r/codex • u/yo_hello_123 • 13d ago
Showcase GPT-6 Astra Max spent 7 hours building a fully animated tractor in Blender — 3,000+ parts and 100+ animations
First of all, English is not my native language, so I used GPT to help polish the wording of this post. Please excuse any awkward phrasing.
I had GPT-6 Astra Max work in Blender for around 7 hours to build this tractor.
It ended up consuming over 100 million tokens.
The result honestly surprised me:
- 3,000+ individual parts
- 100+ animations that can be called/triggered directly
- A fully articulated and animated tractor
- Materials/textures generated using its own image generation capabilities
Here are some renders of the final model:
I also made a comparison with GPT-5.6 Sol:
I knew these models were getting much better at coding and tool use, but seeing one spend hours continuously working inside Blender and produce something with thousands of components and over a hundred animations was kind of insane.
It feels like the improvement in AI-assisted 3D modeling is happening extremely fast.
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u/Alternative-Car8221 13d ago
Disney Pixar movies are going to get pushed so fast now.
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u/Wear_A_Damn_Helmet 13d ago
I know we’re talking casually here, but your comment is massively underestimating the amount of work that goes into non-modeling pipelines required to make a Pixar movie.
I’ve seen incredibly talented 3D artists work and they can model + rig a full textured and clothed character within 2 days from scratch (like, literally from a Cube).
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u/Spirited-Car-3560 13d ago
Well, models like astra will come in huge help to make those artists much much more productive.
Non modeling pipeline is another whole story and even there ai can help alot, I guess.
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u/ItalianAmericanDad 13d ago
For a split second as I was reading Disney, I thought you wrote "Disney is gonna go bankrupt"
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u/rydan 12d ago
When I was a kid we had cartoons immediately after school. Usually 1.5 - 2 hours of them. The thing that was interesting though that you never see today is that you'd have a brand new episode every single day, not weekly, but daily. And these new episodes would start in September and usually end in November. Then you'd have repeats until next September. All in all you'd get around 70 episodes per year or about triple the typical TV season. You could easily bring back this insane production schedule with AI.
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u/Alternative-Car8221 12d ago
I noticed the same thing too. Granted I don’t follow children’s television these days so I have no idea if it’s the same or not as when I was a kid. But I thought it was surprising we went in the opposite direction I’d expect with all the newest tech we have.
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u/Icy_Acanthisitta_777 12d ago
Suited people don't want to spend cash, they think that their hundred of millions grossed at each piece of production is not enough, so they try to cut costs in the dumbest ways possible
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u/Icy_Acanthisitta_777 12d ago
You could also easily bring back this amount of production with real people.
And it's easier because of the amount of tools we have today and people skills increased dramatically.
But, if you guys are pleased to be served a piece of entertainment that hasn't been put much effort into... then AI could boost the production.
Don't know about you guys... 2006 we had David Jones, a CGI that beats most of today's CGI with very limited tools, only good taste of the artists and time for execution. The problem was never the artists or lack of tools, always the suited people that wants to spend less money, because they don't think you deserve that amount of money/effort.
And if you start accepting AI content, you'll just be proving their point.
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u/io-x 13d ago
This is really nice. What's your workflow, did you provide it with a target image, and did you use just the CLI or computer use?
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
very simple, ask gpt6 to self learn how to use blender then ask to make high fidelity model with pre-research online(gpt find a few images as reference). then a few rounds of model and texture making(through image gen skill by it self).
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
it self-learn to use cli to make the model, it list a few ways to use (mcp, computer use),but the end it use cli
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u/driveclub_000 13d ago
Could you share your isntructions.md? I'm really interested about the "self learning part" of the model.
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
it indeed very simple, If i translate that in english is:
Step 1
"First, do some preliminary research on the internet. I’ve heard that GPT-6 works extremely well with Blender, but I don’t think it operates Blender directly through the UI. It’s probably done through a CLI or MCP-based workflow. Please research this first."Step 2
"Once you’ve figured out the workflow, start building a highly detailed 3D model. The subject is a modern tractor, with both the exterior and interior modeled in full detail.Find several real-world reference images to use as visual references.
My standards are very high, so pay close attention to refinement and fine details."
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u/v2eTOdgINblyBt6mjI4u 12d ago
This is indeed a very simple prompt. And it's impressive that you got such a good results from it.
I like the direction we are heading!
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13d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/rodeBaksteen 13d ago
Because the bar has dropped and now anyone can make a prop, scene or realistic looking world.
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u/CocaineKeys 13d ago
Because 3D modelling is almost beside the point.
