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AI 3D Model Generator Goes Open Source: What Hi3D V1.0, Trained on Two Million 3D Assets, Means for Blender Artists (2026) | Blended BORIS | Digital Art IP

On 23 October 2026, the 3D AI company Hi3D announced from Beijing that it had released the source code and model weights of Hi3D V1.0, an image-to-3D generator formerly known as Sparc3D. The company says the model was trained on about two million curated 3D assets. It does not say where those assets came from, and its licence leaves the copyright risk in every generated mesh with the person who uses it.
Anyone with a large enough NVIDIA graphics card can now download a 3D generator that turns a single picture into detailed geometry, run it on their own machine and sell the results. For Blender artists, that raises two practical questions. Was your published work part of the training data? And what happens when someone feeds a render of your model into a tool like this and gets a mesh back?
Neither question has a simple answer yet. But the paperwork around Hi3D V1.0 is unusually detailed: a licence, a technical report, a list of third-party models and an earlier research paper that names its training sources. Read together, they show how today's 3D generators are built on artists' uploads, and why dated proof of your own work matters more each month.
TL;DR: what the Hi3D open-source release means for 3D artists

Hi3D V1.0 refines a rough mesh into high-resolution geometry using a reference image. Its makers say it was trained on about two million curated 3D assets but do not name the sources. The earlier Sparc3D paper, which Hi3D builds on, trained on 500,000 assets from Objaverse and Objaverse-XL, datasets largely collected from public 3D platforms such as Sketchfab. The licence lets anyone use the model commercially, claims no ownership of outputs, gives no promise that an output is original or non-infringing, and makes the user responsible for claims. Your best defence is proof that your model existed first.

What exactly did Hi3D release on 23 October?

According to the company's press release, Hi3D V1.0 is an open-source version of its production image-to-3D system. The public Hi3D V1.0 repository on GitHub contains inference code, documentation and a licence. The model weights sit on Hugging Face as eight files, including two transformer models of about 3.7 GB each. Training code and the evaluation setup are not included.
The model does one specific job. It takes a reference image and a rough coarse mesh of the same object and refines it, in up to three passes, into geometry at nominal grid resolutions of 512, 1024 or 1536. It makes geometry only: no textures, materials or vertex colours. Parts hidden from the image are filled in as a "plausible completion", in its own documentation's words. It runs on Linux with a recent NVIDIA GPU and has only been validated on a 96 GB data-centre card at the highest setting.
Alongside the open release, the company announced a paid, closed model, Hi3D V3.0, and a 3D agent for creators. Those claims are the company's own; we could not test them.

What data was Hi3D V1.0 trained on?

The nine-page technical report says Hi3D V1.0 scales training to "approximately two million curated, high-quality 3D assets", up from about 500,000 in the earlier Sparc3D work. It does not name a single source, licence or opt-out process for those two million assets. The licence also lists "training, validation and test datasets" among the materials it does not cover.
The earlier step is better documented. The Sparc3D research paper from May 2025 states that the team trained its models on 500,000 high-quality assets from Objaverse and Objaverse-XL. Objaverse is a dataset of more than 800,000 3D objects collected through Sketchfab's public API, made, in its authors' words, by over 100,000 artists. Only models with distributable Creative Commons licences were included. Its dataset card lists about 721,000 objects under CC BY, 52,000 under CC BY-NC-SA, 25,000 under CC BY-NC, 16,000 under CC BY-SA and 3,500 under CC0. Objaverse-XL is much larger, with over 10 million objects from several sources, including hand-made models, photogrammetry scans and museum scans.
So if you uploaded a downloadable model to Sketchfab under a Creative Commons licence before late 2022, it may sit in Objaverse, and Objaverse fed the system Hi3D grew out of. Whether it is in Hi3D V1.0's two million assets is something the company has not disclosed. Note also that some of those licences are non-commercial, while the trained model is now offered for commercial use. Whether training on NC-licensed models fits those licence terms is one of the open legal questions in AI training, and no court has answered it for 3D models. Our explainer on Creative Commons vs copyright for Blender assets covers what each licence allows.

