Bill & Ted.....EXCELLENT!! Got the $5 (Awesome!!) download tutorial, and Inkscape. I thought it was going to be some cheap pdf with a 5 minute video. Boy was I wrong. You literally walk us through it with very detailed information. Thank You so much! Amazing content!
I bought Bill's foam smithing book years ago and it was a great help. I know this is an older video but Bill consistently puts out GREAT content that WORKS for others as well as himself. His methods are tried and true. Thanks for the content Punished Props!
Thanks for yet another awesome tutorial, Bill! A few additional tips for everyone: If for any reason you can't take a square-on pic of the pattern/mat, just 'fix it in post'; Put it in your image editor of choice, and use the perspective transform tools to square it up, using the grid for reference. Also, (and I don't know if you can do this in GIMP and whatnot, but I know it is thus in Photoshop) if you use the image analysis tools to determine the scale using the grid, and then use the image size dialog to set that as the DPI for the image (Without resampling) it will already be to-scale when you import it into your vector drawing app. (This may seem like an extra step, but it has the added bonus of the image always being to-scale if you ever need to do it again.)
Hi Bill, Just getting into cosplay about 6 months now and I've just followed your intro into Inkscape. Brilliant thank you so much for your guidance. Always helpful. Hi Ted too. :)
Guys, thank you! I'm just getting started with my own props business venture and this helps streamline so much work- Thank you for laying the groundwork Ted
I just discovered PP over a week ago and barely discovered Evil Ted 2 days back. I gotta say the more I watch, the more I freaking LOVE THIS CHANNEL!! Ya'll are so accessible and friendly and you don't have the hierarchy attitude prevalent amongst a few other...how shall I say.... "higher tier" cosplayers? You genuinely seem to want everyone to do everything they can in order to create the best--ever props for their cosplays. I've fallen in love the happy can-do attitude that this channel embodies. Fellow cosplay creators can better express themselves through these methods you share and being able to do that well is a type of freedom only other creatives can understand. I truly appreciate it. I also feel vindicated....a few of the methods I'd simply discovered for myself over the past few years are indeed things that FAMOUS COSPLAYERS DO! :o Lol. Please never stop doing what you do.....it brings happiness to the world....for real. =]
I don't think I've ever subscribed to a channel so quickly. Thank you for the wonderful walkthrough; I'm off to check out the full tutorial right now! I've got a massive armor build coming up and I need everything to be symmetrical and clean. Thanks again, Bill and Ted!
An additional step that I would take to improve the original image is to correct the perspective so that those guide lines from the cutting mat are perfectly parallel/orthogonal. This should make it even more precise and you won't run into problems that parts from one side of the photo do not fit parts from the other side, if your photo was not perfectly square. I don't know about Inkscape, but many other free tools like Gimp and Krita have such a feature.
Unsure if you check comments on older videos, but I have been searching like crazy to find if there is a way to take STL files and turn them into 2d patterns. I have 3D printers, but would like to dabble with foam work. Any suggestions? I wish I had a foam or 3D printed version of your Handsome Jack mask.
No thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. It's thanks to you and Bill that I started my first Mass Effect costume and I can't thank you enough for this
If you want a really dead-on photo to import, it's not that difficult to make a rig to hold your phone. I have one that I use for decorating cookies and photographing small patterns, blocked crochet pieces, etc. It allows the phone to lie flat and completely parallel to the surface below. Seems like that same idea scaled up would produce much more accurate and consistent results than trying to manually hold the camera parallel and still while trying to accurately match it to the grid beneath. Quick to make and if anyone is as neurotic about that kind of thing as I am, or has a lot of patterns to photograph, completely worth it!
Hi Guys Great tutorial video. Thank you so much for all you share with us/ followers. I'm still new at cosplay and prop builds and enjoying a new found hobby. Thanks again !
As i have access to illustrator I have used that and/or flash to make patterns, the line bending that you do here is the reason I have used flash. Going to give this program a try now though.
I saw you do this on your helmet pattern video, and I was amazed at how easy it was! Thanks for making the videos! I used the free version of the CamScanner app on my phone to undo the parallax when I photographed my cut out pieces on the cutting mat, and it made things very easy to trace. I still think the overhead camera in the workshop would be better, but I am spending too much money on foam and paint, anyway. ;-)
since it's hard to take the photo perfectly parallel, you can use the grid to adjust for distortion. verticals must be vertical and horizontals should be horizontal
I'll usually end up doing some tweaking like that in Photoshop if need be. Although I've found that level of precision isn't necessary, so long as the photo is fairly square to the mat.
