Meshy vs. Hunyuan3D: Which AI 3D Generator Should You Choose?

Hunyuan3D is Tencent's flagship open-source 3D foundation model family, with a hosted Hunyuan 3D Engine on top. The latest open-source release, Hunyuan3D 2.1 (June 2025), takes a single image or a few multi-view images and outputs a textured 3D mesh in GLB or OBJ format, using a two-stage Hunyuan3D-DiT (shape) + Hunyuan3D-Paint (texture) pipeline. The hosted engine — currently running Hunyuan 3D 3.1 (Nov 2025) — adds higher resolution, 4K PBR, and 8-view input but is closed-source. Running 2.1 locally requires a Linux machine with a 10–29GB NVIDIA GPU, CUDA 12.4, and Python 3.10. The Community License excludes the EU, UK, and South Korea.

Hunyuan3D 2.0 (Jan 2025) introduced the two-stage shape + paint pipeline. Hunyuan3D 2.1 (Jun 2025) is the latest open-source release — 3.3B shape + 2B paint parameters, first to ship full PBR weights and training code. Hunyuan 3D 2.5, 3.0, and 3.1 are hosted-only and not open-sourced: 3.0 (Sept 2025) reached 1536³ resolution, and 3.1 (Nov 2025) added 8-view input, watertight meshes, cleaner topology, and 4K PBR textures. Meshy ships a single production model — Meshy 6 — covering text/image input, PBR texturing, animation, and engine export in one workflow.

Installing Hunyuan3D 2.1 locally requires a Linux machine with an NVIDIA GPU (10GB+ VRAM for shape, 21GB for texture, 29GB for the full pipeline), CUDA 12.4, Python 3.10, and PyTorch 2.5.1. The official steps are: clone the Tencent-Hunyuan/Hunyuan3D-2.1 GitHub repository, install dependencies (including custom rasterizer wheels), download model weights from Hugging Face, then run the provided Python scripts or the Gradio demo. The hosted Hunyuan 3D Engine at 3d.hunyuan.tencent.com avoids installation but requires a Tencent account and consumer access is gated by region. If you want to skip installation entirely, Meshy generates the same type of 3D models directly in your browser — no downloads, no GPU, no configuration.

For the open-source Hunyuan3D 2.1, yes — the official GitHub README documents 10GB VRAM for shape generation, 21GB for texturing, and 29GB for shape + texture in one pass. It also requires CUDA 12.4, Python 3.10, and Linux (Windows and macOS are not officially supported for the full pipeline). The hosted Hunyuan 3D Engine runs on Tencent's cloud and needs no local GPU. Meshy runs entirely in the browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android with no local hardware requirements at all.

It depends which surface you use. The hosted Hunyuan 3D Engine supports text, image, multi-view, and sketch inputs. The open-source Hunyuan3D 2.1 release is primarily an image-to-3D model — text input typically routes through an upstream text-to-image model first, then feeds the generated image into the 3D pipeline. Meshy supports both text-to-3D and image-to-3D natively in the same browser-based workflow.

Not unconditionally. Hunyuan3D 2.1 is released under the Tencent Hunyuan 3D 2.1 Community License — not a standard open-source license. The terms include: (1) the license does not apply in the European Union, United Kingdom, or South Korea; (2) if your product or service has more than 1 million monthly active users on the release date, you must request a separate license from Tencent; (3) you cannot use the model or its outputs to train any other AI model. Meshy's paid plans include full commercial ownership with no such restrictions and are available globally.

It depends on which surface you use. For the open-source Hunyuan3D 2.1, the answer is no: the Community License explicitly states it does not apply in the EU, UK, or South Korea, and prohibits using, reproducing, modifying, distributing, or displaying outputs outside the licensed territory. For the hosted Hunyuan 3D 3.1, the situation is legally unresolved — Tencent Cloud's separate API Terms of Service do not exclude these regions, and Tencent contracts with EU and Korean users through Tencent Cloud Europe B.V. and Tencent Korea Yuhan Hoesa. However, the 2.1 Community License explicitly defines 'Hosted Service' and claims to govern hosted use, so the two documents conflict. Until Tencent publishes clarifying guidance, EU/UK/KR commercial use of hosted Hunyuan 3D carries unresolved license risk. Meshy is available globally under a single commercial license with no territorial restrictions.

The open-source Hunyuan3D releases output static meshes only — there is no built-in rigging, motion library, or animation workflow in the public repositories. The hosted Hunyuan 3D Studio mentions mesh manipulation at a high level but does not document a rigging system. Meshy includes auto-rigging for humanoid and quadruped characters, a library of 500+ preset animations, and direct export of rigged FBX/GLB to Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, and Roblox.

Hunyuan3D exports GLB and OBJ formats with PBR materials. The hosted engine documentation also lists GLB and OBJ as the primary outputs. FBX, STL, USDZ, and 3MF are not natively exported. Meshy exports FBX, GLB, OBJ, STL, USDZ, 3MF, and BLEND.

No — Hunyuan3D generates textures as part of its own image-to-mesh pipeline. It cannot apply new PBR textures to a mesh you already have. Meshy's AI Texturing engine generates full PBR maps on any mesh, including assets you didn't create in Meshy.

Yes — Tencent Cloud offers a hosted Hunyuan 3D API with credit-based billing (approximately $0.014–$0.02 per credit, with 25 credits per standard image-to-3D call and additional credits for PBR, multi-view, or LowPoly add-ons). The open-source releases also provide Python inference scripts that you can host yourself. Meshy provides a full REST API with webhooks, batch processing, and versioned endpoints, plus an in-product API Playground.

Meshy is the stronger choice for game developers. It offers 500+ preset animations, auto-rigging, full PBR textures, and native plugins for Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, and Roblox. Hunyuan3D's open-source releases output static GLB/OBJ meshes with no rigging or animation, so integrating them into a game pipeline requires substantial additional work in Blender, Maya, or a custom toolchain.

Meshy is the better choice for 3D printing. Meshy generates optimized, watertight meshes and exports STL, 3MF, and OBJ with one-click Bambu Studio integration and a 97% slicer pass rate. Hunyuan3D exports GLB or OBJ with no native slicer integration, no watertight mesh guarantees, and no print-specific tooling.

Yes. Meshy offers a free tier with 100 credits per month, no credit card required, which is enough for about 10 full generations including PBR texturing. See meshy.ai/pricing for current plan details. Hunyuan3D's open-source weights are free to download, but you need to supply your own GPU; the hosted Hunyuan 3D consumer app offers 20 free generations per day.

On Meshy's paid plans, you own the outputs entirely — full commercial rights, no attribution required, available globally. On the free plan, assets are licensed under CC BY 4.0. Hunyuan3D's situation is more complex: outputs are subject to the Tencent Hunyuan 3D 2.1 Community License, which restricts commercial use in the EU, UK, and South Korea and prohibits using outputs to train competing models. If you plan to sell assets globally, Meshy's paid plan is the simpler, legally clearer option.