Anyone would like to share their thoughts on TreeMaker?

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » August 12th, 2005, 10:08 pm

Just this week I had access to a Mac and run Treemaker for the first time. I had read the manual through the previous week, but even though I thought I had understood everything, you never really learn until you are at the "real thing" (and sometimes not even then).

I wanted to create a centaur so I thought that a model with a head, a tail and 3 flaps on each side would do the trick. I was able to place the nodes and optimize the scale (although the command has a different name than the one on the manual). The program made some calculations (fortunately my friend's Mac is a new machine and is very fast) and rearranged the circles. I changed the views and understood part of what had happened there. Finally I switched to "Show Creases only" view and printed the Cp's.

When I tried to fold them, the final base actually had 3 flaps on each side of the head and tail, but the distribution certainly would not be of use for a centaur. It is more suitable for some kind of insect.

I changed the symmetry line from diagonal to book fold (not automatically though, I had to do all the process again) and I got another base that might also be useful for some simple insect.

I still have lots to learn about this software so I wanted to know if other people has experience using it and could share some of their wisdom

Thanks

wolf · Post by **wolf** » August 13th, 2005, 12:25 am

I tried it once some years ago, when I had access to a Mac. I never fully explored it though, since the thought of folding a crease pattern with unconventional angles puts me off somewhat.

Have you tried fixing the locations of various circles? Adding more constraints usually helps you get a better flap distribution.

Also, can you describe fully why the flap distribution isn't useful? I'm not quite sure I see how your tree figure is laid out, but maybe that's where the problem is - I think what's happening is that you're not putting a river between the centaur arms and its forelegs, so that part may look a bit strange.

My tree figure for a basic centaur looks something like this (bad ASCII drawing coming up!):

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The river between the forelegs/hindlegs is about twice that between the arms/forelegs;also I've made the length of all the six limbs the same for now, extra paper at the arms can be used for fingers.

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » August 13th, 2005, 1:17 am

Hi Wolf

Maybe you should try the program again, for the unconventional angles is not a problem anymore. The program has a feature named "Path angle quantized" that allows you to force the crease at exact divisions of 360 degrees.

My stick figure look spretty much like your. As I mentioned before I tried it both diagonaly and with book simmetry and the program re-arranged everything and gave me some bases with 3 flaps on the sides but coming from weird places.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Anyone else that has tried the program is welcome to give their opinion

wolf · Post by **wolf** » August 13th, 2005, 2:51 am

It might be fun to try, except I don't have a Mac anymore.

It's been at least 5 years since I used it.

Are your flaps connected where you want them to be - ie where the individual circles touch each other? That's another thing that can be tweaked to get better placement of flaps.

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » August 13th, 2005, 3:28 am

I think Treemaker re-arranged my flaps and they ended up not having contacts where I wanted.

As i said before i will have to try it again next week and pay more attention to some details such as contact points.

Thanks for pointing it up

T · Post by T » August 21st, 2005, 12:04 am

anyone know the rough date this program comes out for a pc?

thanks

Joseph Wu · Post by **Joseph Wu** » August 21st, 2005, 1:59 am

T wrote:anyone know the rough date this program comes out for a pc?

thanks

When someone volunteers to port it. Robert is willing to let people try, but only if they pass his test of ability and commitment.

Friet · Post by **Friet** » August 21st, 2005, 2:49 am

A quote from Robert Lang's site.

And if you don't have a Mac? Well, there will soon be TreeMaker 5.0, which will incorporate improved algorithms for crease generation and complete crease assignment (version 4.0 leaves the mountain/valley assignment for certain creases unspecified, although it's easy to figure them out when you're actually folding the base). TreeMaker 5.0 also provides an image of the folded base to go along with the crease pattern. TreeMaker 5.0 is being built using wxWidgets, a cross-platform GUI class library, and when it's ready for release, I should have versions for Mac, Linux, and Windows. I'm working on it now, and hope to have it ready sometime in 2005.

Joseph Wu · Post by **Joseph Wu** » August 21st, 2005, 2:58 am

I missed that. Thanks, Friet.

T · Post by T » August 23rd, 2005, 8:50 am

Thanks v much

steyen · Post by **steyen** » August 24th, 2005, 7:26 pm

me too...cant wait for treemaker windows version

hi brimstone,do you know who is jorge e duardo jaramillo? he recently posted the same topic as yours at a spanish origami group named "GruppoOrigamipatrones"

he also have the same problem of creating the centaur

Brimstone · Post by **Brimstone** » August 25th, 2005, 12:39 am

steyen wrote:me too...cant wait for treemaker windows version

hi brimstone,do you know who is jorge e duardo jaramillo? he recently posted the same topic as yours at a spanish origami group named "GruppoOrigamipatrones"

he also have the same problem of creating the centaur

That is an easy question to answer if you haven't figured it out for yourself. It is me.

steyen · Post by **steyen** » August 28th, 2005, 6:19 am

ha ha
its you really !

thut · Post by **thut** » March 11th, 2006, 5:21 am

Treemaker version 5 is finished!!!!!!!!

and can be downloaded here
http://langorigami.com/science/treemake ... aker5.php4

he also has a new insect in his gallery

Friet · Post by **Friet** » March 13th, 2006, 5:11 pm

Awesome!!!!

Finally a windows version!!