#plushify

me: 4000 things to do

We can go two ways with this - Continue in Blender - Continue via Plushify I don't have a Blender tutorial written yet. Just videos.

This is a playlist of my Blender-only Plush Tutorials

For the rest of this text guide tho let's use Plushify

(EDIT: Now no commercial use without Premium. Plushify is a bit more user/newbie friendly.) For a Blender-only guide,use the videos above, I MAY eventually make a part 6 for Blender-Only At the time of writing this guide, Plushify was fully free with no premium features and fewer tools. It has gone forward with a premium mode that adds a few handy tools! But not everyone can justify the price if they're a small artist who wants to sell their patterns. I was never comfortable selling raw Plushify exports and manually edit my patterns anyways. I used Plushify just for it's scaling and labelling feature. But I also regularly do so in Blender.

The better and cleaner your model edits are, the easier this process will be. It's okay if you spot an issue and need to go back. You can also do ALL of that UV editing stuff of setting seams in PLUSHIFY. As long as there are edges where you want a seam to be, you can use plushify to set your seams instead of Blender.

BUT it's IMPORTANT TO TRY to UV unwrap in blender first. Why? If you dont do any of the UV mapping in blender, and you have to re-import your model into plushify after a small fix, you'll have to REDO all of your Plushify seams. With the new premium update, that will count towards your model upload credit, I think it takes a few hours to "count" though, you can delete and re-upload over and over if it's pretty soon after you've uploaded (within a certain time window or something I think?) Doing a chunk of the work in Blender will make this significantly less painful if you need to go back to the model and make any revisions like adding geometry you won't have to select the same edges over and over in a web browser based tool if you have it already set and ready to go on the .obj file you're uploading! You can easily edit it in plushify and clear your blender UVs if you want to drastically change something too!

Upload your .obj file

Orient it with the prompts & select your appropriate UV option.

The Seams Panel

Once your file is uploaded, enter the Seams Panel and turn on Show pattern quality (This is similar to showing UV stretch which you can also do in Blender. if you want to exclusively do everything in Blender.) The red areas show where you may want to put seams or darts, it is essentially showing you where the pieces may not lay flat if you were to use the Duct Tape Method.

Plushify seam marking is the same thing as marking seams and unwrapping in Blender. (UV unwrap) Many may find Plushify to be easier than fiddling with Blender. But the pros of blender are you won't lose progress on UVs if you have to go back and edit the mesh.

As of time of writing, Blender and Plushify will unwrap pieces the same as each other. So you can use both in your workflow.

Markings

Using the markings option you can create "stickers" to place onto your model. This is very handy if you know how to draw. This is great for those who want to digitize embroidery files.

If you want to instead "trace" the features on your model using the knife tool instead in blender to add them to the pattern, you can skip drawing things like markings, eyes, etc. but it will count each as a separate piece on the UV maps

(The markings cut in blender and made with seams instead of using the markings panel)

Colors

The Colors Tab lets you preview your colors on the model, and label them. This will calculate how much fabric you need per color.

Pattern

In the Pattern tab you can click on a part of the model and it will expand a menu on the left side panel, showing you what piece it is.

Size

The size panel shows a visual representation of you plush compared to a human, You can also make it sit on a table, or chair to get an idea of the scale. Setting the size will calculate an estimate of how mcuh fabric you'll need! It's very handy, and will print the pattern pieces to result in a plush toy of the size you choose!

Print

In the print tab you can select a page size, and seam allowance. You can also do a calibration test, to make sure things are printing at the right scale.

Then you can print your pattern! A donation prompt will pop up. It's optional, but I highly suggest throwing a bit their way! This saves so much time and can speed up the plush prototyping process.

Save

Plushify only stores models locally on your PC via your web browser. Not on the website. I highly suggest saving the file it will create for you a .plush filetype* If you are sharing you pattern, you can share this .plush file and others will be able to upload the model to plushify on their own device so they can see how the pieces go together. It's very handy! (**This is now a premium-only feature)

Edit

Any patterns I do I will usually add small notes, if not fully re-digitize, to be more clear with at least a little bit of instructions. Like this!

Good Luck!

That covers MOST of what I do to create prototype starting patterns for plush projects. I have only been sewing for about 3 years VERY casually/infrequently, and consider myself to be a new sewist. If I can do it, you can too! I believe in you!

Togpei is something I probably could've cracked out in only 1-3 hrs if I didn't document the process, but anything more complex than Togepi will result in significantly more pieces and can take WEEKS of time.

I also have a video on the process of a slightly more complex pokemon, and the resulting pattern available for free! It is a recording of the entire process (with timestamps in the comments)

That's him on plushify.net so hopefully I can get the materials to make him real

Into this

Then into this

Now into this! And I'm not quite done yet. I've still got to finish stuffing it and thread sculpt the face

He has 50,000 diseases and needs to be punted into the sun. What a creature.