Needle Engine

Needle Engine is a web engine for high quality 3D applications with performance in mind.

Built on three.js and the glTF standard, Needle Engine delivers flexible, extensible web experiences with built-in collaboration and XR support.

Quick Links

🏓 Changelog • 📑 Documentation • 🧠 Sample Scenes • 💎 Showcase

Key Features

🎮 Development Experience

Component system with easy custom component creation
Unity and Blender integrations for familiar workflows
Multi-scene support with dynamic content loading

🌐 Web & XR Ready

WebXR support for immersive experiences on Android and iOS (yes! WebXR on iOS!)
Interactive QuickLook support for interactive AR on Vision Pro
Built-in networking and collaboration

⚡ Performance Optimized

Progressive texture and mesh loading
Automatic LOD generation for textures and meshes
Advanced PBR rendering with lightmap support

🎬 Animation & Effects

Animation state machines and timeline animations
Physics simulation
Post-processing effects
Animate anything with ease

→ See all features

Editor Integrations

Powerful integrations for Unity and Blender allow artists and developers to collaborate and manage web applications inside battle-tested 3d editors. Needle Engine integrations allow you to use editor features for exporting models, author materials, animate and sequence animations, bake lightmaps and more.

Getting Started

Quick Start with npm:

npm install @needle-tools/engine

Or use our Editor Integrations: Follow the Getting Started Guide to download and install Needle Engine with Unity or Blender.

Explore Examples: Try our interactive samples to see what's possible ⚡

Available under commercial and educational licenses

Examples

Example	Description	Links
Multiuser Cross device experience, Desktop, AR & VR (Sandbox)	Real-time collaborative multiplayer sandbox experience with WebXR on Android and iOS
Image Tracking AR	AR image tracking example (iOS and Android). See docs
Scrollytelling Bike Example	Timeline Animation using ScrollFollow, ViewBox and FocusRect	Project on Github
See-Through Walls	See-Through component sample
Cursor Follow	Cursor Follow sample
Animate Anything	Interactive animation system	Code on Stackblitz • three.js Example
Postprocessing Effects	Custom magnifier effect with post-processing	Code on Stackblitz
Unity ShaderGraph to MaterialX & mtlx materials	Using @needle-tools/materialx
Camera Focus DIV 1	Responsive layout with camera focus	Code on Stackblitz
Camera Focus DIV 2	Click-to-move camera focus example	Code on Stackblitz
FastHDR Loading	10x faster than EXR, non-blocking, 95% less GPU memory	Code on Stackblitz • Learn more
Scrollytelling Example	Scroll, physics and cursor interaction: a playful 3D interactive scrollytelling website	Included in Samples Package
AR Restaurant	Interactive AR restaurant experience	Code on Github
Custom Loading Overlay	Wait for LODs with custom loading states	Code on Stackblitz
React Shopping Cart	E-commerce integration with React	Code on Stackblitz

👋 More examples on samples.needle.tools, docs.needle.tools and in the Needle Engine Stackblitz Collection

Contact ✒️

🌵 Needle • Github • Twitter • Discord • Forum • Youtube

Recent Changes

[4.13.0] - 2026-02-10

NEW: Needle Engine MaterialX loader added to core. No extra dependency to @needle-tools/materialx is required anymore
Fix: ContactShadows not correctly rendering anymore

[4.12.5] - 2026-02-09

Update three.js dependency
Minor log improvements in development mode

[4.12.4] - 2026-02-05

Fix: WebXR image tracking support for multiple images (iOS + Android)
Change: Animation and Animator components now checks in local dev if the root object to be animated is marked as static and won't automatically update matrices
Improved iOS WebXR balloon message rendering to not overlap with camera or menu button

[4.12.3] - 2026-02-04

Add: getComponentInChildren and getComponentInParent now expose the includeInactive parameter to include inactive objects in the search
Change: Improved XR sessiongranted temporary scene design (removing temporary objects in AR and adding support for custom logo display while the AR session is initializing)
Fix: iOS WebXR canvas size for screenspace UI rendering
Fix: iOS WebXR UI InputField support
Fix: Invalid input event causing issue in OrbitControls when pressing multiple mouse buttons at the same time