Turn your low-poly creations into papercraft instructions with this Blender addon.
You no longer need any additional software or good faith in some automatic unfolding algorithm. PolyZamboni provides you with all tools necessary to create high quality paper models!
With the addon enabled, select any mesh object and navigate to the PolyZamboni panel in the viewport sidebar (toggle with 'N'
) and click on the Unfold this mesh
button. This starts the unfolding process of the selected mesh with no initial cuts.
Not all meshes can be processed by PolyZamboni. The following things prevent this addon from working for your mesh:
You will get a warning whenever one of these fail-cases occur and the option to select all faces that need to be fixed.
To transform your 3D model into printable mesh pieces that can be glued together to create an awesome paper model, you have to define where the mesh should be cut open and where to place flaps for glueing. You can edit cuts and glue flaps by entering Edit Mode
. Here, you have access to plenty of powerful tools:
Separate Materials
adds cuts between all faces that have different materials assigned to them.Auto Unfold
automatically adds cuts until the entire mesh can be unfolded. The algorithm tries to create loops of connected faces. You can choose whether these loops should wrap around the X
, Y
or Z
axis. You can also give a maximum number of connected faces.Remove Auto Cuts
removes all automatically added cuts. In case you are not happy with the results of the previously listed operation.Recompute Flaps
places glue flaps at all cut edges. The greedy algorithm tries to avoid overlaps of the printed pieces. There is also a toggle next to the button that lets you decide whether flaps should alternate along patch boundaries.Alt+C
opens the manual cuts pie menu. Here you can cut, clear or glue all selected edges. Glued edges can not be cut by the Auto Unfold
operator and have no other purpose. You can also select multiple faces and mark them as one connected region via the Define Region
operator. This automatically cuts all edges between selected and non-selected faces.Alt+X
opens the glue flaps pie menu. Here you can flip the glue flaps attached to all selected edges.PolyZamboni renders feedback on top of your models. Dotted lines on top of mesh edges indicate one of the following:
All connected face regions, separated by cut edges, are visualized via colored patches on top of mesh faces. These regions colored based on their quality:
Glue flaps are also visualized on top of faces at the position they will have in the papercraft version of your mesh. If any flap overlaps with something in the instruction, it will be colored red.
Before exporting the instructions for your model, PolyZamboni allows you to edit the final page layout. For this go to the UV or Image-Editor
and open the sidebar. After clicking on Create print review
and setting some layout options, a preview of all pages and papermodel pieces should appear on your screen. You can then edit the layout by clicking on Edit page layout
. Here you can do the following things:
g
. Behaves similar to Blender's move operator.r
. Behaves similar to Blender's rotate operator.Once you are satisfied with your edits, you can export the paper model instruction. Go to File->Export->Polyzamboni Export PDF/SVG or just click in the respective buttons in the side panel. PolyZamboni lets you fully customize the instructions appearance. Here is a list of export options:
Tip: Model size and margins are measured in the units of the current blender scene. I recommend to set the scenes length unit to something like cm, unless you are planning to create huge models. Change this setting at Scene Properties->Units.
I am thrilled to see what you can create with this addon. Share your cool papercraft creations with me and the world!
This extension requests the following permission:
Export PDF/SVG to disk
Hi! Thanks for the review :)
The mesh edge visibility is an issue. I do not know how to render lines infront of mesh faces but behind edges (like seams are rendered by Blender). My solution is to draw dotted lines so you can still see the mesh edge behind it. You can adjust the dotted line length to your liking in the PolyZamboni Render Settings Panel. The colored regions can also be hidden there, in case they annoy you.
I assume 'twisted polygons' are faces that are not planar. The Addon warns you if very twisted faces are present when starting the unfolding process. I chose a somewhat arbitrary threshhold that might be a bit to lax at the moment. Maybe an operator that gives you some kind of planarity score would be a nice feature to add here.
Thanks again for the feedback! I plan on making a tutorial video soon. Maybe it will clarify some things further. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this addon (also for larger projects) im happy to hear from you :)
Hi, having bit of a trouble here, would you be able to provide a video tutorial any time soon? please? also, thank you!
Hi! I plan to make a tutorial video soon to make this addon more accessible :)
Is there anything specific you are having trouble with? Maybe I can clarify some things here already.
And thank you for the review, it means a lot to me!
Hello! I've been using Export Paper Model for pepakura blueprints. Your add-on has been filling out a lot of what I wished was available to me while working with the latter. I do however find it difficult to navigate the Zamboni interface, and would prefer seeing the Edges while defining regions, which has also been a problem when I can't (or don't know how to) hotkey the command. Your work looks very promising for low-poly and small projs, but after working with it, there's room to fill to cater larger meshes such as one I'm working on.
One key difference from Export Paper Model was the lack of notice about 'twisted polygons': faces that would curve if it were on paper. I haven't ever printed my works yet but that might be a concern, yes?
Everything aside, your work is great! High hopes for this passion project of yours