Origami User Interface

When you start Origami the first time, you see the main application window like below:

From left to right you see: the panel tabs, the panel itself and the working area (3D preview). You can click the panel tabs at the left to switch between panels. You use the panels to control everything in Origami: from loading and saving projects to configuring paper types and rendering or exporting scenes. There are 4 panels in Origami:

Main Panel — (displayed above) lets you save and load projects, look for help, connect to Illustrator and so on;
Scene Panel — shows the list of elements (shapes) of the current scene, lets you show and hide them, move, rotate and configure in many ways;
Camera Panel — controls the camera parameters: angles, position, zoom etc;
Export Panel — lets you export or render the current scene.

There is also a special button at the bottom of the panels tab (the bottom left corner of the window) that opens the application settings, where you can configure plenty of Origami parameters, if needed.

The large gray area at the right is the working area (or scene preview) where you see your 3D models folded. You can drag your mouse to rotate preview, zoom in or out using mouse wheel and pan the camera by dragging with the right mouse button.

The button at the bottom left corner of the preview area lets you zoom the camera to the shapes in scene. The buttons at the bottom right corner of the preview area let you exchange dielines with various applications and file formats (we’ll discuss this later).

Now click the Plus button at the bottom right corner of the preview area and select “Pizza Box” from the popup menu to make a sample shape we’ll be using for this tutorial:

Origami 3 with sample pizza box model loaded

You see that there are now two buttons at the bottom right corner and the scene panel is now shown at the left. Let’s have a closer look.

Scene Panel

The scene panel is made of two parts: a list at the top and parameters at the bottom. The list shows all the shapes (elements) in the current scene. You can show and hide them using check boxes near their names, you can rename and delete them by right–clicking the items and you can select them with a click. Origami shows the properties of the selected element at the bottom of the scene panel:

A shape has many parameters grouped in sections:

Position — here you can configure the shape’s offset along the three axes and also its rotation around them. It is useful when you have multiple shapes in scene, otherwise it is easier to leave the default values;
Front and Back — here you can configure diffuse (paper) and foil tint colors. You can also enable the backside here, which affects the Illustrator integration (see below);
Paper — you can specify the paper thickness, side texture and side texture tint here to simulate the paper type you need. There is a presets button at the right of the “Paper” title where you can configure your own paper presets to speed the process up;
Illustrator–specific — we’ll discuss this later;
Information — here you can find the dimensions of the currently selected shape, in case if you need them.

We’ll provide more information on some of these parameters in the next tutorials. Now lets switch to the third panel.

Camera Panel

The panel is quite straightforward and lets you see and configure all the camera parameters:

There are two sections there: Camera and Preview. The latter configures background gradient and grid.

Export Panel

The last panel lets you export and render your scene:

The panel is quite simple and discussed in details in this tutorial.

What’s Next?

Now as we quickly went through the panels it is time to make a first dieline with Illustrator or any other vector editor, like Affinity Designer or Corel Draw.

Connecting to Illustrator — exchange dielines with Illustrator;
Making a Simple Dieline — make a simple dieline and see it in 3D;
Adding Creases — learn how to fold a dieline;
Defining Bottom — tell Origami where is the bottom of the shape;
Multiple Shapes — how to have several objects in the same scene;
Dieline Generator — make dielines faster with the online generator;
Export and Rendering — learn to export scenes or render them.

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