can take your own pictures, but a bit harder if you rely on the internet.
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