Nova3D: Code-Native Generation of Programmable 3D Assets

Nova3D is a code-native 3D generation system that outputs executable Blender source code, with the compiled GLB treated as the artifact rather than the asset itself. That distinction matters: the generated object already contains semantic structure at creation time, so named parts, parent-child relationships, constraints, and edit handles are present up front instead of being reconstructed later through segmentation or rigging.

The system was evaluated on Nova3D-Bench, a frozen benchmark of 54 items spanning six domains and three difficulty levels, using both text and image inputs. Against eleven baselines across mesh-native, part-structured, code-native, and CAD families, plus a same-LLM ablation, Nova3D produced a valid program and valid artifact on all 54 items. It also satisfied 51 of 52 prompt-stated numeric and count constraints, and passed 14 of 18 blinded local edits while preserving locality in all 18 cases.

For animation and interaction work, the most interesting result is articulation: Nova3D exposed 59 joints across 12 assets with 98.3% geometric validity, while the baselines exposed no native joints at all. The generated assets also carried named parts organized into assembly trees, which makes them much easier to inspect, measure, and modify in downstream pipelines.

Geometry quality was competitive too. Nova3D won the structured domains in a pairwise shape-quality tournament and came in second only to the strongest mesh-native model, though baked-PBR systems still held an edge in texture realism. For developers, the practical takeaway is that code-native...