Sometime in the late 2010s, startup pitch events became stale: every company rolled up to share their “Uber for X,” a laundry app for college campuses, or “the productivity app that will finally fix your calendar/inbox/life.” Sometime in the late 2010s, startup pitch events became stale: every company rolled up to share their “Uber for X,” a laundry app for college campuses, or “the productivity app that will finally fix your calendar/inbox/life.” They were all the same pitches, the same problems, the same not-quite solutions. Attending those events started to really become a drag. But in the last 12-18 months, that has changed. Dramatically. The frontier opened by artificial intelligence has brought us back to a world where startup pitch events feature companies that leave you re-thinking what’s possible. The real unapologetically nerdy, “wow” stuff. I’ve been writing about these: the time I accidentally consumed AI-generated music without realizing it, or the polished and convincing text-to-speech engine that conveyed emotion rather than just reading the words. And it hasn’t stopped. emotion Not long ago, I was talking about those experiences and how it wouldn’t be long before AI-powered 3D modeling would evolve from “good enough for a hackathon” to producing commercial-grade, high-quality assets fast. fast. Someone cut me off and asked, “Like Hyper3D?” Just like that, I knew my afternoon was toast. I rolled up my sleeves, opened a new tab, and found myself staring at the next leap: real-deal, scalable, fast, good 3D generation. good The product is actually called Hyper3D Rodin Gen-2, a fitting name for a digital sculptor and a good reminder that I’m overdue for a visit to the Rodin Museum here in Philadelphia. From one look at the homepage, it’s clear they’ve enabled creators to build some cool stuff. Hyper3D Rodin Gen-2 Hyper3D Rodin Gen-2 It was also evident that it wasn’t just cool stuff; it was unbelievably high-quality cool stuff: as I dragged the 3D Labubu and rubber duck, and printing press around, there were no skips, no loss in quality, no awkward angles. Given that it all looks better quality than what I see on my PS5, I needed to dig into the what and, no matter how nerdy, the how. what how What I found in the details is that Rodin Gen-2 isn’t just a wrapper or a shiny front-end; it’s a whole new model 3D architecture called BANG, scaled up to ten billion parameters. Now, that number doesn’t mean much to most people (me included), except that it’s… a lot. Big enough to explain why these models don’t look like melted Play-Doh. But it’s not some vanity number or marketing trick: this is coming straight out of SIGGRAPH, the Olympics of computer graphics. Last year, the team’s Clay and DressCode papers both got Best Paper nominations. This year, they came back swinging with Cast (which actually won Best Paper) and Bang (Top 10 Fast Forward). Clay Clay DressCode DressCode Best Paper Best Paper Best Paper Top 10 Fast Forward Top 10 Fast Forward That’s not just “cool demo on X” validation. That’s “peer-reviewed, top-of-the-field, other researchers are jealous” validation. Bang itself is the shift that we’re writing home (or to HackerNoon) about. Instead of trying to cough up a full model in one messy pass, it works recursively, developing the rough outline first ahead of layers of detail. More like a sculptor than a printer. That’s why the meshes are four times cleaner than what you’d normally get, with geometry that feels solid from every angle. And here’s where it goes from academic flex to something you can actually use: formats. They didn’t stop at a web toy. You can export glTF for browser previews, OBJ and FBX for Blender, Maya, or Unreal, and even CAD-friendly files if you’re building, say, a sneaker prototype or furniture mockup. It’s a (kind of rare?) moment where the research paper didn’t get lost in translation to product, you can drag these straight into a pipeline and get moving. The difference is apparent. The meshes, which are essentially the skeletons that give the models their shape, are four times cleaner, according to documentation. Instead of edges folding in on themselves or random holes appearing when you spin the model, the geometry actually holds up. These things look solid from every angle. All of it adds up to a pretty wild leap: models that not only look good in a browser preview, but could actually hold their own in a game, an animation, or a commercial project. look What All of This Means The more I clicked around, I realized: this isn’t about shaving a few minutes off a workflow or generating some placeholder assets for a hackathon demo. This advancement (and those that will inevitably follow) is unlocking time and imagination for 3D artists and animators. So much of the job in 3D animation has always been grunt work. Building clean meshes. Wrestling with textures that don’t quite line up. Burning GPU cycles just to see if a detail will hold. These advancements don't erase that work, but it moves the baseline up. Suddenly, you’re starting with models that look like production quality out of the gate, not prototypes you need to spend hours fixing. And that’s where it gets exciting because the creative part can get wilder. Imagine what a talented animator can do when they don’t have to spend a week wrestling with geometry. Imagine how much bigger the worlds in games, films, and VR can feel when you’re not bottlenecked by time and tech. It’s the same feeling I had when I realized AI music wasn’t just background noise anymore - that it could carry real emotion. We’re at that moment for 3D: the start of a new chapter where imagination sets the limit, not technology. It’s the same feeling I had when I realized AI music wasn’t just background noise anymore - that it could carry real emotion. We’re at that moment for 3D: the start of a new chapter where imagination sets the limit, not technology. imagination

This story contains new, firsthand information uncovered by the writer.

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