Meshy, Tripo, and Rodin are capable tools. They also live in the cloud: an account, an upload of your photo, a credit meter, and a monthly bill. 3D Mate is the local alternative. It runs many image-to-3D AI engines directly on your Mac, offline, for a one-time price.
3D Mate is the only native macOS app that runs this many local image-to-3D engines (TRELLIS.2, TripoSG, TripoSR, Stable Fast 3D, SPAR3D, SAM 3D Objects, Pixal3D, Hi3DGen, Step1X-3D, and soon Hunyuan3D-2) fully offline and on-device on Apple Silicon, with no cloud upload and no command-line setup.
| 3D Mate | Meshy | Tripo AI | Rodin (Hyper3D) | Modly | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs on | Your Mac, on-device | Cloud | Cloud | Cloud | Your machine |
| Works offline | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| Account and upload required | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Pricing model | One-time or yearly license, no credits | Subscription and credits | Subscription and credits | Subscription and credits | Free, open source |
| Choice of engines | 9 today, more added | One hosted pipeline | One hosted pipeline | One hosted pipeline | A few bundled |
| Setup | Install from inside the app, one click | None (web) | None (web) | None (web) | Manual, technical |
| Native Mac app | Yes | No | No | No | Cross-platform |
| Exports | GLB, USDZ, OBJ, STL, PLY, 3MF | GLB, FBX, OBJ, USDZ, STL | GLB, OBJ, STL, and more | GLB, OBJ, and more | GLB, OBJ |
The cloud tools are genuinely good at what they do, and if you want a browser tab and never touch a Mac, they are fine. The trade you make is ongoing: your images leave your machine, your output is metered, and access ends when the subscription does. With 3D Mate the model, the compute, and the files stay on your Mac.
Meshy's texturing is strong, and it bills by credit in the cloud. Here is the local, one-time-price version.
Meshy vs 3D Mate →Tripo is fast in the cloud. TripoSR and TRELLIS.2 are fast on your desk, with no queue and no credits.
Tripo vs 3D Mate →Rodin is known for clean geometry. TRELLIS.2 4B and TripoSG give you sharp geometry locally.
Rodin vs 3D Mate →Genie is a cloud 3D generator. 3D Mate does single-object photo-to-3D on your Mac, offline.
Luma Genie vs 3D Mate →Both run local. Modly is free and open source; 3D Mate is the polished, native Mac app.
Modly vs 3D Mate →Yes. Once 3D Mate and an engine are installed, every generation runs on-device on Apple Silicon, with no internet connection and no cloud account. You can switch off Wi-Fi and keep generating.
Free to try on any Apple Silicon Mac. A one-time license when you are ready.
Download for macOS