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+--- Thread: CrochetPARADE Remesher: Turn a 3D Model Into Crochet Instructions (/showthread.php?tid=59)
CrochetPARADE Remesher: Turn a 3D Model Into Crochet Instructions - CrochetPARADE - 02-14-2026
Hi All,
I’m excited to announce a new tool on CrochetPARADE: CrochetPARADE Remesher. In short: you give it a 3D model (an `STL` file), and it generates crochet instructions in the CrochetPARADE language that (when rendered/simulated) reproduce the shape as a crocheted surface.
What it does (from a crocheting perspective)
- You crochet in rounds only (no turning chains / no back-and-forth rows). The Remesher grows the fabric outward on the surface, round by round.
- Two ways to start:
- Magic Ring: you pick (or let it infer) a ring point + axis + stitch direction.
- Starting Chain: you pick a chain midpoint + axis + number of chains, and it grows from that.
- It can use multiple yarns when the shape is complicated (thin parts, deep concavities, separate “pockets”, etc.).
- When independently-grown regions meet, it can emit “sewing” edges (zips) to join them cleanly.
- You can manually intervene when needed: if the automatic stitch layout gets stuck (or if you want creative control), you can pause at specific points and inject your own moves, such as a short sequence of stitches, starting/ending a yarn, or forcing a zip. The Remesher will continue from there and incorporate your edits into the final pattern.
- You get:
- a 3D preview of the crocheted surface (so you can visually inspect what it produced), and
- the CrochetPARADE instructions you can copy/paste and render on the CrochetPARADE website.
What it cannot do (current limitations)
- The input `STL` should be a closed (watertight) surface (no holes / no open boundaries).
- The stitch plan is round-based only (again: no turning chains yet).
- Very fine stitch size (small `L`) can explode stitch count and make runs heavy; in the browser you can hit WebAssembly memory limits. (If that happens, use a larger `L` or the desktop app build.)
How to try it
- On crochetparade.org, click the **Remesher** button in the CrochetPARADE toolbar.
- Load an STL, choose your seed (Magic Ring or Starting Chain), tune settings if needed, then press **Calculate**.
A few technical notes (for those interested)
- The backend is a surface remesher that grows a stitched patch while maintaining a frontier (the current boundary of the crocheted surface). At each step it tries a small set of stitch operations (the classic “stitch / decrease / increase”-style moves; it supports different stitch heights: ss, sc, hdc, dc, etc), checks a bunch of geometric/topological guards (overlap, surface proximity, etc.), and commits the best candidate.
- When it gets stuck, it can backtrack to a previous snapshot, and it has an adaptive relaxation ladder that selectively loosens certain epsilons/guards to escape local dead-ends.
- If you want to report a failure, the most useful bundle is: the input STL + exported settings JSON + the run log (`output.out`) + the saved output folder.
Some screenshots
Input model:
Remeshed model:
Model rendered in CrochetPARADE from the generated crochet instructions:
Happy crocheting!
RE: CrochetPARADE Remesher: Turn a 3D Model Into Crochet Instructions - admin - 02-16-2026
Apparently CrochetPARADE Remesher can handle generating crochet instructions for 3D models that are NOT water tight, i.e. 3D models that have holes/openings. The Remesher was not designed for that as it does not support turning chains, yet even with rounds it can produce not-so-bad crochet instructions. See the example below:
Starting with an STL model with a hole (this is the STL model for the baby bootie demo from CrochetPARADE, exported from the new Export STL tool):
Remesh using the Remesher:
Render resulting instructions in CrochetPARADE:
(The glitches in the periphery should be avoidable if one plays around with the Settings and/or after a simple reworking of some of the internals, but for me, it's overall a good start, given that I did not expect this to work even this well at all!)