I downloaded Inkscape when you first put out a video about it, but never sat down to use it, but after seeing this I will definitely start using it more. I use Corel Draw at work and this seems about the same at a much more reasonable price. Free is always a good thing when you are a broke cosplayer.
I've had inkscape for a while to try and make patters, but I have been having trouble figuring out the scaling and printing. Thanks so much for the video! I think I'll have to check out the one on your website and it another go! =)
Easier than hand-scaling: select the image, then in the top properties bar select 'inches' from the dropdown (for those with a metric cutting mat, chose 'mm') then click on the lock icon and type your 'known dimension' in the width or height box.
Have you tried to use the trace bitmap feature with that? If the pattern is light color and you put a dark backing, could try and contrast those in Gimp for example and then trace bitmap in Inkscape. Of course, could also clean the raster a bit, make the grid square, fill the background in Gimp also. When taking references for 3D modeling it's good to take the picture as far away as possible to flatten the perspective. Might also help with the patterns. If you think the camera sensor as a single point above, up close it takes a wide shot but further away that cone of vision gets smaller and at least in theory would have less lens distortion and might help keeping the grid square.
Ah, right. I searched for a pattern photo and tried it myself. While editing the image in raster editor and then trace it, then only choosing one trace layer helps to cut down the amount of nodes, it still isn't that great as a starting point if the lines need to be absolutely perfect. Makes more sense if the result of the trace doesn't need much editing, like generating a jiggsaw puzzle in Gimp, tracing that in Inkscape, and importing that in Blender to quickly make 3D models for all the pieces. Nice that you did a tutorial about taking reference photos properly. I was thinking that maybe shooting the patterns the same way would help with distortions on the image itself but maybe that's not a big issue. Not enough to get them attached on a vertical surface with magnets or something.
I was actually kind of disappointed with this video. I thought it was going to show how to make patterns from photos or something, but this is basically a how to use MS Paint tutorial... Not knocking it, it's a good tutorial with equally good narration to explain what's happening in the video, but... My little heart had so many expectations.
Check his download version. It's well worth it while supporting one of our favorite prop makers. It went over my head at some point like Ted was feeling, but Bill makes it easy to understand. 10/10
I use Inkscape for a lot of things. It's really useful. Was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be the software of choice in this video :D (Yeah I didn't read the description. title was interesting enough). If you need to straighten up the lines of the cutting mat in a photo you can use the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), also free. Rolf Steinort has a lot of tutorials on youtube about how to use the program.
hey there's an easier way to scale, first you use the Measurement tool to measure the lenght of the square in the picture imported. Lets say its measured as 1/3 inch, but you know its real size is 1inch, so you scale the image up by 3 times. Boom, exact scale
Are you able to define dimensions of the drawn lines individually (like in SolidWorks)? I ask because you could bypass the entire "squaring up" process if you know the dimensions of your pattern already.
As a free software journalist I often get questions from the community if 'printing' trademarked content from video game or movies is piracy or whether it violated copyright. The way I see is it falls under fair use doctrine as we are printing custom work for personal use and not for commercial gain. What's your take on it? Can you talk about it a bit? If you are interested I can even do an interview of yours around the topic? Thanks.
Printing something that's copyrighted for use in making your own costume is plenty fair. I guess a video game company could come after someone who's trying to sell those patterns, but I've never heard of that happening.
Very usefull video, thank you very much for sharing this! I have a question though: in the video you told something about printing large drawings at home, in different parts. How can you do that?
That might be technically recasting, but that's the chance 3D modelers take when they put their files up on the internet. That's one of the reasons why I don't make my files available. As a creator, I wouldn't be satisfied printing, molding, casting, and selling pieces that I made from someone else 3D model. Other people don't care so much as they get the end product.
Really helpful tutorial, one thing is how would I go about transferring the pattern from the paper onto the material (in this case foam). Would it need to be traced or would I just need to redraw it with the blueprint as a reference?
I couldn't fully get this to work... my pattern printed about 1.5x as big lol. I'm going to try again on a simple shape like a square and see if I can get that down first. Back to the drawing board...
