What happened
Aircada's analysis of AI-generated 3D models, using Trellis for an e-commerce product, reveals current limitations for production use. While AI models generate quickly (8 seconds) and produce small files (1MB), they exhibit critical flaws: wobbly silhouettes, illegible text, and impossibly bad UV maps. The underlying "triangle soup" topology prevents efficient editing, contrasting sharply with handcrafted models' structured geometry and clean textures. Aircada concludes AI output is practically "heavy" and unsuitable for e-commerce standards, despite comparable file sizes to production-ready assets.
Why it matters
E-commerce brands cannot currently rely on AI for production-ready 3D assets, forcing continued human intervention for quality. AI-generated models produce "triangle soup" geometry and fragmented UV maps, making simple edits impossible and requiring full manual rebuilds. This constraint means procurement teams evaluating AI content generation tools must factor in significant post-processing costs, negating initial speed benefits. Platform engineers integrating 3D configurators face a choice: accept low-fidelity visuals or maintain human modeling pipelines.
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