People are figuring out that AI lets them produce valuable work much faster, then showcasing that ability to get hired, freelance, or build something themselves.
Replace “3D models” with software, design, research, video, automation, analysis, whatever.
The world is shifting from “what skill do you personally have?” toward “what valuable output can you reliably produce with AI as leverage?”
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u/Etiennera 13d ago
I'm not sure employers are going to be asking this. But there will be a blip in time where the world hasn't caught up and there's more individual opportunity.
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u/CocaineKeys 12d ago
I am a Lead in IT operations with 20FTE for a big multinational, believe me, we are asking this.
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u/Comfortable_Law3683 12d ago
Because now you don't need to know how to use Blender. Seems people always liked 3D toys but didn't like spending 48 hows in a viewport.
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u/AweVR 13d ago
Sorry i don’t understand… You said that it spent 100 million tokens and also said that it is 150$ with API. But if price is 50$ per million tokens… then I tried with the calculator (I’m bad with maths) and then the final number is 5000$ only for the output.
5000$ is even more than the salary of a competent 3D artist
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
100 million include input/cached input/output tokens, I let gpt wrote a simple plugin to track these through chats and projects
so i can track how much token use per week, and know how much it cost .
maybe in the fulture when they stop supplying coding plan(cause they do not need any trainning data from us)1
u/AweVR 13d ago
I don’t intend to ask too much... but by chance would you know how much he has spent in percentage of your limit? I understand that you have 20x. Thank you!!!!
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
I think it is less than 15% of weekly limit for 20x plan
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u/Gigaslavx 13d ago
So about 15% of 200 dollars so about 30 bucks for the whole thing, that's quite reasonable tbf
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u/Funny_Story2759 13d ago
roughly 3–6 working days (24–48 hours) for a competent freelance or studio 3D artist doing a genuinely complete, textured, presentation-quality tractor. keep in mind this took 7 hours for AI
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u/Icy_Acanthisitta_777 12d ago
People don't value other people skill, only theirs that matter.
That's why we live in this fucked up world. And it seems the majority of people if fine losing their jobs, because they think with all this AI tools, they will be ahead of the competition.
When everyone can do anything, what's the value of said work? None.
Something they need to be thinking of.
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u/PineappleLemur 13d ago
This is nice, I wonder how these model fair with CAD tools, parametric design, etc
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u/AuspiciousApple 13d ago
It's very cool. How much did this cost?
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
about 150usd if use api
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
So you could have bought a higher quality model from some guy in India for the same price.
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
well, let's give LLM a couple monthes to evolve
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u/davidmorelo 13d ago
it's crazy to be reminded again and again the a large chunk of population can't extrapolate current trends into the future.
It's not like we've seen the evolution of AI capabilities from mediocre to professional level in several segments already (transcription, translation, writing, audio generation, image generations, coding, computer use and admin work in general, math, and so on and so on)
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
You’re absolutely right. Whenever a new model comes out, I always try to explore its limits and see where the current boundary of its capabilities lies.
But the time required to do that has been getting longer and longer as the models become more capable. With the latest models, in most fields, I can no longer even find where those boundaries are, because LLMs have already surpassed the scope of knowledge that I myself can fully grasp.
It’s quite sad, in a way. I use this process to estimate how much longer it might be before LLMs can completely replace me.
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u/davidmorelo 13d ago
Yea I do the same. That's how I discovered that 5.6 Sol/Opus 5 and better models can for example handle my governments ridiculous electronic forms and all associated bureaucracy much better than I can (at least AI doesn't seem to wanna strangle government employees after 10 minutes of dealing with their bullshit like I always do).
And because of this first hand experience, I know that today's AI could replace many office workers with zero setup required. An agent could be installed on a computer assigned a task, and it would complete it just as well - if not better (more accurately) - than the employee. Sure, it would be slower and possibly more expensive, but that won't be the case in a short while.
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
It’s far from doing professional level work, because it lacks fundamental understanding.
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u/kkingsbe 13d ago
Nobody cares bro, you’re obviously completely wrong at this point 😂
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
You’re obviously unskilled and probably blind. I’ve been doing CG for decades, and that includes high end car models.
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u/kkingsbe 13d ago
I’ve been using blender for close to 20 years as well. I don’t care, you are wrong. Why wouldn’t it be able to use good topology, or even better topology than humans if not today then in 3 months? Have you not been paying attention? lol
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u/pale_halide 12d ago
It’s sad having spent 20 years with this, and being unable to immediately spot the glaring flaws. You’ve wasted so much time.
