@Dannyela, Really really sorry for the inconvenience and the poor system maintenance. Currently, we are upgrading (rebuilding from the ground up in fact) the entire system. Meanwhile, you can always access features through the following links.

• Simulator: https://dorigami.com/app/workspace
• Album: https://dorigami.com/app/album

You can also try the bleeding edge simulator which I hope will be the next big release. Still under heavy development and only the replaying is supported. Your feedback and comment are priceless for the new direction.

• New simulator: https://dorigami.com/dev/test/[real]crane.json/

As an effort for adding interoperability with FOLD (Flexible Origami List Data structure) file format, FOLD viewer was implemented and published on Github as open source.

Why Another Viewer?

There is a good viewer created by Jason Ku. It’s an excellent implementation. But it’s written in CoffeeScript and I wanted a more accessible and extensible implementation that can be part of the bigger growing system for origami simulation so I made the following decisions:

• TypeScript as an implementation language
• Three.js as a 3D framework

So Is It Worth?

The sophisticated type system of TypeScript makes it possible to express the FOLD file format specification in a very concise and elegant way (as in the fold_format.ts file). As the FOLD format specification evolves, maintaining the implementation reflecting the new changes in the specification would be a no-brainer.

Working on the interactive origami simulator at D’origami I find current origami diagrams and D’origami lack features that can make origami much more joyful and engaging. Here is my idea about hyper-diagram - a new kind of origami diagram.

TL;DR: Hyper-diagram is an interactive, dynamic origami diagram recreated for the digital age.

Music Notes and Origami Diagrams

(or the importance of origami diagrams)

I often find a close analogy between the origami diagrams and music notes.

Music note is lingua franca for music. Essentially a common notation system that makes it a dominant medium for conveying music. It's getting even more valuable when you enjoy or learn by yourself without a teacher. Diagrams are lingua franca for origami. Essentially a common notation system that makes it a dominant medium for conveying origami. It's getting even more valuable when you enjoy or learn by yourself without a teacher. Human interaction is great and actually one of the best parts of origami-related activities. Nothing can be better than learning directly from and sharing the joy of creation with real people but still, the value of quality medium is huge.

Origami Diagrams: Good Parts

Crease patterns and videos are also used in modern origami community. And yet origami diagrams are by far the most used format for learning and sharing origami because they faithfully reflect the essential characteristics of origami.

Characteristics of Origami

• It's 3D, a spatial representational form of art, just like sculpture or architecture.
• It's the folding process that gives us the joy of creation, discovery, and sharing. We usually enjoy beautiful sculptures but less likely the creation process, often a lonely and painstaking process. But in origami, we appreciate the folding process as well as the finished art. Often even more than the finished origami itself.
• It's easy. Very cheap and easy to start, even for kids.

Features of Origami Diagrams

• Intuitive, easy to understand (for the most time)
• Common, simple notation (thanks to Akira Yoshizawa, the grandmaster of origami)
• Sequential yet in full timeline context

Origami Diagrams: Wanted Improvements

But I think the origami diagrams have the following problems to be fixed or can be improved:

• It’s 2D since they’re drawn on paper no matter how they try to depict a 3D representation of origami sheets.
• It’s static. The dynamic and magical transforming process of paper sheets along with the timeline is barely expressed.
• It’s not always easy to understand. Sometimes very difficult to interpret the intention of instructions especially for tricky folds. I often get stuck while trying hard to properly understand those instructions. I’m sure others have similar experiences.
• It’s difficult to create. Creating diagrams is not what many people do (usually artists and publishers do) but still are too difficult than it should be. Quite similar to architectural drawings and unlike fine arts, origami diagrams has both artistic and engineering aspect and engineering parts like geometric shapes correctness can be fully automated.

Traditional architecture drawings have been fully digitized nowadays being benefit from CAD systems and simulations. Origami diagrams can have a similar transition by taking a ride on the digital revolution and engineering correctness can be obtained with zero effort from the creator.

