{
  "title": "What is the 3D figurine trend, and can you print one?",
  "url": "https://nendo.world/articles/3d-figurine-trend",
  "published": "2026-09-18",
  "updated": "2026-09-18",
  "publisher": {
    "name": "Nendo",
    "url": "https://nendo.world/"
  },
  "summary": [
    "The 3D figurine trend is an image trend. People ask an AI image model for a picture of themselves as a collectible figurine on a desk, next to its box. Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, nicknamed nano banana, set it off on 26 August 2025. An earlier wave of action figure pictures started with OpenAI's 4o image generation on 25 March 2025.",
    "The result is a picture. A printer needs a closed 3D shape, and nothing on it can be thinner than the printer can build. For the full-color resin our figurines are printed in, that means walls over 1 mm and details of at least 0.8 mm.",
    "Since 1 July 2026, 96 in 100 pictures uploaded to Nendo reached a finished 3D model, and half were done in 5.1 minutes. The failures we see at the printer are thin parts, like glasses arms and shoelaces."
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "id": "what-the-trend-is",
      "section": "What the trend is",
      "caption": "The two waves, and what each one produced",
      "columns": [
        "When",
        "What people used",
        "What came out",
        "Peak on Google Trends, worldwide"
      ],
      "rows": [
        [
          "Late March to April 2025",
          "OpenAI 4o image generation, released 25 March 2025",
          "A picture of you as a boxed action figure",
          "\"ai action figure\" peaked at 9 out of 100 in the week of 6 April 2025"
        ],
        [
          "September 2025 onwards",
          "Google Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, released 26 August 2025",
          "A picture of you as a 1/7 scale figurine on a desk",
          "\"nano banana\" peaked at 100 in the week of 7 September 2025, and runs near 10 today"
        ]
      ],
      "notes": "Release dates from OpenAI's and Google's own announcement posts. The trend line is our own capture of Google Trends, worldwide, five years of weekly points, taken on 17 September 2026. Google Trends is relative: in one chart every term is scaled against the highest weekly point in that chart, so these numbers compare to each other and to nothing else. Google has said that way over 500 million images were made with the model, which counts every kind of image, not figurines."
    },
    {
      "id": "picture-versus-print-file",
      "section": "From a picture to a print file",
      "caption": "What full-color resin printing needs, from JLC3DP's own guidelines",
      "columns": [
        "Limit",
        "Number"
      ],
      "rows": [
        [
          "Recommended wall thickness",
          "Over 1.0 mm, rising to 1.5 mm and above on larger flat areas"
        ],
        [
          "Smallest embossed or engraved detail",
          "0.8 mm wide and 0.8 mm deep"
        ],
        [
          "Gap needed between parts that must not fuse",
          "1.5 mm"
        ],
        [
          "Largest part",
          "380 x 330 x 230 mm"
        ],
        [
          "Tolerance",
          "Plus or minus 0.2 mm up to 100 mm, then 0.3%"
        ],
        [
          "Layer height",
          "21 to 30 micrometers"
        ],
        [
          "Hollow models",
          "Not supported in full color, the inside is filled"
        ]
      ],
      "notes": "JLC3DP full-color resin service page, its White Jet Process page and its WJP design guidelines, all captured on 17 September 2026. Those pages carry no publication date. The maximum size differs by material on JLC3DP's own pages. 380 x 330 x 230 mm is the one for the full-color resin we use. Protolabs publishes 0.76 mm as its minimum free standing wall for the same family of printing. The closed surface rule is in the 3MF core specification."
