Meshy vs Tripo vs Hunyuan 3D vs Rodin for Game Assets

For most small game teams, Tripo is the default of these four: it's the cheapest per model on a paid plan, it has a dedicated low-poly mode, and it rigs creatures as well as humanoids. Pick Meshy if you need a free tier you can ship commercially or the larger animation library, Hunyuan 3D if you want to pay per call with no subscription, and Rodin if you're making detailed hero props and want more control over the shape.

We make Oryn, an AI game maker that also generates 3D models, so weigh that. We didn't run hands-on tests and we can't tell you which mesh looks best. Everything below comes from each vendor's own pricing pages, API docs and terms as they read on November 3, 2026, and the cost-per-model figures are our arithmetic from those pages. Where a page disagrees with itself or with another page from the same vendor, we say so.

Tripo vs Meshy vs Hunyuan 3D vs Rodin at a glance

Each cell comes from the vendor pages linked in the sections below. "Not stated" means we couldn't find it on the vendor's own pages, which doesn't prove the feature is missing.

Which one to pick

Start with Tripo if you're a solo developer or small team making a stylized game with a lot of props. You get more models per dollar than the others, the low-poly mode has a documented range that suits games, and the same plan rigs animals and monsters.

Use Meshy instead in two cases. You have no budget and accept crediting Meshy in your game, or your characters are humanoid and you want the animation library without leaving the tool. Its web app also charges nothing for remeshing and rigging.

Use Hunyuan 3D's API if you make models in irregular batches and don't want a monthly fee. Its prepaid credits stay valid for a year. Check the hosted terms for commercial use yourself, because we couldn't find the clause.

Use Rodin for a few detailed assets where the shape matters more than the count: a boss, a vehicle, a hero prop. It costs about $0.50 a model on its cheapest monthly plan, roughly three times Tripo, and we found no auto rigging, so plan on rigging elsewhere.

If you're after a prop inside a game you're already building, you can skip the export step entirely, which the last section before the FAQ covers. For the wider field, including open-source models, see our guide to the best AI 3D model generators.

Pricing and credits

All four sell credits, and a "model" means different things on each page, so compare the same job. Here's a textured image-to-3D generation:

These are our sums from Meshy's credit table, Tripo's pricing page, Tripo's API pricing, Tencent's billing page and Rodin's pricing page, read on November 3, 2026. Quality isn't equal across these rows, and retries, higher texture resolutions and add-ons change every number.

Some details the table hides:

• Meshy's plan ladder: Pro €19 (1,000 credits), Premium €38 (3,000), Ultra €95 (8,000). The pricing page showed euros when we read it, so your currency may differ. Its "up to 100 assets" on Pro assumes 10-credit generations on the Lite model. Plan credits reset monthly and don't accumulate.
• Tripo's plan ladder: Pro $20 (3,000 credits), Max $90 (25,000), Team $110 per seat or $55 per seat billed yearly (90,000 credits, with the comparison table implying three seats). The card estimates about 200 models on Pro and prints $0.16 per model, while $20 divided by 200 is $0.10, so confirm the price at checkout. Bought credits start at $10 for 1,000.
• Hunyuan's credit price: $0.02 postpaid, or $15 for 1,000 prepaid, falling to $1,350 for 100,000. Failed tasks aren't charged, and the API has a one-time free pack of 200 credits.
• Rodin's plans: Creator is $30 a month or $24 billed yearly for about 60 models. Business is $120 or $96 for about 416. Without a plan, direct credits cost $1.50 each. Its API docs charge a base 0.5 credit per Gen-2.5 generation, and an extreme-high texture adds 2.

Polycount, topology and LODs

A generated mesh with half a million faces is far too heavy for a phone, so these settings matter more than the headline model version. Our 3D game guide covers the phone budget, where low-end devices manage roughly 100 to 200 draw calls.

Tripo has the most game-specific controls in its docs. Its generation API accepts a face limit of up to 1.5 million triangles on H3.1, and suggests 50,000 to 100,000 for game-ready assets and 10,000 to 50,000 for web and mobile. Smart low-poly mode runs 500 to 20,000 triangles or 500 to 10,000 quads, adds 10 credits in the API, and the docs warn it may fail on complex inputs. Asking for quads forces FBX output and defaults to 10,000 faces.

Meshy splits topology into two routes in its image-to-3D docs. The remesh route takes 100 to 300,000 polygons (default 30,000) and can output quad-dominant meshes. Smart Topology models produce triangles only: meshy-t2 goes up to 15,000 faces with a default of 4,000, and meshy-t2.5 goes up to 30,000 with a default of 15,000. Remeshing is off by default on the full models, so a plain API call returns the raw high-detail mesh.

Hunyuan 3D takes a face count of 3,000 to 1,500,000 with a default of 500,000, far above what a small game wants, and setting it adds 10 credits. Its LowPoly mode costs 30 credits rather than 25 and can mix quads into the output, but it isn't available on model 3.1. A separate Smart Topology API costs 50 credits.

Rodin advertises up to 10 million polygons on its game development page, which also offers optional LODs and remeshing, and gives 40,000 triangles as an example budget for a hero prop. It's the only one of the four where we found LOD generation described. The Gen-2.5 API page we read mentions only the Raw mesh mode, so we couldn't confirm quad output there.

Godot lowers the stakes on LODs. It generates them automatically on import for glTF, .blend, Collada and FBX scenes, though the docs warn the result can break, especially on skinned meshes. OBJ gets none unless you import it as a scene.

PBR textures

All four produce PBR materials, but the defaults differ, and that catches people out in API scripts. Tripo turns PBR on by default. Meshy's enable_pbr and Hunyuan's EnablePBR both default to off, and on Hunyuan it adds 10 credits.