What does the Hi3D licence say about the meshes it makes?

The Hi3D Open License Agreement 1.0, dated 22 October 2026 and issued by OCEANO HK HOLDING LIMITED, is generous to users and careful for the company. Anyone may use, change and sell the model and build commercial services on it. Products with more than 200,000 monthly active users or at least USD 1 million in monthly revenue must apply for a separate licence. Companies that build the model into a commercial product must show "Powered by Hi3D 1.0", but people who only sell generated files do not.
On outputs, the company claims no ownership of the meshes you generate. The same section says the licence does not guarantee that an output is copyrightable, original or non-infringing. The acceptable use policy bans using the model to infringe copyright, and the user must indemnify the company against third-party claims arising from inputs and outputs. The licence also allows outputs to be used to train other AI models. Disputes go to arbitration in Hong Kong.
In plain terms: if a generated mesh turns out to copy someone's model, the person who generated and sold it carries the risk, not Hi3D. For artists whose work gets copied, that means your claim is against the uploader or seller, and your evidence has to show your model came first. Our guide to whether 3D models automatically have copyright explains what is protected in the first place.

Why does the optional Hunyuan step matter in Europe and the UK?

Hi3D V1.0 needs a coarse mesh to start from. Its example script can create one with Tencent's Hunyuan3D-2 mini model, which is not part of Hi3D's release and has its own licence. That Tencent licence states that it "does not apply in the European Union, United Kingdom and South Korea", and it forbids using its outputs outside its licensed territory. Hi3D's main refinement script works without Hunyuan if you supply your own coarse mesh, for example a blockout made in Blender.
If you buy or commission AI-assisted 3D work, ask which tools made each stage.
QuestionHi3D V1.0 licenceHunyuan3D-2 mini (optional coarse step)Objaverse (used for Sparc3D)
Who issues itOCEANO HK HOLDING LIMITED, 22 Oct 2026Tencent community licenceAllen Institute for AI, dataset under ODC-By 1.0
Commercial useYes; separate licence above 200,000 MAU or USD 1M monthly revenueYes inside its territory; separate licence above 1M MAUPer object: most CC BY, some non-commercial
TerritoryWorldwideExcludes EU, UK and South KoreaDepends on each object's licence
Who owns outputsCompany claims no ownershipTencent claims no rights in outputsNot applicable
Promise outputs are originalNo, expressly not guaranteedNo, provided as isNot applicable
Training data disclosedNo sources named for two million assetsNot covered hereYes, sourced from Sketchfab's public API
Who carries infringement riskThe user, who indemnifies the companyThe userThe dataset user, under each object's licence
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Can an image-to-3D generator copy your Blender model?

Nothing published suggests Hi3D V1.0 stores and reproduces specific training models, and we have seen no claim against it. The more immediate risk is how the tool is used. An image-to-3D model needs only a picture. Your ArtStation render, a Sketchfab turntable or a product shot on a marketplace page can be the reference image. The model then builds geometry that follows what it sees and guesses the rest.
If the result keeps the creative shape and details of your design, it can still be a copy of your work, whatever tool made it. The licence makes clear that infringement is the user's problem, and marketplaces handle such copies through their normal takedown processes. We saw how fast copies spread in our report on the flood of AI knock-offs on Etsy, and our earlier look at Meshy's AI part-editing of 3D models showed how terms differ between generators.
In a dispute, the questions are familiar: who made the original, when, and is the copy close enough? A court recently answered an "it was AI" defence by looking for the human raw version, as we explained in our report on the Frankfurt AI copyright ruling. The answer for 3D artists is the same: saved versions, sculpt layers and dated proof.

What are 3D platforms doing about AI training?

The platforms where artists show their work have moved in different directions. ArtStation, which Epic Games agreed in August to sell to KitBash, switched its NoAI setting on by default for new and existing projects in early September 2026 and said it is working with Cloudflare to block known AI crawlers. Fab requires a "Created with AI" label on generated content, and Sketchfab labels AI models, as covered in our article on the Steam AI disclosure fight.
Labels and opt-out tags help, but they only work for future collection and only if the collector respects them. Datasets built years ago, like Objaverse, already exist and are already being used. That is why our NoAI tag ruling explainer, the guide to opting out of AI training datasets and our report on the first US appeals ruling on fair use in AI training all end with the same advice: keep your own records.