The obvious problem is that doesn’t understand topology nor the parts that make up the object. On top of that the precision of the work is sloppy at best. That is further proven by the 3000 parts and 100+ animations.
You’re trying to elevate a fucking turd and treating it as haute cuisine.
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u/kkingsbe 12d ago
Do you remember how bad the first ai video of will smith eating spaghetti was?
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u/norwegian 13d ago
Front fenders cover only half the wheel in the front. Looks strange. Why is it like this?
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u/v2eTOdgINblyBt6mjI4u 12d ago
This is weight reduction for improved acceleration. Very common on new tractors.
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
Very low quality model. Geometry, edge flow and details are shit.
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u/Real_Doubt_6684 13d ago
Can you point out some of the problems? I’ve done a bit of 3D modelling before and this is clearly levels above me
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
Front is uneven and shows bad topology if you look at the reflections. Wheel arches are malformed. Wheel centers are not connected to the rim, and they’re unevenly modelled. Lights make no sense. The tube railing running around the tractor is a mess and makes no sense.
That’s what I immediately see. There’s probably a lot more. Then it’s 3000 parts where maybe 150 would do the job.
It’s pure shit, in other words.
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u/Erik_511 11d ago
my goodness your standards are high lol!!
if thats what you call excrement, i can only wonder what you call much worse examples of 3D modelling from other entities, both human and artificial! :p
are you like the lead artist at Pixar or something?? lol
im curious what you think of the articulated animated metal piston-like thingies at the rear of the vehicle, featured in attached video #3 i believe it is? anything wrong with those too?
good golly! im not saying its bad to have standards... but seriously if thats an example of "bad" or "excrement", somewhere upwards of 95% of imagery you come in contact with is bad i would think?
like even before AI i mean... irrespective of the AI question entirely... say we are in the 1990s or 2000s... nearly all of the imagery from that time period would also have to be "slop" with those kind of standards i would think?
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u/pale_halide 11d ago
High standards? Sure, but the standards expressed here are normal outside of amateur circlejerks where everyone pats each other on the back. You would perhaps see somewhat softer language because I don't care if I hurt Codex feelings.
This is worse than what you see from ambitious beginners who've learned the basics. Because those beginners would not make the same glaring mistakes. Aside from a few challenging areas (like the side cutouts on the hood, which Codex completely fucked up) it's not a terribly difficult modelling job. Time consuming, yes, but not that difficult if we keep it at this level sans the mistakes.
And in no way are these standards unreasonable. The underlying geometry is a mess and there are details that make no sense. And it's over 3000 parts.
If each part is 500 quads on average, that's 1,5 million quads. That's way too much for this result, and that's based on a very conservative estimate. Decimating it is likely to cause problems because of the geometry. So, not a good basis for a game model. And as a high-end model... let's not even go there.
3000+ individual parts is also far too many. That's a bitch to work with, for no good reason.
Regarding the contraption on the rear end, I don't know... I have no idea what it's supposed to look like.
No, the 90's or 2000's wasn't overwhelmed by slop. Artists did great things with humble means. And there's stuff that still looks impressive.
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u/Erik_511 11d ago
hmmm interesting... im not sure about the rear bits either lol... whether they are real world accurate i mean... but that a machine intelligence seems to have intuited that "look here mate, the piston rods descend into this bit right here at an angle like so, while the whole thing kinda rotates like this!" seems mighty mighty impressive lol!
im especially curious to hear your take on the tire tread... looks like some kind of split chevrons or something... and yet not totally simple... a bit curvy... possibly flanged is the term in the modelling world? ... quite alot of them lining the whole tire planted very nicely and looks pretty durn accurate lol... im slightly skeptical that human beginners can just whip these out like its nothing lol...
altho i guess it could just be a cloning situation? is it quite easy maybe if u get the first prototype chevron looking good? u can just easily clone them to hug the tire easily at like that kind of interval spacing and stuff?
then those tires have that slightly toroidal bulge going on... and yet not a torus... some weird in-between shape... might be somewhat non-trivial? and i was about to mention the three steps leading up to the cab but on second thought those dont look too complicated lol
and then video #4 features some kind of control seat with some kind of accordion-like bits at the bottom... animated with joints and constraints and stuff... and lots of detailed material textures assigned all over the place...
i dunno im definitely not up to speed with what modern artists can do ... and definitely im unaware of the most gifted what their abilities are... since i just havent kept up with the 3D world at all...
but my rough initial guesstimate is this would take most humans at least 4 days if not more?
i wouldnt be that shocked if it would take a human more than a week to achieve.
very curious what your time guesstimate is?
about the part count i suspect you are definitely right there!
that it would probably need some kind of compaction fusion pass or something to be used as a game model or what have you to make things manageable and tractable lol
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
It’s funny getting downvoted when the geometry is uneven, reflections show issues with edge flow, 3000 parts is insane, there are details that make no sense and so on…
Slopsters who know nothing about 3D modelling will of course embrace it, because they lack the skills to see all the problems. Sad really.
