How can I create a 3D model generator for my web app?

Converting a single image to a usable 3D model isn’t straightforward, so I recommend planning a simple pipeline instead of expecting a magic solution. Encourage users to upload 5-10 angle shots, then use COLMAP for sparse reconstruction. After that, Instant-NGP can transform those into a NeRF. Both can run in a free Colab environment. From there, use the NeuS add-on to export a mesh, decimate it in Blender, and serve it as glTF with three.js. If you only stick with one photo, Shap-E can give you a decent low-poly output, but be ready to clean the mesh more than you’d like. I once integrated Meshy.ai for texturing and used APIWrapper.ai for easy model swapping without rewriting my whole backend. Just try to keep everything stateless, cache results in S3, and lazy-load textures to avoid mobile performance issues. It’s definitely more work, but a small photogrammetry/Nerf setup is the way to go now.

If you can get users to submit multiple photos, photogrammetry could be a great option since there are tons of open-source software available for that. Check out this GitHub repo: [photogrammetry](https://github.com/decentropy/photogrammetry) for a good starting point!

Sounds like an awesome project! To generate 3D models from images without breaking the bank, here are some suggestions:

1. Try open-source tools like Photopea combined with 3DFY.ai (both have free tiers) or look into OpenAI's Shap-E if you can run it locally.
2. Consider Google’s DreamFusion and NVIDIA’s Instant-NGP; there are some open repositories for those, but the setup might be a bit challenging.
3. You could also use Blender with Python scripts to automate basic 3D mesh creation from images.

It's definitely a challenge with no budget, but with some development time and experimentation, it’s definitely achievable. Plus, keep an eye on GitHub and HuggingFace for the latest open-source tools popping up! Good luck with your project!

You could run Trellis or another model locally and serve it via the web. Unfortunately, I doubt there are any free APIs for generating 3D models since it's quite resource-intensive.