Origami Diagrams and 3D Animation from Flat-Foldable Crease Patterns Sequences

Origami is the art of folding paper. It is a simple way of constructing geometric shapes from a single sheet of paper without using any cuts. There are two usual forms to document an origami model; diagrams and crease patterns. Diagrams are the step-by-step sequences that can be found in traditional origami books while crease pattern is the pattern of creases left on the paper after folding an origami model. The disadvantage of crease patterns is that it is difficult to use them to recreate the design, since crease patterns show only where each crease must be made and not a step-by-step instruction. However, drawing diagrams is tedious and very time-consuming. We propose a method to autonomously generate the corresponding diagram for a crease pattern sequence. Each element of the sequence represent the state of the paper in a certain origami step. We construct a sequence of steps, also generating an animation to show the transition between steps, thus helping novice origamists.