Jorge E. Jaramillo asked: > Is it really so important how the first > crease is made or for the sake of precision (and if your not that pressured > to finish the model) you can make it the way you find it easier?
It depends a lot on what you want to achieve. For many models the direction of the creases do matter, for others it is not that important. It also depends heavily on the paper you use whether it matters or not. Some examples. If I want to fold a boxpleated model from tissue foil it is very important to make the creases in the right directions from the beginning since the model will basically fall into place during the collaps if I do so. Furthermore reversing creases on tissue foil is rather tedious, so starting out with them in the right direction saves you a lot of time and effort. For tessellations you often need genderless creases, but opposed to the boxpleated models where you start with mountain-valley-mountain-and so on, for the tessellations you should start making them all to the same direction (valley-valley-valley) and then turn them over (mountain-mountain-mountain) because otherwise the finish might not look as clean, especially if you use thicker paper like elephant hide. That's because when you make a crease, on the valley side you will just have a small line that is oftentimes hardly visible. On the mountain side on the other hand, a ridge will appear. This ridge will stay visible even if you turn the crease over. So the mountain and valley fold actually visually look different. This might not matter when you fold some animal or modular unit, but for tessellations it can be very distracting and give a not so good finish. For thin papers like kami, the effect is not as visible like for thick papers like tant or elephant hide, but it is still there. Personally I prefer to always precrease into the right direction because it makes every kind of collapse easier and it does look better too, but if you feel that you get more precision making the creases the other way round first and then turning them over, just do it, it is your decision after all. In my opinion it doesn't add that much more precision to fold to the edge of the paper instead of folding to a crease and given that sometimes it is even better to leave a tiny little gap instead of folding directly to a fold precision might even be overrated. So if you ask me, crease direction is more important then folding a hundred percent accurate. If you have problems seeing a crease you can still hold the paper up along the crease at an angle and fold the other side towards it, that way you needn't turn it over to fold to the edge. Nice Greetings Anna from Vienna/Austria
