Watching a lot of cosplayers, the really great ones are quickly building without patterns and models.
Pepakura viewer lines off how to#
Learn how to size a helmet for pepakura and you can use this method to size the rest of your armor. So whether it’s the old style paper and bondo or eva foam, you can use these techniques and instructions to quickly process your pep files and get them into the real world. I’ve often not sized correctly and it didn’t matter because I could just re-run it. In the end, you can use a laser cutter to save an incredible amount of time when prototyping. I’ve gone as low as 400 dpi on the rastering, do your test cuts and samples before you run the whole job.Īs you can interpret from the settings here, this gives you the cut and raster as compared to the cut line settings above. With the numbers, it’s unavoidable you have to raster (engrave) them. We use the cut function because it is very quick, and rastering (engraving) all of those lines would take hours. This leaves the poster board bendable but not easily torn. On the green vector lines (mountain and valley folds) you want it to simply shave off the color layer without cutting through. Since this is just poster board, you want it to cut quickly where it needs to cut on the black lines. My laser cutter is an Epilog and they are the Cadillac of laser cutters. Part 3: Print this on an Epilog Laser Cutter Save your file, then export to the format for your particular laser cutter. Once this is set we want to make these shapes instead of text vectors since they are going to be rastered anyway. Set the outline color to null and the fill to RGB Red.įont: Arial Regular, Size: 6, Leading: 6, Kerning: 0, Tracking: -100, Horizontal Scale: 90% Vertical Scale: 100%,and Baseline Shift: 0 The last thing we have to do is set up the numbers so single click on one of the numbers. 001 pts and the dash line spacing to 4 pts, 2.83 pts, 1.42 pts, 2.83 pts. Set your outline color to RGB Green, your stroke. 001 pts and the dash line spacing to 2.83 pts, 2.83 pts.įinally, find a valley line and double click on it with the Selection Tool (V). 001 pts.įind a mountain line and double click on it with the Selection Tool (V) and Select > Same > Appearance Make sure your outline color is RGB Black, and your stroke is set to. The valley folds which are dash dot dash dotted lines.įind a cut line and double click on it with the Selection Tool (V) then Select > Same > Appearance.The mountain folds which are dashed lines.The cuts which are just a solid black lines.There will be 3 kinds of vector lines you’ll have to change. File > Document Setup > Change Bleed and View Options Units: Millimeters Open your file in Illustrator and make sure your Document Setup is set for the metric system. Part 2: Processing the Cut File in Adobe Illustrator File > Export > Vector Format > Encapsulated PostScript (*.EPS). I like to save the pdo, in case I need to revisit or make changes, i.e. The more you have to raster, the longer it will take. Optimize your placement in designer because the app is designed for this.Īnother factor besides simply fitting the pieces on each sheet of poster board is how many of the numbers there are to raster on the entire board. Now you’ll get to have some fun playing Tetris. Someone probably did it originally for the different sized paper. So then you arrange the pieces so they will cut optimally per sheet. If you don’t know how to size your pep, check here. It’s good to keep notes because more often then not you’ll get it wrong the first time, or clicking an option will automatically rescale it against your will. Modify the Other settings as follows: Settings > Other Settings > Others Tab I use dollar store poster board and I cut it down to my 24″ x 18″ bed. Type: 24 in in mm in your search field and Google will present you with it’s unit converter widget.įirst thing I do is set the paper size to the size of the laser bed (or material).