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wtf is trellis?

microsoft/trellis — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-06-24

12,578PythonAudience · researcherComplexity · 5/5Setup · hard

TL;DR

A Microsoft research model that converts text descriptions or photos into 3D objects exportable as game-ready meshes, radiance fields, or 3D Gaussians. Requires Linux and an NVIDIA GPU with 16 GB of VRAM.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((TRELLIS))
    What It Does
      Text to 3D model
      Image to 3D model
      Multiple output types
    Output Formats
      3D mesh for games
      Radiance field
      3D Gaussians
    Model Sizes
      342M parameters
      Up to 2B parameters
      Hugging Face demo
    Requirements
      NVIDIA GPU 16GB
      Linux only
      Python environment

Code map

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filefunction / class

Why would anyone build with this?

REASON 1

Generate a 3D game asset from a product photo without needing a 3D artist.

REASON 2

Convert concept art or a reference image into a 3D mesh for use in a game engine or 3D printing.

REASON 3

Research 3D generation techniques by training on TRELLIS's publicly available training code.

What's in the stack?

PythonPyTorchCUDA

How it stacks up

microsoft/trellisbobeff/open-source-gamesmyhhub/stock
Stars12,57812,57212,566
LanguagePythonPythonPython
Setup difficultyhardeasymoderate
Complexity5/51/54/5
Audienceresearchergeneraldata

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you spin it up?

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires Linux with an NVIDIA GPU with at least 16 GB of VRAM, setup installs GPU-specific Python libraries via a provided setup script.

Wtf does this do

TRELLIS is a research project from Microsoft that generates 3D objects from text descriptions or images. You describe something in words or provide a photo, and the model produces a three-dimensional version of it that can be exported in several common 3D formats used in games, film, and design software. The core idea is that TRELLIS uses a single internal representation to produce multiple output types from the same generation. Rather than committing to one specific 3D file format, it can output as a mesh (the kind of 3D model used in games and 3D printing), as a radiance field (a way of representing 3D scenes that captures lighting), or as 3D Gaussians (another representation suited to rendering). This flexibility is useful for teams with different downstream tools. The project provides pre-trained models ranging from 342 million to 2 billion parameters. Larger models generally produce more detailed results. A live demo is available on Hugging Face, so you can try the tool without installing anything. Image-based generation is recommended over text-based generation when you want the most detailed output, since the text-conditioned models have less training data to work with. Running the code yourself requires a Linux machine with an NVIDIA GPU that has at least 16 GB of memory. Installation involves setting up a Python environment with several GPU-specific libraries, which the project handles through a setup script. The training code is also publicly available for researchers who want to build on the work. The full README is longer than what was shown.

Yoink these prompts

Prompt 1
Using TRELLIS, generate a 3D mesh from a photo of a chair and export it as a .glb file for use in Unity.
Prompt 2
How do I run TRELLIS image-to-3D generation on a Linux machine with an NVIDIA RTX 3090?
Prompt 3
What is the difference between TRELLIS mesh output, radiance field output, and 3D Gaussian output, and when should I use each?

Frequently asked questions

wtf is trellis?

A Microsoft research model that converts text descriptions or photos into 3D objects exportable as game-ready meshes, radiance fields, or 3D Gaussians. Requires Linux and an NVIDIA GPU with 16 GB of VRAM.

What language is trellis written in?

Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python, PyTorch, CUDA.

How hard is trellis to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is trellis for?

Mainly researcher.

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