As of writing, the process of creating free 3D models using artificial intelligence is not super straightforward, but once you get over a couple barriers, it's actually simpler than you might think. As with all AI software, you shouldn't rely on it for prints that require precision or consistency, but for things like little figurines, it works fairly well.
For this demonstration, I am using Hunyuan-3, an open-source program created by the Chinese company Tencent. Currently, only Hunyuan-2 has been released in English, but it's less intuitive than Hunyuan-3, and Hunyuan-3 is perfectly usable with a little help from translation software. It requires no downloads, no special permissions, and no technical knowledge to use. As December 2025, the software allows you to generate 20 prompts a day for free.
Let's get into the process.
The software is hosted at https://3d.hunyuan.tencent.com/
You should arrive at a landing page that looks like this
Click the blue box to continue.
You will arrive at a page that looks like this, but in Chinese. I've translated all the options so you have a better sense of what you're looking at:
Click the rightmost box, enter your email, then click the box that has the Chinese equivalent of "Get verification code." Enter the code once it's sent to your email, then click Log in.
Once you're in, the left side of the page has the options for generation. Here's what they mean in English:
Enter your prompt in the top left box. There is a 150 character limit. In most cases, the default settings are fine. Once you're ready, click the blue box at the bottom to generate your model.
The software will generate four options for you to choose from. Once they're done generating, you can pick which one you want to use.
Once you select one, you can click and drag to rotate the model or click the arrows in the middle of the page to see the other three models. Clicking the three circles in the middle will show you different model textures, but since our printers only print in one color anyway, the choice is irrelevant.
There will be options on the right side of the screen. For our purposes, the only one that's relevant is the dropdown box near the download button. Make sure you are downloading the file in .STL or another format compatible with our printers.
Once the file is downloaded, you can open it in PrusaSlicer. You will likely get this warning, it's not a big deal, simply click Yes to continue.
Voila! You have a workable file you can print.
Usually, the models will be pretty small, but you can use the scale factors row in the bottom right of the PrusaSlicer options to make them bigger.
Slice, print, and enjoy!
