TripoSplat

TripoSplat turns a single photo into a 3D model you can spin around. Feed it one image and it generates a cloud of 3D Gaussian splats, no multi-angle capture or photogrammetry rig required. The remarkable part: both the code and the model weights are MIT licensed, commercial use included. That's rare in image-to-3D, where most models ship research-only licenses you can't build a business on.

You need a GPU and a weights download from HuggingFace, but the dependency list is tiny. No diffusers, no transformers, roughly 2,000 lines across two files. There's a ComfyUI workflow and a Gradio demo if you'd rather not touch code, and inference is a single script.

This replaces paid image-to-3D services like Meshy, Luma, and Kaedim for a lot of jobs, and the commercial-friendly license means you can actually ship what it makes. Solo and small teams with a GPU: run it yourself. No GPU on hand: TripoAI's own hosted Tripo Studio has a free tier and then paid plans.

The catch: one photo can't see the back of an object, so the hidden sides are guessed, sometimes well, sometimes not. And you get splats, not clean editable meshes. Great for viewing and rendering, not for dropping straight into a modeling pipeline.