Hyper-Diagrams - New Kind of Origami Diagrams

I believe origami diagrams can be something much more dynamic, fun, and easier to enjoy, and create than they are now if they have the following features:

• Full 3D - ready for VR/AR/XR technology
  • D’origami already showed the possibility
• Fully Interactive - something we can act on, even directly editable
  • sheet and instruction in each step is fully engaged with the user interactions such as zooming, rotation, etc.
  • modifying sheet materials, background decorations, on-sheet paintings in-place
• Animated - something dynamic, alive, and living creature-like
• Hyperlinked - something smart eg. references to used bases or similar works or other media such as books or videos. Not anything new but seen enough from the web pages and ebooks nowadays.
• Self-generated - automatically created from the user’s recorded folding steps. As more features are added artistic touch can also improve.

Now What

I’m starting to build a prototype of hyper-diagrams for showing how they work and get feedback from the users. Maybe I need another dedicated article for a detailed feature list of hyper-diagrams. Also working prototype itself is accessible to D’origami users.

Your feedback is highly wanted and appreciated. Leave comments or send a message to me “innan.yun at gmail dot com”.

Reference Products

• WikiHow Origami diagrams utilizing heavy use of videos - Already has several wanted features of hyper-diagram: animated, and hyperlinked. But not fully 3D, limited interactivity, fixed viewpoint (of a camera), and (seemingly) hard to create.
• Origami diagram with the visual clue of instruction sequence path - I like the background stripe of the snake-flow path for a visual clue of the instruction sequence.

Hi @hm933, thank you for your feedback. Your comment and feature requests are priceless to us.

I tried to rephrase my understanding of your feature request in a more tech-savvy way below hoping you can pinpoint specific ones for me:

• “to flatten paper”:
  • to align face planes with the desktop plane
  • to unfold the sheet flat preserving all crease patterns created so far. Note that “unfold” differs from “undo” which discards folds and, naturally, crease lines.
  • to restore folded sheet to its initial state (= new sheet) discarding all folds so far
• “to straighten paper”: to align sheet direction with
  • normalized (such as “horizontal” or “vertical”) directions or
  • any wanted directions

The ticked ones in the above list are already implemented features (at least partially if not complete). My question: “You want a quick way to unfold the sheet completely flat (preserving crease lines):question:”

Let me answer with those existing features for quick solutions based on my current understanding hoping they can make your dorigami experience even a little easier.

• Flattening
  • Click the “back” button (⏪) to UNDO the last fold and proceed one step backward. If you make a new fold here then the last fold is discarded and the new fold is recorded. Click the “next” button (⏩) to restore the last fold.
  • Click the “skip to the start” button (⏮) to start over. Once you start a new fold sequence, the fold sequence you’ve made so far is discarded.
  • “Snap” feature helps you align fold lines or face planes with other edges or planes while you’re making fold lines. Note that this feature is still far from complete. Your case is related to this.
• Straightening
  • Double-click the sheet to reset its position and direction (transformation) back to the initial value.
  • Right drag in the background to rotate the sheet around Z-axis while left drag is for free rotation around any (X, Y, and Z-)axis
  • Double-click in the background for quick rotation for 45° in that direction

Gocha! You’ve actually found a bug in our system and I thank you for your spot!

This is quite embarrassing. It will be filed to our issue tracking system and we’ll start working on it. Not sure how long it’ll take to resolve this but will try at our best. Will update you as soon as possible.

Until then, take care :)

A new release (0.18.0) was made:

• added US Letter paper
• restored paper selection UX (via settings button with cog icon(⚙) in workspace)

Happy folding!

The simulator is back. Sorry, it took longer (~12 hours) than expected. 😥 Definitely need much improvement in process and workflow. Hope we could devote a fuller effort to improve D’origami once we get funding.

Feedback and comments are more than welcome.
Happy folding! 😀

Dear D’origami users,

Terribly sorry to announce that the D’origami simulator will not be available temporarily during the system maintenance (27 Oct 2020 16:00 UTC - ?) for restoring paper selection UX with additional paper size (US letter). Sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll try to bring back the simulator ASAP.

See you soon hopefully in hours.

@hm933, you pointed correctly. Your sight on code is really sharp. Amazing.

Currently, two paper sizes (aspect ratio to be exact) are supported: the square (1:1), and A4 (11.69:8.27). But selection UX has been temporally disabled due to poor readiness for mobile screens. We need more UX design work to make dorigami work equally for any device.

Do you want to bring them back for trying on desktop screens?