3D Origami Teapot

An origami teapot folded from one piece of square paper. As far as I know, this is the first attempt in the world to make a three-dimensional origami Utah teapot.

The model was manually constructed from a triangulated version of the Utah teapot to prove the original algorithm to convert a polygonal manifold into an origami crease pattern.

Technical Overview
No cutting was needed to make the 3D model from the crease pattern, so this approach is different from the method for making papercraft proposed by Mitani et al. (SIGGRAPH 2004), which requires cutting the sheet of paper into a number of non-convex parts.The original "origamizing" algorithm results in a totally zero-gaussian-curvature surface which is on and enveloped by the desired three-dimensional surface. The idea is based on aligning polygons on a plane, so that "tucking" of the blank area around the polygons is possible.

Tomohiro Tachi
The University of Tokyo
tachi.tomohiro (at) gmail.com