What should Blender artists do now?

  1. Check what you have published under open licences. List models you shared as downloadable under CC BY or similar licences on Sketchfab or elsewhere. Those licences allow wide reuse, and you cannot take back copies made under them.
  2. Choose licences on purpose. For new uploads, decide whether you want free downloads at all. Our guide to marketplace copyright policies compares the options.
  3. Switch on NoAI settings where they exist. Use ArtStation's default NoAI setting and similar tags elsewhere. They do not stop every scraper, but they document your choice.
  4. Publish renders that are harder to rebuild. Single clean front views are ideal input for image-to-3D tools. Consider watermarks, angled shots and lower-resolution previews for paid models.
  5. Keep your raw versions. Save incremental .blend files, sculpt layers and reference boards. They show your process if someone claims your design came out of a generator.
  6. Timestamp finished and in-progress work. Dated proof of a file's existence is strong evidence when a copy appears months later. See our guide to registering artwork and 3D models too.
  7. Watch for copies of your work. Search marketplaces for your model names and run reverse image searches on your best renders every few weeks.
  8. Act fast when you find one. Use the platform's takedown form with your dated evidence, and follow our tips to protect your Blender models from theft.

Where does this fit in the bigger picture?

Open 3D generators are part of a wider shift: AI training is moving from text and images to 3D, while governments are still deciding how training data should be licensed. We followed that debate in Australia's AI training opt-out fight. The sister blog explains AI dataset opt-out strategies, sets out artists' rights in AI training and covers metadata and watermarking in Blender.
Our sister sites looked this week at who controls design data and the tools around it.

Conclusion

Hi3D V1.0 is a capable tool, and its open licence will put high-resolution 3D generation in many more hands. It is also a reminder of how these systems are built: on large collections of models made by artists, often gathered under open licences long before anyone expected them to train commercial generators. The licence makes users responsible for what they generate, which means artists who can show when and how they made their work will be in the strongest position when copies appear.
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BlendedBoris adds a blockchain timestamp to your Blender files from inside Blender, giving you dated proof of authorship to use alongside licences, NoAI settings and copyright registrations.

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FAQ: Hi3D V1.0 and open AI 3D model generators

What is Hi3D V1.0?

An open-source image-to-3D model released on 23 October 2026 by Hi3D, formerly Sparc3D. It refines a coarse mesh into high-resolution geometry using a reference image. It produces geometry only, without textures or materials.

What was Hi3D V1.0 trained on?

The company says about two million curated 3D assets but does not name the sources. The earlier Sparc3D paper says its models were trained on 500,000 assets from Objaverse and Objaverse-XL.

Is my Sketchfab model in Objaverse?

Possibly, if you published it as a downloadable model under a distributable Creative Commons licence before the dataset was built in 2022. Objaverse collected more than 800,000 such models through Sketchfab's public API. Its metadata lists each object's source and licence.

Who owns a mesh made with Hi3D V1.0?

Hi3D claims no ownership of outputs. Whether a fully generated mesh has any copyright depends on local law and on how much human creative work went into it. The licence does not promise that outputs are original or non-infringing.

Can I use Hi3D V1.0 in the EU or UK?

Hi3D's own licence is worldwide. The optional Hunyuan3D-2 mini model used in its example script has a Tencent licence that does not apply in the EU, UK or South Korea, so artists there should supply their own coarse mesh.

What can I do if someone makes a copy of my model with an AI 3D generator?

Collect evidence of your original, such as dated files and timestamps, and use the marketplace's takedown process. Under Hi3D's licence, the person who generated and sold the copy is responsible for it.

How can BlendedBoris help?

BlendedBoris timestamps your Blender files on a blockchain from inside Blender. That gives you dated proof that a file existed at a certain time, which supports your licences and copyright registrations but does not replace them.
2026-10-28 16:10 News