Free 3D Model Licences Explained: What You Can Actually Do

"Free download" doesn't mean "free to use however you like". Every 3D model has a licence, and the differences matter as soon as you put a model in a commercial game, sell a print or use it in a client project.

This is general information, not legal advice. Always read the licence on the model's source page.

The licences you'll meet most

Licence	Commercial use	Credit required	Share-alike
CC0	Yes	No	No
CC BY	Yes	Yes	No
CC BY-SA	Yes	Yes	Yes: your adaptation must use the same licence
CC BY-NC	No	Yes	No
CC BY-NC-SA	No	Yes	Yes
CC BY-ND	Yes	Yes	No modifications allowed

The tricky cases

Share-alike in games

Whether a CC BY-SA model forces you to release other parts of your project under the same licence depends on whether your use counts as an adaptation, and that isn't always clear. Many studios simply avoid SA assets in commercial products.

"Non-commercial" is broad

NC rules out more than selling the model. Ad-supported videos, client work and selling prints of it are generally out too.

Fan art

A model of a famous character can carry a CC licence from its modeller, but the character still belongs to its owner. The licence covers the modeller's work, not the character. Avoid those in commercial work.

Datasets

Large collections like Objaverse on Hugging Face gather models that each keep their own licence. The dataset's licence covers the collection. Check each model's licence before using it.

How we handle it in our library

Our free model library uses only CC0 and CC BY models from Objaverse, so every one is usable commercially. Each page names the author, links the source and licence, notes that we re-encoded the textures, and gives you a credit line to copy.

Models you generate yourself

Models you create with text to 3D or image to 3D on a paid plan include a commercial licence. The usual caveat applies: if you upload someone else's artwork as the input, you need the rights to that artwork.