Illustration created for Nexaria Digital.
The short answer: researchers at Tsinghua University have shown a printer that cures a whole millimetre-scale object inside a vial of liquid resin in about 0.6 seconds, with no layers at all. It is lab research, not a product. But for anyone who builds 3D assets for virtual worlds, it points to a future where the trip from digital model to physical object takes almost no time, and owning the design matters more than ever.
We spotted the story in a widely shared reel claiming a printer can now make an object with light in under a second. The claim holds up, with a few details worth getting straight.
What did Tsinghua actually build?
The method is called DISH, short for digital incoherent synthesis of holographic light fields. The team, led by Academician Dai Qionghai, Associate Professor Wu Jiamin and Professor Fang Lu, published it in Nature on 11 February 2026.
Most printers you can buy, whether they melt filament or harden resin, build an object one thin layer at a time. DISH does not. The resin container stays still. A fast-turning periscope in front of the lens swings the angle of the light while a digital micromirror device flashes patterns from a 405-nanometre laser, curing the whole shape at once. Earlier volumetric printers spun the vial; this one moves the light instead.
The numbers are striking. Exposure takes 0.6 seconds for millimetre-scale parts. The smallest features come out as fine as 12 micrometres, with steady detail of about 19 micrometres across a 1 cm range, several times thinner than a human hair. Throughput reaches up to 333 cubic millimetres per second. The team printed in several resins, including hydrogels used in tissue research.
How close is this to a product?
Not close yet. DISH needs heavy computer processing before each print and specialised optics, and it makes small parts. Nobody is printing a chair in a blink. What changed is the idea of what is possible: a physical object no longer has to be built slowly from the bottom up.
Why does this matter for virtual worlds?
Because both ends of the pipeline are getting faster. Making a digital model used to take days of skilled work; AI tools can now turn a sentence or a photo into a 3D model. Making a physical one took hours of printing; research like DISH suggests it could one day take seconds.
That makes the 3D asset itself the valuable thing. The statue in a virtual gallery, the wearable on an avatar, the product in a virtual storefront are all files, and each file is also a set of instructions for something real. We have written about this meeting point in what a digital twin is and the future of phygital, where owning the digital version and owning the physical one start to mean the same thing.
What should creators watch?
- One design, two editions. A creator could sell a virtual sculpture for a world and offer a printed edition of the same design. Both share one source file, and one buyer could hold both.
- Provenance travels with the file. When a model can become an object anywhere, the record of who made it and who holds it does the job a signature used to do. That is why verifiable ownership matters.
- Licences need to be explicit. Owning a token does not automatically mean the right to print copies. Spell out what a sale includes, as you would for any creative asset package.
Where does Nexaria fit?
Nexaria is a marketplace for digital spaces and the assets inside them. When you list a collection on the Nexaria marketplace, it stays in your own wallet, and the public record shows who holds it. As making things gets faster, that record becomes the bridge between a model in a virtual world and the object on someone's desk. Teams that want a custom 3D world or storefront built can also talk to Smith App Studio, which designs immersive spaces and apps.
Frequently asked questions
What is DISH 3D printing? A volumetric method from Tsinghua University that cures a whole object inside liquid resin at once, using rotating patterns of light rather than layers.
How fast is it? About 0.6 seconds of exposure for millimetre-scale parts.
Can I buy one? No. It is lab research that needs specialised optics and heavy computing.
What does it mean for digital asset owners? The design file becomes the core asset. Clear ownership records and licence terms decide who may turn it into a real object.
More in this series
- 3D Printing at the Speed of Light, the companion piece
- AI Layoffs and the Rise of Digital Creator Work
