Needle Engine

Build 3D web experiences that work everywhere. From browser to VR headsets, mobile AR to iOS WebXR – create once, deploy anywhere. No app stores, no waiting, no limitations.

Why Needle Engine?

🚀 Deploy Instantly to the Web Build on your machine, deploy anywhere. Share your 3D experiences with a simple URL or QR code. No app stores, no waiting for approval, no installation required.

🌐 True Cross-Platform One codebase runs everywhere – desktop, mobile, VR headsets (Meta Quest, Apple Vision Pro), and mobile AR including native iOS WebXR support. When new XR devices launch, your apps work automatically.

🎨 Work in Unity, Blender, or Pure Code Full-featured integrations for both Unity and Blender — modeling, materials, animations, lightmaps, and more. Or skip the editors entirely and build from code with three.js.

🎯 Built-in Rapier Physics Full physics simulation with rigidbodies, colliders, raycasting, and character controllers – powered by Rapier, ready to use with zero setup.

🤝 Multiplayer & XR Built-In Collaboration and XR aren't afterthoughts – they're core features. Add multiplayer, voice chat, or immersive XR with a single component.

⚡️ Optimized for Performance Powerful compression and optimization pipeline ensures your files are small and load fast. Built on the glTF standard for maximum compatibility.

What's New

Latest features, updates, and documentation changes

NEW

Needle Engine for Blender 1.0.0

A milestone release: completely redesigned UI, reflection probes, improved lightmapping, supercharged EventLists, 15+ new components, and support for Blender 4.2 LTS through 5.1.

Apr 17, 2026vBlender 1.0.0

MaterialX: Displacement & ShadowsNEW
MaterialX materials now support vertex displacement (procedural and texture-based), realtime shadows, displacement animation, and alpha mode detection — all built into Needle Engine 5.
Mar 22, 2026v5.0.0

FastHDR Environment LightingNEW
Coming to Needle Engine: environment lighting that loads 10x faster, uses 95% less VRAM, and needs zero CPU processing. Works on every device — even budget phones.
Mar 20, 2026v5.0.0

iOS WebXR with NeedleNEW
Full WebXR AR on iPhone and iPad — no app install needed. Powered by ARKit via App Clips, launched instantly from any link or QR code.
Feb 1, 2026

Choose Your Path

🎓 Learning

Start with step-by-step tutorials

Perfect for newcomers who want to learn the fundamentals.

🔧 Problem Solving

Jump straight to practical guides

Get things done with focused how-to instructions.

📚 Understanding

Explore concepts and architecture

Deepen your knowledge of how Needle Engine works.

📖 Reference

Look up specific APIs

Quick reference for components, methods, and configuration.

Build with AI

Install the Needle Engine skill to give your AI coding assistant built-in knowledge of the engine. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Codex, Gemini CLI, and many more. Auto-installs via the Vite plugin, or install manually:

npx skills add needle-tools/ai

You can also connect AI to your live 3D scenes with the Needle MCP Server.

What Our Users Say

See all testimonials →

I've tried Adobe Aero, 8th Wall, and Niantic Lightship — all either dropped or required app store downloads. Finally, I found Needle with AppClip tech. I feel like I've found the right path with Needle.

Needle Engine has been the most flexible, easy to implement, and solid web AR implementation I've come across.

We have something like 12 products used globally, made with Needle — it's been a fantastic tool for us over the past 2-3 years. As a tool, Needle Engine has been absolutely instrumental in us getting our products out the door. The support was really, really good. It just makes the workflow so easy, even people that aren't developers only have to click one button. We definitely plan on staying with Needle for the foreseeable future.

Using Needle Tools, it's just magical stuff to work with — it's brilliant. The speed of iteration, being able to see edits on the fly, is absolutely awesome. It's a total game changer. I've never seen or worked with anything like it. And none of this would be happening if it wasn't for Needle Tools.

The reason we got into Needle, which I absolutely love, is because we were looking for a solution to show our interactive work. I saw some examples and it blew my mind. It just works on everything — that's the mad thing, it just works on every browser. It can be used by people like me who can't code.

I discovered Needle which pretty much addressed all the issues I had. I could use Unity, my existing assets, the IDE I liked. There were so many pre-made components, samples, and such a well-made documentation that it felt really easy to get started. At the MIT hackathon, I think we were by far the fastest team.

Needle Engine really eased up a lot of developer work — it's very artist friendly. The workflow was very fast and agile. When we saw it's multiplayer, we started screaming in our office. For everyone wanting to do web experiences or AR, I really recommend Needle Engine. Amazing support, amazing community — I love it.

I have tested in your engine, and it worked at first try, which i have not experienced in any other engine.

Unbelievable Unity editor integration by an order of magnitude, and as straightforward as the docs claim. Wow.

This is the best thing I have seen after cinemachine in unity. Unity should acquire this

Spent the last 2.5 months building this game, never built a game/never used unity before, but absolutely loving the whole process with needle tools. So rapid! Would love to make a career building AR experiences!

My workflow has been optimized 10X ever since i started using needle