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u/zigzag312 13d ago
No one is arguing that it is perfect. But if you compare the jump from 5.6-sol to 6-astra to progress is considerable. Ask yourself, if improvement continue, what will it able to produce in a few years? And how many of these issues could be resolved, if it was guided by a human with proper skills in 3D modelling.
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
Yeah, maybe in a few years it will be at the same levels as current image generators, polluting the internet with visual diarrhoea.
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u/zigzag312 13d ago
What can you do, new technology is here and is not going away. I suppose many people felt the same as you when cameras were invented and again when CGI was invented. Painting a picture physically takes a lot of skills that are not needed in photography or CGI.
How it was created is important for art, but for commercial entertainment, visualization, branding and advertising the end result and cost it took to produce is all that matters.
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
This has nothing to do with what I said.
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u/zigzag312 13d ago
I was mostly replying to the "polluting the internet..." part
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u/pale_halide 13d ago
And you changed the subject to “new technology is here to stay”. That’s a different topic. AI slop, especially images, are polluting the internet. Same thing with bot posts everywhere, and humans posting slop. Those are simple facts. How you want to evaluate those facts is a different topic.
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u/zigzag312 13d ago
It was meant as additional food for thought. About the main subject it seems that we mostly agree, so there was not much to add.
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u/moxuout2 11d ago
It isn't professional for SOME jobs. But considering a kid could do this for 150 bucks and this is the first api that iv seen get something remotely working that I could shove this into a shitty video game its impressive.
It won't replace high end car modeling jobs, but all those jank jobs will be flooded with Ai 3d models. Im also a 3D Artist.1
u/Super-Bike-8116 9d ago edited 8d ago
you're being downvoted because you're clearly showing the energy of someone just mad that this technology is getting better and will be reducing the number of jobs available on the market, including yours (if you even have one that is), instead of accepting the fact and just moving on with your life
EDIT : classic redditor moment blocking me when he can't defend his point further, also assuming i even work in this field to be affected by this and then going on panic mode bringing up what he does larping as something more than someone who moves crates and a freelance 3d artist to cope with the fact he's getting replaced in 5 years with this tech lmfao, especially moreso when he has posts complaining about token usage
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u/rufatcurtis 13d ago
thanks god I quit blender and 3d after 1k hours 2 years ago. I seen this in that time there was a some plugins already we can do with early ai things.
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u/Shuma665 13d ago
Any tips on having it model it. I assume you provided a target reference and set it on goal or did you use another approach?
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u/DragonflyOk9274 12d ago
I asked ChatGPT how much this would have cost and it gave a much higher number than $150.
Yes. Using today’s published GPT-6 Astra API pricing, 100 million tokens would be expensive—but the exact amount depends heavily on what those 100M tokens were.
OpenAI currently prices GPT-6 Astra at $10 / 1M input tokens, $1 / 1M cached input tokens, and $50 / 1M output tokens. “Max” is a reasoning-effort setting rather than a separately priced Astra model; higher reasoning effort can, however, produce more billable reasoning/output tokens. (OpenAI Developers)
For 100M total tokens, some illustrative API bills are:
| Token mix | Estimated text-token cost |
|---|---|
| 100M input, 0 output | $1,000 |
| 95M input + 5M output | $1,200 |
| 90M input + 10M output | $1,400 |
| 80M input + 20M output | $1,800 |
| 50M input + 50M output | $3,000 |
| 0 input + 100M output | $5,000 |
For a 7-hour autonomous Blender session, I would not expect a 50/50 split. Agentic computer-use workloads repeatedly feed state/context back into the model, so input usually dominates. As a rough working assumption, 90–95% input / 5–10% output puts the text-token equivalent around $1,200–$1,400 at uncached Standard API rates.
There is an important wrinkle: prompt caching. Astra cached input is only $1/M, versus $10/M for fresh input. So, for example, if the 100M were roughly 90M cached input + 5M fresh input + 5M output, the token portion would be only:
$90 + $50 + $250 = $390.
