In comes Tinkercad, a new 3D Design program available online as free-through-trial. Pepakura works by converting the 3D model's geometric faces and vertices into foldable papercraft surfaces, therefore we need to use a program that converts objects using a low surface polygon count. Since we will eventually be exporting our model into the papercrafting program Pepakura, we need to have a 3D design software that will meet its restrictions.

For more on paper 3D printing I suggest this instructableĪlso, you'll want to download a free PDF converter software, to export from Pepakura into GIMP.

They have a 'paper cut out' option which is decent for the most part, but their 'Slice' option is most impressive.

Autodesk 123D: Autodesk's new 123D Make program is a new software program for creating and 3D printing objects.

It's learning curve is a bit steep, however.

Blender: A really powerful free 3D design modeling program with a variety of different options.

More on this later, but a good companion piece to Pepakura.

Metasequoia- A fantastic model editing software for correcting 3D models.

The software is relatively simple to use and is popular with designers such as Ninjatoes

Google Sketchup- A free-trial software application that can export to Pepakura.For this project, I will be walking through the process of creating a papercraft from the ground up- using a free online program called Tinkercad, the popular paper design program Pepakura, and free photo editing software Gimp. The purpose of this instructable is to provide a general introduction to Designing, Unfolding and Coloring your own papercraft models. While there are many fantastic papercraft designers on Instructables (notably members like or Robives), designing simple papercraft models or even converting basic 3D models into paper models is not too difficult.

Pepakura designer online