The process
Nothing here is aspirational. Where something is not built yet, it says so — including in the table at the bottom.
1 — The problem, stated precisely
A 3D model is a file. Once a buyer has it, they have it: there is no technical way to stop them copying, printing, re-uploading or selling it, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something that does not exist.
So the question worth engineering for is different. When a copy turns up somewhere it should not be, what can you actually prove? That is where creators lose today:
This platform is built for that question and no other one.
2 — The four steps
The model goes into a vault, encrypted under a key that belongs to your account alone. We record the shape itself — descriptors computed from the geometry, not a hash of the file — with the moment and the account. The master then stays there. Nothing you post anywhere is the master.
Your store asks us for the file to deliver and we return a copy with a mark embedded in its geometry, unique to that sale. For anywhere we have no integration yet, you export a marked copy yourself and name the channel it is for.
We match on shape first, because a reposted file is never byte-identical to yours. When a match comes up we try to read the mark: either it decodes to a specific sale, or the shape is identified and the mark is not readable. Both become a sighting with an evidence packet.
A sighting is information, not an action. Confirm it, clear it as your own licensee, tell us the match is wrong, or ask us to pursue a takedown. Nothing is sent to anyone until a person here has read the evidence and approved it.
A pattern of sub-millimetre displacements distributed through the surface, carrying a code unique to one sale. It is embedded in the copy that gets delivered, never in your master. No file wrapper, no container, no licence blob — so there is nothing for a converter to strip and nothing for your buyer to install.
The decoded mark names a sale reference, not a person. You map that reference to a customer in your own records. We hold no part of that mapping, which is both a privacy commitment and the reason we cannot be compelled to reveal it.
3 — What you see, and what you pay for
Two rules we would most want a competitor to have to match.
Protection is never withheld to sell you an upgrade. A free account's models are marked, tracked, registered and recorded exactly like a paid account's. That is not a trial period and it does not degrade.
You are always told that something happened. If a copy of one of your models is found, you learn that it was found, at no charge, always. Where, when, which sale, and the evidence packet are what monitoring pays for. We will tell you for free that something is wrong; we charge to tell you exactly what.
4 — Claims
If a model is already registered here by someone else, you cannot register it again. You are told plainly, the attempt is recorded, and you are given a route: file a claim. Being refused is not an accusation — the platform has declined to give one shape to two accounts.
Filing changes nothing by itself. If we verify your basis you may ask that the other registration's sales through this service be frozen, and then:
We are the notary and the evidence custodian. Between two colourable claims we are not the judge: we freeze enforcement, hold the record, and state only what we can show.
5 — The honest limit
The part most worth understanding, and the part a competitor's marketing will not tell you.
The master was registered here before any copy ever left your hands. Every copy in existence outside the vault is therefore a marked copy or a degraded descendant of one — so any copy found in the wild either decodes, or is visibly damaged, and either way the person holding the clean original is you. We can assert that from our own records, which is the only kind of assertion worth making. Takedowns we file attach to these models and to nothing else.
Released before it was registered — by you, or found in the public corpus by our screen, or revealed by a later sighting. Legacy models get marks going forward, shape tracking, sightings, and evidence packets that state exactly what we hold and what we saw without asserting who made it first, because we cannot honestly do that. You can use a packet in a notice you file yourself.
It closes the thief-registers-first hole. Someone lifts your model from behind your paywall and registers it here, attesting it was never released. Later you arrive with the actual master — and your file is clean: it matches theirs below the mark amplitude and carries no mark. An unmarked master in a second pair of hands proves the attestation false. Their registration is demoted to legacy and their account flagged; yours is accepted; you lose no sales while it is sorted out. Registration order stops mattering.
It applies to us being wrong about you. If your born-marked master turns up unmarked in somebody else's hands, the same test demotes your registration too — with notice and a review path. A creator whose master leaked has genuinely lost the thing the standing rested on, and a rule with an exception for nice people is not a rule.
The whole instruction is one sentence: the master never leaves. Use Export watermarked for anything you post anywhere.
6 — State of the build
Everything marked built is tested on every change; the test suite is part of the source, not a claim on a web page.
| Registration, vault custody, shape descriptors | built and running |
| Per-sale marking, decoding, evidence packets | built and running |
| Creator portal — accounts, portfolio, uploads, export watermarked, sightings, claims, messages, settings | built and running |
| WooCommerce delivery integration | built |
| Prior-art screening against the public corpus | built |
| Claims, the 15-day window, freezes, disputes | built |
| Internal review console | built — not reachable from the internet |
| Monitoring crawler | built; its isolated host is not deployed yet |
| Notice filing pipeline | not built — takedown requests are handled by hand |
| Patreon, Shopify and marketplace integrations | not built |
| Billing | not switched on; nothing is charged |
The short version
Register the model before you release it, and every copy that ever leaves has a serial number in its geometry. When one turns up where it should not be, we can usually tell you which sale it came from, and we can show — from our own records, not from your word — that you hold the original. Nothing stops the copying; what changes is that afterwards you can say exactly what happened, to someone who has to listen.
Invitations open shortly — our mailbox is being set up.