    },
    {
      "id": "how-often-it-works",
      "section": "How often a picture becomes a printable model",
      "caption": "From upload to a printable model, measured on Nendo runs",
      "columns": [
        "Step",
        "Typical",
        "Measured on"
      ],
      "rows": [
        [
          "Upload reaches a finished 3D model",
          "96 in 100 runs",
          "455 uploads, 1 July to 17 September 2026"
        ],
        [
          "Picture redrawn in the Nendo style",
          "104 seconds",
          "314 runs, 3 August to 17 September 2026"
        ],
        [
          "3D model built from that picture",
          "176 seconds",
          "314 runs, 3 August to 17 September 2026"
        ],
        [
          "Upload to a finished model with a real print price",
          "6.8 minutes, 12.4 at the slowest tenth",
          "306 runs, 3 August to 17 September 2026"
        ],
        [
          "Picture refused by the AI image filter",
          "3.2% of uploads",
          "1,169 uploads, 9 May to 17 September 2026"
        ],
        [
          "Typical finished figurine",
          "60 x 41 x 31 mm, about 19.6 cm³ of resin",
          "1,059 finished models, 9 May to 17 September 2026"
        ]
      ],
      "notes": "Our production database, read on 17 September 2026. Figures are medians, the middle value when you sort the runs, unless the row says otherwise. Nothing here is about any one person or picture. The volume is what our own measurement gives. On the figurines we have printed, the printer measured a median of 17.2 cm³ across 21 prints."
    },
    {
      "id": "what-ai-answers-say",
      "section": "What AI answers say about this today",
      "caption": "Two runs of the same question, one day, against what we measured",
      "columns": [
        "Question asked",
        "What the AI answers said on 17 September 2026",
        "What we measure"
      ],
      "rows": [
        [
          "How long from photo to a figurine in my hands?",
          "Run one: about 2 to 6 weeks, with no searches and no sources. Run two: about 7 to 21 days.",
          "About 7 minutes to a priced 3D model, then a median of 17.4 days from checkout to the door across 33 delivered orders"
        ],
        [
          "What are the odds it works?",
          "Run one: no reliable public failure rate exists, followed by an uncited table of 70 to 90%, 40 to 70% and 10 to 40%. Run two: a different table.",
          "96 in 100 uploads reached a finished 3D model, on 455 runs since 1 July 2026"
        ],
        [
          "What does the AI picture lose when it becomes an object?",
          "Neither run searched, neither cited a source, and neither gave a single millimeter figure.",
          "Walls under 1.0 mm are the failure. Three orders came back in August 2026 over parts as thin as 0.43 mm"
        ]
      ],
      "notes": "Eight prompts, two separate runs each, through an OpenAI model with web search and a US location, on 17 September 2026. We didn't test the consumer chat apps themselves."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "label": "Google, introducing Gemini 2.5 Flash Image",
      "url": "https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-gemini-2-5-flash-image/",
      "note": "Launch post, 26 August 2025, and the nano banana nickname",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "Google, the best Nano Banana trends of 2025",
      "url": "https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/gemini/nano-banana-google-trends-2025/",
      "note": "Google's own write-up of the figurine prompt",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "OpenAI, introducing 4o image generation",
      "url": "https://openai.com/index/introducing-4o-image-generation/",
      "note": "Released 25 March 2025, the model behind the action figure wave",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "AI News, the ChatGPT action figure trend",
      "url": "https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/news/chatgpt-got-another-viral-moment-with-ai-action-figure-trend/",
      "note": "Dated report of the April 2025 wave",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "Creative Bloq, how people are making those viral 3D figurines",
      "url": "https://www.creativebloq.com/ai/ai-art/heres-how-people-are-making-those-viral-3d-figurines",
      "note": "Dated report of the September 2025 wave",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "SiTH, single view textured human reconstruction (arXiv)",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.15855",
      "note": "Research describing the unseen back of a one photo model as hallucinated",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "3MF core specification",
      "url": "https://github.com/3MFConsortium/spec_core/blob/master/3MF%20Core%20Specification.md",
      "note": "The closed surface rule for printable meshes",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "JLC3DP, full-color resin",
      "url": "https://jlc3dp.com/help/article/full-color-resin",
      "note": "Wall thickness, tolerance and maximum build size",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "JLC3DP, WJP design guidelines",
      "url": "https://jlc3dp.com/help/article/wjp-products-design-guidelines",
      "note": "Minimum walls by area, detail size, clearance and the no hollow rule",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "Protolabs, PolyJet design guidelines",
      "url": "https://www.protolabs.com/services/3d-printing/polyjet/design-guidelines/",
      "note": "An independent 0.76 mm minimum free standing wall",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    },
    {
      "label": "Google Trends",
      "url": "https://trends.google.com/trends/",
      "note": "Our own capture of the weekly worldwide series on 17 September 2026",
      "accessed": "17 September 2026"
    }
  ]
}