Generating multi-style paper pop-up designs using 3D primitive fitting

Abstract

Paper pop-ups are fascinating three-dimensional books that impart stories and information more vividly to their readers. The design and construction of these pop-up books, however, are generally done by hand, and given the lack of expertise in this area, have necessitated the need for automated or computer-assisted design of paper pop-ups. This paper presents an automatic algorithm and the underlying theory for producing paper pop-up designs from 3D models. Existing studies on paper pop-ups have mainly focused on individual styles and proposed formulations for only a limited set of mechanisms. In our work, we design multi-style pop-ups by combining the formulations of previously studied styles with our derived validity conditions for box-style pop-ups. We use a mesh abstraction technique that fits volumetric primitives unto a 3D mesh, which are later automatically mapped to selected mechanisms. We also preserve important texture and shape contours using a hybrid object- and image-space approach. Finally, we generate printable design layouts and the corresponding assembly instructions to facilitate the actual production, which verifies the feasibility of our pop-ups.