After looking at the web page (wow, this is a nicely designed app!), I read a bunch of comments being annoyed at the price, so I went to check, expecting something ridiculous - and it’s $30, with a free trial‽
At least for people in the US this is, like, two meals at a fast casual restaurant. It’s four hours work even at the depressingly low federal minimum wage. The Mac to run it on cost a thousand dollars. It’s way less than someone into this hobby will spend on paper and glue if they’re making more than a couple of models.
Depresses me that people see so little value here.
I wouldn’t buy it at any price because I’m not, and don’t want to get, into papercraft, but it’s a fair price.
Unfortunately the Apple App Store set an incredibly low floor of "free" or $0.99 when it launched. Whether companies were just trying to get customers or Apple was subsidizing things, the expectation is an "app" is cheap and disposable.
$30 is eminently reasonable for this kind of thing. And it isn't a subscription! But it costs more than a morning coffee so impulse is restrained and some people just don't like being restrained.
I like the clean design of the landing page. I downloaded it and started the app and it needs an OBJ file to even do anything, so I wasn't able to play with it at all.
It would be cool if it included sample OBJ files to entice me to find my own later. Otherwise I feel like I just hit a wall immediately in the app will probably not try it again.
The way I tested was search Thingiverse for "angular" and download an STL, then convert it online to an OBJ on the first search result for "stl to obj"
Sadly, some of the crenelations on top of it are just cubes with 2 sides missing that would be impossible to attach to the folded up rook. I imagine there is a ton of loss between a file for a 3D printer, a random convert to Obj with no settings, and this net maker, so I'm not unsympathetic to the problem. It's just that this is a printout that would not be foldable into something useful.
So weird for me to see this popup now on HN as I happened to dig through an old downloads folder a few minutes ago and saw an install file for Pepakura (13/11/2014), and wondered where that sort of thing had ended up... .
For a look at someone solving a harder version of this problem with stretchy fabric deformation, check out pandafold.app
Admittedly an unconventional audience but its a curious problem space. Pepakura as mentioned here does this very well. The author of this software looks to be familiar with it
That site would do well to show an image of an actual physical thing you can make with it instead of the same images over and over of a cartoonish dog/wolf head.
Just a suggestion: have an example obj object, or several, loaded up. It will sound nuts to you, but I probably won't find one and will just unload the app when I need space.
I wrote something like this for windows 20 years ago, a friend of mine used it to make some cutout models for an art exhibition.
It's an interesting problem to try to solve. Anything but the simplest model requires more than one cutout, which you then (in my app at least) have to position by hand onto sheets of paper for printing. Performing the unfold to minimise the number of separate sections was not something I even attempted.
I found the idea very interesting but put off a little bit by the various details such as face normals etc (have limited knowledge of the topic). Here are few ideas to increase adoption:
- Sample files
- A video of end-to-end process of creating a basic model (perhaps something more complex than a cube) from 3d design to finished artefact.
I don't have an usecase, I don't own a printer even. But this is actually a good piece of software - it seems non-trivial from algorithmic point of view, UX is also well polished. Kudos to authors.
Same — as someone building macOS utilities I have a soft spot for indie apps that tackle genuinely hard algorithmic problems and still manage to ship a clean UI. The gap between "technically interesting" and "actually usable by non-experts" is huge, and it looks like they've bridged it well here.
The usecase for Unfolder or Pepkura isn't 3D printing. They're targeted at paper crafting. You print the unfolded file onto paper, cut, fold, and glue to create a 3D object. Something like these samples <https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=paper%20craft%20models&ia=i...>
As someone who is not into papercraft I'm intrigued, but it feels like it's not for me. If the app was advertised as having a small selection of simple models to get started with, people in my position might be more interested in trying it out.
Isn’t the screen shot of the app just below the fold good enough? Or would you like to see the finished product. The quality of that would significantly depend on the person making it (how well they can cut paper, how well they can glue) and their commitment to quality (how hard they’re trying), so I think it would either oversell the product by showing something the average user cannot produce or undersell it.
