Tencent Cloud is the cloud computing service of Tencent. It sells cloud servers, databases, storage, video delivery and CDN, domain registration and AI model services to companies and developers. One of its AI services is Tencent HY 3D (腾讯混元生3D, also called Hunyuan3D), an API for 3D generation built on Tencent's own generative AI models.
A program sends a text description, a 2D image, or eight views of an object, and the API returns a 3D model. Generation runs in two steps: a geometry model first builds the shape, then a texture model paints high-resolution surface textures on it. The service can also optimize the topology (the mesh of polygons that forms the surface), generate an object as separate components, and unwrap UVs automatically, which means laying the surface flat so that a 2D texture image maps onto it. Tencent also publishes a version of the model, Hunyuan3D-2.1, on GitHub with full model weights and training code.
The API is billed in credits: prepaid credit packs, or use billed after the fact and settled each month. New users receive free trial credits.