Interactive system for origami creation

Abstract

This paper proposes a new system which supports origami creators who have no special knowledge about origami creation to create their unique works easily in 3-D virtual space. Moreover, 2-D diagrams or 3-D animation are automatically made for describing the folding processes so that people can re-build these works. Users can decide folding operations and create works by an interactive interface. For easy creation, two methods are proposed. One is a method for representing overlapping-faces of 3-D virtual origami in order to support users' recognition of origami's conformation. As a result, users can input information about folding operations easily and correctly. The other one is a method for deriving halfway folding processes according to users' intents. Even if users have rough images about shapes of origami works, they may not be able to start creating an origami model as their imagination. Namely, the system shows folding processes from square to basic forms until they can start do it by themselves. We expect that the common people will create and publish their unique works and more people will enjoy origami. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.