The app reminds me of the boom of (IMO) cool Mac apps around 2010. It's a great idea as well, I wish I had thought of it. The price is out of reach for me though...
If I built a Mac app, the reason would be that I use a Mac, as do a lot of other people, and native apps are a lot more pleasant than non-native apps. I don't really understand why it's "restrictive"? There is no restriction happening.
You can vibe code an app like this, relying on OBJ import (no editing apart from cutting/opening constraints), in possibly half a day.
If you doubt me, take, me up on it.
Sure, I have 35 years of experiences writing computer graphics code but I am certain I would just need to provide functional description input to Claude or Codex for this.
Zero architecture or deep 3D know-how.
The only challenge/interesting part is what happens with non-planar polygons (>3 vertices). I.e. deciding if they can be unrolled (approximated with a cylindrical or conical surface enough to 'work' when cut from paper that does not stretch).
You can alleviate this problem completely by always triangulating befor calculating any unfolding solution ofc (and get zero curved surfaces in the resulting paper model thusly).
The rest is rather trivial.
I'm not saying this isn't great, I just don't understand how you could ask people to pay for it, in early 2026.
I can tell that is not trivial. I like to design papercrafts with my kids, and I use Blender but always wanted something on par with Pepakura but for Linux, so I decided to use Claude to build something similar. Furthermore, I started suggesting the Java/JavaFX stack because it is easier for me than JS, but I couldn't even create an STL viewer, so I let Claude decide the tech stack. It chose web/react/etc. (no surprise), the STL was loaded and presented as expected, the unfolding process was harder, and finally I gave up. Claude couldn't figure out by itself the best algorithm; the results were always wrong, and unfolding was just the first feature I wanted. My conclusion is that this is not the kind of application that can be easily resolved with vibecoding; the approach must be different, maybe AI assisting specific building parts to someone who knows exactly how the result should be with low-level detail.
You should really try vibe coding a nontrivial 3D app before you die on this particular hill. LLMs are still really bad at spatial reasoning and coordinate systems. Like, painfully bad.
Given your confidence and the seemingly small amount of time you think it will take, this seems like something you should be proving rather than expecting others to do so.
After looking at the web page (wow, this is a nicely designed app!), I read a bunch of comments being annoyed at the price, so I went to check, expecting something ridiculous - and it’s $30, with a free trial‽
At least for people in the US this is, like, two meals at a fast casual restaurant. It’s four hours work even at the depressingly low federal minimum wage. The Mac to run it on cost a thousand dollars. It’s way less than someone into this hobby will spend on paper and glue if they’re making more than a couple of models.
Depresses me that people see so little value here.
I wouldn’t buy it at any price because I’m not, and don’t want to get, into papercraft, but it’s a fair price.
Unfortunately the Apple App Store set an incredibly low floor of "free" or $0.99 when it launched. Whether companies were just trying to get customers or Apple was subsidizing things, the expectation is an "app" is cheap and disposable.
$30 is eminently reasonable for this kind of thing. And it isn't a subscription! But it costs more than a morning coffee so impulse is restrained and some people just don't like being restrained.
I like the clean design of the landing page. I downloaded it and started the app and it needs an OBJ file to even do anything, so I wasn't able to play with it at all.
It would be cool if it included sample OBJ files to entice me to find my own later. Otherwise I feel like I just hit a wall immediately in the app will probably not try it again.
The way I tested was search Thingiverse for "angular" and download an STL, then convert it online to an OBJ on the first search result for "stl to obj"
Specifically I tried this rook from this chess set. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5994219/files
Sadly, some of the crenelations on top of it are just cubes with 2 sides missing that would be impossible to attach to the folded up rook. I imagine there is a ton of loss between a file for a 3D printer, a random convert to Obj with no settings, and this net maker, so I'm not unsympathetic to the problem. It's just that this is a printout that would not be foldable into something useful.
Some items on thingsverse provide .obj files; like the king in this chess set...
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1078513/files
or this army tank...
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4618182/files
(n.b. under the main image viewer click the "files" tab to explore individual files/extensions)
So, like Pepakura? https://pepakura.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura_designer/
No!