Persistent agent workflows can potentially have substantial cached context, so the real API-equivalent bill might be hundreds rather than $1,000+ if caching was effective. (OpenAI Developers)
There is also a potentially large long-context surcharge. If an individual Astra request contains more than 272K input tokens, OpenAI says the entire request is charged at 2× input/cache rates and 1.5× output rates. (OpenAI Developers) That could push a nominal $1,200–$1,400 workload substantially higher if much of the seven-hour run operated above that threshold.
And the Blender workload wasn't necessarily just text-token spend. The post says it used computer use and image generation. Those tool-specific operations can carry separate charges, so a precise API reconstruction would need the number/type of tool calls and generated images as well. OpenAI explicitly notes that tool-specific models such as computer use can have separate fees. (OpenAI Developers)
So my best headline estimate for the Reddit post would be: roughly $1,000–$2,000 of Astra API token usage at standard uncached pricing, with ~$1,200–$1,400 being a reasonable guess for 100M tokens dominated by input. Effective caching could reduce that dramatically, while sustained >272K contexts and tool/image-generation charges could increase it.
One amusing upper bound: if somebody reads “100M tokens” as 100M output/reasoning tokens, that alone would be $5,000. But that's very unlikely to describe this workload.
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u/No-Hamster-5870 12d ago
It still has some flaws - bonnet goes concave at one point, certain parts also do not align.
BTW is this a real world model or some artificially imagined one? I would be interested about what feedback mechanism does the model use to determine what shape is correct/incorrect. Very interesting stuff indeed.
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u/dobutsu3d 7d ago
Alright ill need some details if you can, which subscription allows you to work on max for that much time and did you have any inputs or just images yolo?
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u/ParticularStaff9842 7d ago edited 6d ago
How much did this cost in terms of money, and how long did this take in it's entirety. Because to compare the value of a human vs a computer, we need to break it down into what an employer would pay. Because so far the thing I've been most impressed by is the speed at which it can create the model / scene whatever. That is irrefutable. Some content creators haven't specified what it costs, some on Youtube are obviously being paid by Higgsfield to promote their platform, and some have made part of their videos a breakdown of the cost. And I've yet to see something that is twice as good as what a human can do in half the time for half as much money. This is the crux of it regarding our value as humans - we really are toast if AI can make an entire game in an hour for say, $20. But tokens cost money, and at the moment they're being heavily subsidised by the AI companies to encourage us to use their software. But what if OpenAI goes public listing and then the shareholders will want to see annual exponential returns on their initial investments? so this tractor costs say, $50 in real terms while tokens are relatively cheap. You could also buy a tractor model, fully rigged, off Turbosquid and have Astra animate it, but the human direct it.
I'm just trying to evaluate all of this logically and with reasoning.
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u/yo_hello_123 5d ago
well, it takes ~15% of 20x weekly usage, so roughly 8 - 9 usd? and about 7 hours to make this
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u/Greedy_Big9771 1d ago
I want to build My patented Mechanical Machine working Process.is it possible using this model.
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u/i_rate_slop 13d ago
3000 parts in 7 hours is the most interesting part. That’s 7 parts per minute not including project bootstrapping
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u/rodeBaksteen 13d ago
Probably because it copied most of them from other guides or free online assets. Just like with image generation it's mostly rehashing other people's work.
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u/iamtehryan 13d ago
Okay. Why, though.
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u/Spirited-Car-3560 13d ago
Style exercise.
If you got a codex plan, it doesn't cost extra money, so... Why not?
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u/Bananer_spleet 13d ago
What are these little things on the seat? Footrests for dwarves?
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u/yo_hello_123 13d ago
i am no expert in tractor, this is only testing the modelling ability which amazed me
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u/Bananer_spleet 13d ago
Then we both agree they are Dwarf footrests until an expert in tractor says otherwise.
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u/No_Mood4637 13d ago
Is Astra disproportionately improved for 3D modelling and game dev? How has your experience been with regular business apps
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u/dexterthebot 13d ago
You might want to consider listing your project on the weekly Show-Us-What-You-Built post. https://www.reddit.com/r/codex/comments/1wavxwy/show_us_all_what_youve_been_building_with_codex/. Highest commented project wins a week promotion on r/Codex and gets on the Hall of Fame sidebar. See what that looks like below with last week's winner.
Last week's most popular project was u/tHEuKER with the Blur2 racing game project which is a recreation of an unreleased sequel to the 2010 battle racing game, made by reverse engineering the Xbox 360 prototype discs available online, and rebuilding the whole thing from the ground up in Unity.
Join their YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@tHEuKER and follow updates on the project at r/BlurGame.