Hey Bill, I am currently building a Bastion helmet (overwatch) and i don't know what to use for the visor. Im thinking blue and maybe red LEDs and diffusing those so the light blocks people from seeing inside the helmet. Any advice on what plastic to use and how to diffuse the light over the rectangular visor? Thanks
thats why people are worried about 3d modeling!!. when they are too afraid of simple software like inkscape!! it is so easy you can self taught it over a cup of coffee... thanks ted for taking the brave step and bill for helping people cross their psychological barrier
I spotted a fatal flaw in this method. The photo (or rather it perspective). You can see that the grid from the cutting board is smaller at the top then the bottom. This could be fixed in photoshop by skewing the image. I'm not sure if there is something similar in this program.
I've found that a little bit of a perspective discrepancy has little effect on the outcome of the pattern. Usually I will tidy it up in Photoshop, but in this case it worked just fine.
how do i get patterns from ingame screenshots to real paper versions? i can make 3d screenshots of the character, in this case the witcher 3 geralt but i dont know how can i trace the armor to make the pattern from paper so later i can make it from foam/leather etc...
Is there a way to print across multiple pages through Gimp? I feel like I’ve done it before but I can’t remember for the life of me. If there’s a better alternative that’s free I’d like to know! Ps I’m on a Mac.
I haven't used Gimp but I know you can do it in Adobe Illustrator. Another trick you can use online for free is rasterbator.net/ (It's a weird URL but I promise it's okay!). It splits up images to print them large format using small pages
+ozgur gulbir The template is flat. Distortion is incredibly minimal. You can correct for perspective in Photoshop, but I've found it has little impact on the final pattern.
I just want as tutorial that shows how to get correct angles in EVA foam joins. It's always straight cuts and 45 degree angles in every youtube tutorial. Most builds aren't all 45 and 90 degree angles.
Honestly it takes practice and time. You can always make jigs or tools to assist you in getting perfect angles but the wonderful thing about foam is it's very forgiving so it doesn't always have to be laser perfect!
@@punishedprops thanks for replying, especially on a video as old as this one. Building my first set of armour which is OG Halo Combat Evolved Mark V Mjolnir. Helmet has a tonne of different angles as it is a very straight edged design, especially the 'sun shade/double visors' that go to a very sharp edge. Using a pepakura 'foam' template, but it doesn't seem to take into account the thickness of the EVA foam. Guess I'll just go at it with the rotary tool and sand it back until I get it right lol. I guess buying a protractor wouldn't hurt either. Any way, great videos. Been binging on them over the last few weeks and have learned a lot from them. Thanks.
Bill & Ted? 😮 Hehehe I recently purchased patterns from Teds site and Bills Foam Smith book 😊 So far its Foam 1 : Lina 0 🙁 I dun goofed on the cutting of foam, rough edges don't stick well 🙁 (forgot lesson 1, sharp blade!)
i have a question would this work with pics of toys? i suck at drawing but decent at digital art. the reason i ask is im trying to do a build on a set of armor from a old 80s cartoon called robotech. im trying to do the ride able armor cyclone (link to the pics below). i asked some friends and that was a big mistake. one friend says buy the toy and scan it into the scanner. the other says buy the model kit and scan it to make my digital template. i do have pics i took from google on the ride armor and would that work or would i have to pick one of the other options above. im just a little lost on how to make my template with as much detail as those templates shown in the background in this video. also based on the pics what thickness of foam would work. if the program works with my pics ( i have more on my hard drive) after editing would work with pepakura? hlj.com/product/SET88026/Act thanks for taking the time to read and have a good day
You can totally use quality photos of a toy or model to do this method! You just want to try to find some good angles (top, front, side, etc) of the toy in question, and then you can use the same scaling method seen in the video - figure out the real world measurements you want (you can use a ruler held up to your body) and scale the toy images to those measurements. Then you can just trace out your patterns the same way! It will take a little more adjusting as you work out forming the shapes, but it can be done! Hope this helps! - Paige
it is a great help. i tried what you guys did here with other free programs and it would cause the program to crash. now all thats left is to get the item so i can get the right angle. the pics i have are only angles that a store would use to sell it and the res is really grainy. and thanks again now i can start pricing out kits/toys and call up my local printing stores on pricing for a full scale sheet