Texture size adds up fast in a small game. One uncompressed 4K map is 64 MB in memory (4,096 × 4,096 × 4 bytes), and a PBR set is several maps. Meshy offers 2K by default with 4K and 8K available, and Tripo offers up to 8K, limited on the lower plans. For most props, ask for 2K or lower it after import.

Tripo also has a delight option, on by default with its newest texture model, that removes baked lighting from the texture. Baked highlights and shadows are one of the first things to look for when you inspect a generated model, since they stay put when your game's lights move.

Rigging and animation

This is where the two best-known tools differ most.

Tripo's rig API lists biped, quadruped, hexapod, octopod, avian, serpentine, aquatic and "others" (v3.0 only), with a free rig check before you spend credits. Biped rigs can follow bone-naming conventions for Mixamo, Unity, Unreal and more. Rigging costs 20 credits in the web app and 25 in the API, and retargeting an animation costs 10 per animation. The older v1 rig has 90+ animation presets. Rigged output is GLB or FBX. The pricing page lists rigging in a comparison row, but we couldn't read which plans get it.

Meshy's rigging docs say rigging works only on textured bipedal characters facing +Z, under 380,000 triangles. Its animation page says auto-rigging also handles quadrupeds, so test your creature before you rely on that. The animation library is the bigger draw: the pricing page lists 20 motions on Free and 600+ on paid plans, though the feature page also says 100+ in one place. The web app charges nothing to rig, and the API charges 5 credits per rig and 3 per animation action.

Tencent lists Auto Rigging at 10 credits, though we found no documentation of rig types or an animation library. Rodin describes its output as rigging-ready, meaning you rig it in your own tool, and we found no auto rigger on its pages.

Formats and Godot import

Godot recommends glTF 2.0 and reads FBX through ufbx. It warns that OBJ has no skinning, animation or PBR materials, so skip OBJ whichever tool you use. All four export GLB, so a downloaded file drops straight into a Godot project.

The plugins save a download step:

• Meshy: an official Godot plugin adds a Meshy tab next to AssetLib. Sending models through the bridge needs Pro or above.
• Tripo: its pricing page lists a DCC Bridge with Godot on paid plans.
• Rodin: its home page lists a Godot plug-in along with Blender, Unity and Unreal.
• Hunyuan 3D: the launch announcement names Unity, Unreal and Blender, and we found no Godot plugin.

Tripo's quad mode forces FBX, which Godot reads fine, but GLB remains the simpler path if you don't need quads. For more on Godot's import quirks, read our Godot assets guide.

Commercial license: the free tiers differ a lot

Read this section before you ship anything from a free account.

Meshy Free: Under section 3.2 of its terms (updated September 19, 2026), Meshy owns free-plan output and makes it available under CC BY 4.0 if you credit Meshy. Commercial use with credit is allowed, and the pricing FAQ says the same about selling models. Paid plans keep assets private, and you own your output to the extent the law allows. Section 2.9 also lets Meshy use inputs and outputs from non-Enterprise customers for training unless you opt out by email, and that clause doesn't separate free from paid.

Tripo Free: The pricing page says public models and non-commercial use. Section 5.2.1 of the terms (updated July 11, 2025) goes further: Tripo keeps all rights in free users' inputs and outputs. Paid users generally get all rights, with a license back to Tripo so it can run the service, and the same section says Tripo won't use those inputs and outputs for training. Some third-party sites describe Tripo's free tier as CC BY. Tripo's own pages don't, so don't rely on it.

Hunyuan 3D: We couldn't find an output ownership or commercial-use clause for the hosted product. The API's terms exist on Tencent Cloud, but the pages we could open cover data handling only. The downloadable open weights are a different matter. The Hunyuan3D 2.1 license doesn't apply in the European Union, the United Kingdom or South Korea, requires a separate license from Tencent above 1 million monthly active users, and bars using outputs to improve other AI models.

Rodin: The terms say Rodin won't limit your use of output, while commercial export depends on your plan. The game page's FAQ says commercial shipping is allowed on plans that include commercial use, and the Free plan doesn't list it. Read that as no until Rodin tells you otherwise.

On any plan, two more things apply. Tripo's terms warn that other users may receive similar or identical output, so don't assume exclusivity. And you still need rights to any reference image you upload.

API

Meshy's API starts at Pro, with 20 requests a second and assets kept for 3 days, so download results promptly. Its API price list charges 30 credits for textured image-to-3D, 5 for a remesh and 1 for a format conversion, and doesn't state a dollar price per credit.

Tripo publishes the clearest numbers: 1 credit is $0.01, credits start at $1, text to 3D is 10 credits untextured or 20 textured, and image to 3D is 20 or 30. Quad adds 5 and smart low-poly adds 10.

Hunyuan's API runs through Tencent Cloud, and its Express edition costs 15 credits per call against 25 for Professional. Rodin's pages conflict on who gets API access: the pricing page puts it on Business, while the API page includes it from Creator. Ask before you build on it.

If the model is for a game you're building in Oryn

All four tools hand you a file, and then the work of scaling, placing and wiring it into your game is yours. In Oryn, a later change can ask for the prop directly: describe it and Oryn builds a model for it inside your game, next to a library of CC0 models from Kenney, KayKit and Quaternius that every game can draw on. Files you've already generated elsewhere can be uploaded too, per our assets guide.

Limits, to be fair to the others: Oryn is a game maker and isn't sold as a standalone model generator, changing a game needs a paid plan, and we don't document polycount or rig settings the way Tripo and Meshy do, so those two give you more direct control. Some generated assets also need a commercial-use check, so read the CREDITS.md file each game ships with before you sell.

Frequently asked questions