My kid wanted to be a fish for halloween but didn’t know how to make it, so we decided it was a GF opportunity. I took some methods I’ve been working on to translate SketchUp models into paper craft and had pretty good results – at the very least it was fun to take her through a project from idea to execution and she got a kick running around in the costume. It’s hanging in her room now as a decoration, so that feels good.
Process basics:
Modeled the body in SketchUp
Flattened, exported and traced a pattern in Illustrator
Separated into eight pieces that fit my GF Basic
Cut them out of 130lb watercolor paper
Assembled, glued + reinforced
Painted the whole thing
Added eyes and scales made from wrapping paper (also cut on GF)
Ziptied a helmet inside
And then because we’re in Chicago and it SNOWED on Halloween my kid wore her NASA jumpsuit to stay warm so technically she was a “Fishtronaut”. Her sister was warm enough dressed as a goat.
Does Sketch-up have that ability? Or Illustrator? I have had limited success with Blender, and Freeship, but wondering what other programs have that ability.
There’s a SketchUp plugin called Flattery that’s designed to unwrap a faceted 3D model into a flat pattern. It works maybe 50% of the time. Sometimes it just mashes all the individual faces into one pile. But the pile is coplanar and you can use it as an underlay to trace and build a pattern in Illustrator. For a free toolkit it’s been decently worthwhile.
There’s a plugin called Flattery for sketchup that takes 3D models (only ones made of flat surfaces) and unfolds them into a flat pattern. It works…about half the time. And sometimes it works but it inverts the panels. You can figure it out with some trial and error.