This one is called Unfolder, it's a different app, made by a different person, etc...
More than one app per category can exist, and that's good!
Sure, but it's like Pepakura. And that's a valuable piece of information for people who don't run MacOS.
So weird for me to see this popup now on HN as I happened to dig through an old downloads folder a few minutes ago and saw an install file for Pepakura (13/11/2014), and wondered where that sort of thing had ended up... .
But for Mac! I fonder the difference of the free and paid version through.
You can put "for Mac" in a turd and it'll reach front page in a day.
Doubly so if the app looks like it works well and would be interesting to HN readers!
What a secret cheat code! Make awesome stuff that people like and charge them money for it. Who would have thought!
Just wanted to say: what a gorgeous icon, and such a Mac-ass app design.
Feels like the heyday of OS X, which for me was undoubtedly between 2006-2012. Delicious Library, Toast, Transmit. I could go on.
Congrats to the creator :)
For a look at someone solving a harder version of this problem with stretchy fabric deformation, check out pandafold.app
Admittedly an unconventional audience but its a curious problem space. Pepakura as mentioned here does this very well. The author of this software looks to be familiar with it
https://www.pandafold.app works but https://pandafold.app does not.
That site would do well to show an image of an actual physical thing you can make with it instead of the same images over and over of a cartoonish dog/wolf head.
This is lovely and very slick, but you can get equivalent results for $0 with Blender and Export Paper Model.
That has the benefit of letting you create/edit/export the model in a single application instance in a single workflow that is easy with practice.
I will explore your suggestion, and I love Blender.
But that "easy with practice." does a lot of lifting here.
Though that practice-with-Blender then opens up so many possibilities in the 3D space it is ridiculous. Take the time to learn Blender people!
Just a suggestion: have an example obj object, or several, loaded up. It will sound nuts to you, but I probably won't find one and will just unload the app when I need space.
I wrote something like this for windows 20 years ago, a friend of mine used it to make some cutout models for an art exhibition.
It's an interesting problem to try to solve. Anything but the simplest model requires more than one cutout, which you then (in my app at least) have to position by hand onto sheets of paper for printing. Performing the unfold to minimise the number of separate sections was not something I even attempted.
I found the idea very interesting but put off a little bit by the various details such as face normals etc (have limited knowledge of the topic). Here are few ideas to increase adoption:
- Sample files
- A video of end-to-end process of creating a basic model (perhaps something more complex than a cube) from 3d design to finished artefact.
- Support for STL
- Built-in option to adjust (reduce) face counts
What's the usual production method for the final model?
Do you need cardstock and a cricut machine? Or a laser cutter?
How do you align artwork on the object?
Print it, use scissors and glue.
There is a free Blender plugin for papercraft, see demo https://matiasmorant.wordpress.com/2017/12/23/papercraft-wit...
I don't have an usecase, I don't own a printer even. But this is actually a good piece of software - it seems non-trivial from algorithmic point of view, UX is also well polished. Kudos to authors.
Same — as someone building macOS utilities I have a soft spot for indie apps that tackle genuinely hard algorithmic problems and still manage to ship a clean UI. The gap between "technically interesting" and "actually usable by non-experts" is huge, and it looks like they've bridged it well here.
The usecase for Unfolder or Pepkura isn't 3D printing. They're targeted at paper crafting. You print the unfolded file onto paper, cut, fold, and glue to create a 3D object. Something like these samples <https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=paper%20craft%20models&ia=i...>
> The usecase for Unfolder or Pepkura isn't 3D printing.
I'm assuming they meant a 2D printer, which you need to be able to use this.
Oooo this might be useful for doing geometry unwrapping for laser cutting
This is great - reminds me of the golden age of cool little MacOS apps
This is really cool.
As someone who is not into papercraft I'm intrigued, but it feels like it's not for me. If the app was advertised as having a small selection of simple models to get started with, people in my position might be more interested in trying it out.
Hmm couldn't find any pictures of actual results from using this?
