paper planes and simple origamis with "plane"sculpties?

does anyone got any tips on how I can make simple paper planes and/or simple origamis by really folding the plane sculpty?

any free program, or techniques for free programs, that make this easier?

I don't wanna cheat by trying to make the shape backwards (trying to make a mesh look like the final shape), I wanna actually replicate the foldings done on real paper, I know that due tot he mesh resolution some models will be impossible or much harder to do or have much more limitations than others, but simpler stuff should be possible, it should just a mater of using the right tools/techniques

I think my main difficulties are being diagonal folds and folds that get folded by other folds. At least that is where I've not managed to go further so far

Diagonals will be the problem. Even if you use triangles rather than quads to model with, all the diagonals go in the same direction (bottom left to top right), so even basic origami techniques are impossible to do. Your only real option is to fake it.

I would be willing to accept the vertexes not being distributed uniformly (having the one close tot he folds aligned to thme in away that allows te fold to be done) if I don't have to di ti manually, though the less distortion on the texture applied to the model the better (ideally any texture would look like it was printed ont he paper and the paper was folded, though perhaps this might not be possible depending on what folds are done)

Normals will be an issue. Since the planes are one-sided (invisible from behind), you'll need to do some careful twisting with each "fold". It's certainly doable, but it will be a tremendous PITA.

An easier option would be to use two planes, one being the exact reverse of the other. Link them together, and you'll have what appears to be a single two-sided plane in SL.

yeah, i was thinking about using the insideout option on an exact copy of the prim to make it two sided

but other than manually arranging the vertexes to get the each fold right, you don't know of any other way to do it without "cheating"?

I would think that Wings 3D would pretty good for this, because there are primitive commands that closely match what you would do with a piece of paper. For example, to make any fold, regardless of whether there is already a set of connected vertices along the desired path, you can select a set of connected vertices that go in the right general direction, and a single flatten command will pull them all into a straight line. If that doesn't give you the exact crease line you want, its easy enough to adjust it to exactly where you want it. If you then select all the vertices on one side of the straight crease line you just created, a single rotate command will allow you fold it to whatever angle you want.

The limited precision of scultpy vertices (8 bits for each dimension) is going to limit how sharp the diagonal lines are going to be in SL, though.

you mean some might get rounded? or jagged?

Jagged, because when the vertex positions are adjusted to the nearest possible integer value, the points won't necessarily be on a straight line any more. It's no different than any other sculpty, but it might be more noticeable than usual because one expects origami to have really sharp edges. Come to think of it, any slanted planes will be affected, too. They will probably not look sharp.

I would think you could get the best looking results by using the smallest mesh possible, not necessarily square even if you're doing something that would made from a square piece of paper. But that probably qualifies as "cheating".

you mean like making the spaces between folds be just one or two tris and compress the rest of the vertexes into a single point/line?

Yes, that is what I was thinking.

I would still need to manually figure out where to collapse vertexes so when they are rendered in SL I don't risk getting the screwy edges where a SL disagrees with the modeling program on which three vertexes should form individual triangle...

Agreed. But that may be easier in Wings than what you are used to, in that the Wings exporter maps vertices directly to bitmap pixels, without the use of an intermediary UV map. Of course, Qarl has accepted most of our requested changes wrt sculpties with small dimensions (which is what you would probably want to use if you pursued this path), which means what you see in SL will soon change.

does the triangles on Wings3D match the tris in SL exactly?

what are the changes for small sculpties you're tlaking about btw?

For 32x32 or smaller, yes.
See http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-9384.

This approach might work, although I'd be worried about the paper's "thickness" (10 mm) causing problems...

1. Fold a paper plane in RL. Then unfold the sheet and use it as a model.
2. Create a prim for each triangle and shape of your model.
3. Piece them together to form a rectangle that looks like your unfolded model.
4. Manipulate the pieces to "fold up" your airplane.

that would be quite a few prims, that is why I would be more interested ina way to fold sculpty meshes

Yep, it's not a prim-saving solution. But you could delete all the hidden prims once it's folded up.

hidden prims? you mean for rotating around the folds? even without them, using a prim for each area between folds would stillbe quite a few more prims than doing it all with one or two sculpties