Tanz According to creator Physna, it is the largest 3D art community in the world with over 20 million monthly active users.
An additional 4 million users have signed up to Thangs in the past month as 3D creators and their fans flock to the subscription service, which gives them access to 3D model searching, collaboration features, intellectual property protection and monetization.
Just a year ago, Thangs had about 1 million users. Today, it is used by many Fortune 500 companies – an impressive achievement for a small company in Columbus, Ohio.
Thangs allows fans to find, share, and sell 3D models from the real world and the Metaverse.
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In an interview with GamesBeat, Physna CEO Paul Powers said Thangs quickly set itself apart with its core technology that enables unparalleled geometric search and collaboration capabilities. Thangs is breaking new ground by automatically protecting creators’ intellectual property, instantly detecting unauthorized use on the web, even if the name or image has been completely altered.
Powers said the name “Physna” stands for “physical DNA,” a core concept for understanding the common properties underlying 3D images. The service allows subscribers to access and freely use Thangs 3D models, while creators can receive compensation for their contributions when used.
“Starting last year, we started allowing people to get paid for their intellectual property,” Powers said.
These unique safeguards ensure that creators can protect their work and their livelihoods, even as 3D captures a larger share of the creative economy. Currently estimated as a $250 billion industry, the creator economy is expected to double over the next five years.Over the same period, 3D printing is expected to grow threefold and mixed reality sevenfold, meaning the market for what Thangs can offer will expand significantly, Powers says.
All too often, artists find out their work has been stolen, but in this case, fans can subscribe to an artist through Thangs in a way similar to Patreon, and then use or 3D print anything the artist makes.
“IP protection, which used to be a weakness of 3D, is now a strength,” says Powers. “As a result, Thangs has grown from 1 million to 20 million monthly active users in one year. With IP protection and a search engine that makes 3D content easy to find, we are now significantly larger than any other platform in the 3D space.”
Thangs has quickly emerged as the destination for 3D creators to get discovered, gain a fanbase, and earn more. Thangs attracts designers, animators, other 3D professionals, and celebrities. Felicia Day And a fan favorite Forge Core and Make anything.
“Our underlying geometric search engine makes it easier for users to find models on Thangs, which in turn helps them make more money,” said Powers. “Some designers who started a few months ago are already making over $500,000 a year on Thangs, and many more are on track to exceed $1 million a year within the next few months. We’re committed to evolving our tools and capabilities to empower all our users to build profitable businesses in 3D.”
Core Technology
Thangs is owned by Physna, the developer of a geometric search engine whose software codes the 3D world through a deeper understanding of the physical properties of real-world objects and the relationships between them, bridging the gap between the physical world and digital code.
Physna’s patented technology creates a matrix of all the geometric and spatial relationships within a 3D object or model, then applies AI to normalize the data, classify the model, compare elements/components, and suggest tags. Now, for the first time, according to Powers, companies like creators (Thangs) and the Department of Defense (Phsyna Enterprises) will have a trusted source of truth for all 3D models, based solely on the model’s spatial logic and geometric reality.
Nvidia’s Omniverse allows companies using a variety of tools to build “digital twin” or metaverse applications using the Pixar-created Universal Scene Description (USD) file format, which is now an open format, but Powers said Physna doesn’t care what file format developers use.
Physna’s patented technology frees 3D models from the constraints of specific file formats and allows users to search by shape, solving many of the challenges that plague 3D and threaten to limit the future growth of XR, including standards, collaboration, discoverability and IP protection, he said.
As for standards, Powers said Physna’s platform eliminates the need for the industry to standardize on a single file format. Physna preserves the geometric logic of the model and can instantly reconstruct it in any format (no need to convert file types). It converts the image into the format buyers need to make it compatible with other 3D art. Many of the objects are eventually 3D printed.
“I don’t think we can agree on a standard. Everybody wants theirs to be the standard. We’re standardizing it so that it’s not an issue,” he said.
He also said that Physna’s technology will create a GitHub for 3D (indeed, GitHub’s former CTO is on Physna’s board of directors) and that geometry is a universal language.
You and I can call the same thing by different names and describe it in different ways, but if we know that the object is the same (i.e. a triangle is a triangle no matter what you call it), we know that the descriptions are about the same object, and we can further refine the meaning.
The core technology enables true 3D search by shape, automatic labeling of digital assets based on shape, retrieval of 3D models from 2D images and photos, etc. And this leads to the concept of IP protection. Powers said that Physnas’ core technology powers Thangs with unparalleled IP protection capabilities for creators.
Thangs breaks new ground by instantly detecting unauthorized use on the web and automatically protecting creators’ intellectual property, even when names and images have been completely altered.
Physna says it is building the future of 3D in software and is already improving engineering, industrial design and procurement by giving innovators and creators powerful new search capabilities for every 3D model.
Financial History
Physna is backed by Drive Capital, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global and GV Capital. To date, Physna has raised $82.9 million: $6.9 million in 2019, $20 million in early 2021 and an additional $56 million in mid-2021.
For now, only a small percentage of users are uploading 3D objects. Currently, Thangs has 22 million 3D models available. Physna takes about 12% to 14% of transactions, but it seems that more people subscribe than buy. If you buy a subscription to a particular artist, Physna takes 50% of the subscription fee.
Its rival is Sketchfab, which was acquired by Epic Games, but Thangs has a large number of Sketchfab images.