Isn’t the screen shot of the app just below the fold good enough? Or would you like to see the finished product. The quality of that would significantly depend on the person making it (how well they can cut paper, how well they can glue) and their commitment to quality (how hard they’re trying), so I think it would either oversell the product by showing something the average user cannot produce or undersell it.
I didn't use this app, but I did happen to make a paper moai mask recently using a pattern purchased from etsy.
https://ibb.co/BHcG4BkB
It would be cool if this used ModelIO to do the 3D model loading. It supports a ton of formats which would ease the workflow of asset import.
You’d get STL, Alembic, USD, PLY support in addition to the OBJ.
I remember something like this was huge for rc planes 10-20 years ago as you could then make a plane out of thin bendable foam
You'd make a 3D model from 3-views then use something like this to unfold it
You're thinking of the same app i used to use! I think it was a Japanese app called Papakura? It's what helped me learn 3d modeling back in the day
From another comment: https://pepakura.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura_designer/
Beautiful landing page. I wonder if it uses the OCCT unfolding algorithms or something similar under the hood?
Slightly unrelated: are the OCCT unfolding components a paid add on or included in the open source distribution?
Unfolder? But I barely even know her! Jk, awesome project tho! Makes me wanna make cool packaging for products
What a fantastic idea. Developers who enable others to create art are artists in their own right!
Good artists enable others, great artists enable only Apple users.
The app reminds me of the boom of (IMO) cool Mac apps around 2010. It's a great idea as well, I wish I had thought of it. The price is out of reach for me though...
Why is this not a web page?
[dead]
Mac only. Is there any reason this couldn't be a web app? And seems pretty restrictive to just have one platform, a desktop Mac.
If I built a Mac app, the reason would be that I use a Mac, as do a lot of other people, and native apps are a lot more pleasant than non-native apps. I don't really understand why it's "restrictive"? There is no restriction happening.
The author had to decide between making something excellent for some people or mediocre for everyone, and chose the former
You may use Pepakura if you’re running windows. Not sure if a web or linux alternative exist.
The same could be said about pretty much _any_ software.
You can vibe code an app like this, relying on OBJ import (no editing apart from cutting/opening constraints), in possibly half a day.
If you doubt me, take, me up on it.
Sure, I have 35 years of experiences writing computer graphics code but I am certain I would just need to provide functional description input to Claude or Codex for this.
Zero architecture or deep 3D know-how.
The only challenge/interesting part is what happens with non-planar polygons (>3 vertices). I.e. deciding if they can be unrolled (approximated with a cylindrical or conical surface enough to 'work' when cut from paper that does not stretch).
You can alleviate this problem completely by always triangulating befor calculating any unfolding solution ofc (and get zero curved surfaces in the resulting paper model thusly).
The rest is rather trivial.
I'm not saying this isn't great, I just don't understand how you could ask people to pay for it, in early 2026.
I can tell that is not trivial. I like to design papercrafts with my kids, and I use Blender but always wanted something on par with Pepakura but for Linux, so I decided to use Claude to build something similar. Furthermore, I started suggesting the Java/JavaFX stack because it is easier for me than JS, but I couldn't even create an STL viewer, so I let Claude decide the tech stack. It chose web/react/etc. (no surprise), the STL was loaded and presented as expected, the unfolding process was harder, and finally I gave up. Claude couldn't figure out by itself the best algorithm; the results were always wrong, and unfolding was just the first feature I wanted. My conclusion is that this is not the kind of application that can be easily resolved with vibecoding; the approach must be different, maybe AI assisting specific building parts to someone who knows exactly how the result should be with low-level detail.
No you should vibe code an app like this and prove yourself. Then see if people actually use it.
You should really try vibe coding a nontrivial 3D app before you die on this particular hill. LLMs are still really bad at spatial reasoning and coordinate systems. Like, painfully bad.
They're getting better, and are starting to be used in robotics: https://scenesmith.github.io/
> If you doubt me, take, me up on it.
Given your confidence and the seemingly small amount of time you think it will take, this seems like something you should be proving rather than expecting others to do so.