foldMation
A new Innovative way to bring Origami Fold Creation and Learning online
Idea
There should be a way to digitally create origami folds, and no, it's not done via dragging the paper from one corner to another. That modality is extremely limiting and won't be able to produce anything but the most basic folds. In order to create more common folds, we need to be able to manipulate the paper in such a way to produce most if not all of the following folds.
The goal is to create a tool for users to create origami folds; an interactive player for folders to learn how to fold from created folds; and a community for users to share their creations and learn from each other.
How about video? Why not just record the fold for creators and watch from videos for folders? Well, this tool isn't really to replace videos. First of all, it is highly unlikely that this tool will ever be able to produce more complex folds. So it isn't competing against videos on that front. For simpler folds, creating it on foldMation should be easier than setting up a camera system to record the folding in good lighting and later needing to upload to video servers. For folders, a simulator can enable unlimited repeats of a difficult step and much faster fast forwards and rewinds. It can also provide a way to view the fold from more than just the single angle of the video captured.
Parts
To make this tool possible, there needs be a domain specific language that is tailored to origami folding. After looking hard for it and not able to find it, I decided to create it myself. More on that in this Mation-spec post.
Having a DSL is great, but it's not enough. We need an interactive way to manipulate the paper and to compose the fold instructions without the user typing. When the set of keywords of the DSL is small, having the user type the steps not only take away the flow, but it is also much easier to simply click on a limited set of keywords instead. More over, this is an app that is perfectly suited to be used on a tablet. Needing to bring up the keyboard everytime after manipulating the fold can be an unpleasant experience.
What we need is a viewer that can display the paper and allow the user to move it around in order to view areas that are not visible. The viewer will need to provide a way for users to easily specify the source "points" -- the folded corners, target "points" or "edges to fold over" if there is no target points. It will need to provide a way to specify the many kinds of creases, such as those dealing with percentages and degrees.
Talk
I presented it at the Pacific Coast Origami Conference in October 2023. I was only able to demo it from my computer at the time, but the feedback was encouraging and great.
Release
This is by far the most difficult project I attempted. My initial estimate is about a year. It has been almost 2 years now and there is still much to be done and many bugs to be fixed. There are just too many special cases to handle. Most of the bugs are due to layering of faces. The layering part still hasn't been fully ironed out yet. I am not sure if it ever will be. It will be a fix as it goes kind of thing. It is currently up online now, but I haven't really announced it yet. There are a few important items to be done such as a quick lookup reference among others. Goal is to complete these last items before end of the year.
So give it a try and let me know what you think.