Hacktoberfest 2026 Week 2 — "Side Hustle: build something with open-source AI that someone would actually pay for"
What I Built
Wondful AI Renderer is a free, open-source (MIT) Blender plugin that turns any 3D white model into a finished, art-directed scene image — without leaving Blender.
The core promise: your geometry stays locked. On our benchmark (SheenChair Nordic living room), the rendered result holds 99.2% IoU against the original model's silhouette. The AI changes materials, lighting, and environment — never your product's shape.
v1.2.0 (released yesterday) adds:
Layered output — transparent PNG, shadow/projection layer, clean background, and layered PSD, so the result drops straight into a Photoshop workflow
Pixel-exact detail paste-back — license plates, logos, and nameplates are composited back unmodified ("the AI doesn't touch your product")
Custom terrain — adjustable four-corner slopes with presets
Material-based color calibration (default 0.7)
Who Would Pay
3D artists and small studios doing product visualization who need finished marketing shots from CAD/white models — without a photo shoot, without manual compositing.
The free MIT version is fully functional. The paid version ($29.90 on Gumroad, includes 1 year of updates) gets every new feature 3 months early. People pay for early access to the pipeline, not for locked features.
How I Built It
Blender Python addon (operators + N-panel UI), MIT licensed
Appearance pipeline: the plugin sanitizes the prompt, renders structure guides (mask/depth/normal) from the viewport, and drives an image model for the final re-render
v1.2.0's layered output was built to answer a real artist complaint: "AI images can't go into my PS workflow" — now they can
208 offline tests passing; install is download-zip → Preferences → Add-ons → Install from Disk
Demo
White model → finished shot (all inside Blender):
SheenChair white model → Nordic living room (IoU 99.2%)
YU7 car white model → desert / grassland / snow scenes
Shoe, watch, camera, lamp — 4 more product cases in docs/CASES.md
Before/after comparisons and measured IoU numbers are in the repo's case documentation.
Code
GitHub (MIT): https://github.com/tiandaoyouchang-png/wondful-ai-renderer
Paid version (early access): https://tiandao1.gumroad.com/l/wondful
Built solo. If you've ever needed a product shot but only had a white model, this is for you.
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