Interesting link - Origami Simulator
This 3D web tool simulates paper-folding--both for origami techniques and related paper art like kirigami. There's also a lot of "impossible" origami sheets in here--folded sheets so complex that few in the real world could ever execute them. Speculative origami?
You can use a slider to flatten and fold the paper, which strikes me as a fun exploration for both origami nerds and extremely stoned individuals.
There's a "pattern" tab where you can see the creases diagrammed on the flat sheet of paper. You can upload your own diagrams as either SVG files, or FOLD files, which is an origami-specific file format established by at least one of the simulation's creators. There is also an elaborate "design tips" page under the "File" menu which I recommend checking out. Generally, this tool tracks mountain and valley folds, "undriven" folds with an unclear fold direction, triangulation folds in polygons with greater than 3 sides, boundaries, and cut lines. It seems that one could upload an origami pattern with a non-square boundary shape, which seems cool. Here are some example kirigami patterns, with green cut lines:
The "about" tab is pretty interesting. This tool was the result of a research project which produced a white paper.
This app allows you to simulate how any origami crease pattern will fold. It may look a little different from what you typically think of as "origami" - rather than folding paper in a set of sequential steps, this simulation attempts to fold every crease simultaneously. It does this by iteratively solving for small displacements in the geometry of an initially flat sheet due to forces exerted by creases.
There is a mode which visualizes these origami "strain" forces, too.
Anyway, seems like something that could be interesting to some game development disciplines! And it's a cool toy regardless.
By the way... it's my first "interesting link" post outside Cohost! Enjoy!!