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
• iOS QuickLook support for interactive AR
• 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.

• 🎲 Download Unity Integration
• 🐵 Download Blender Integration
• 📜 Use with Code

Getting Started

Quick Start with npm:

npm install @needle-tools/engine
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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 ⚡

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Available under commercial and educational licenses

Examples

Preview	Example	Description	Links
	Animate Anything	Interactive animation system	Code on Stackblitz • three.js Example
	Postprocessing Effects	Custom magnifier effect with post-processing	Code on Stackblitz
	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
	Scrollytelling Bike Example	Timeline Animation using ScrollFollow, ViewBox and FocusRect	Project on Github
	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

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Recent Changes

[4.10.1] - 2025-09-30

• Change: ViewBox referenceFieldOfView can now set to -1 to automatically take the camera's field of view at runtime
• Fix: ViewBox evaluation order is now hierarchy-independent (Previously OrbitControls panning might be applied after ViewBox calculations if the ViewBox component was on a parent object)

[4.10.0] - 2025-09-29

• NEW: Scrollytelling Bike Example – This example uses ViewBox, FocusRect and ScrollFollow to create a scrollytelling experience. All project files are available on Github.
• NEW: HoverAnimation component. Use this component to get a scale hover animation of an object when the cursor is hovering over the object or one of it's children.
• NEW: ViewBox component. Use this component to automatically perfectly fit your 3D scene into the camera view. Try the Scrollytelling Example to see it in action, test the example on Stackblitz or see the ViewBox documentation for details.
• Add: fitCamera function
• Add: <needle-engine poster> attribute. It works with an URL to an image that should be shown as a poster image. If no URL is assigned then the poster that is automatically generated during the first frame will be used.
• Add: <needle-engine focus-rect="<html_selector"> attribute. Assign a HTML selector to the attribute to use a specific HTML element on screen offset the 3D camera center to the center of the HTML element. (The same can be done programmatically using ctx.setCameraFocusRect(<html_element|DOMRect>))
• Add: Timeline ScrollMarker for Unity and Blender timeline animations to control timing based on HTML visibility.
• Fix: Renderer material accessing error when component was not yet initialized
• Fix: Poster screenshot glitch during the first frame (development only)
• Fix: HTC Vive Focus 3 controller movement (forum post)
• Change: Loading display does not show Needle logo anymore by default
• Change: Use fallback raycast method for lowpoly meshes while the faster mesh BVH is being generated

[4.9.3] - 2025-09-15

• Fix: SpriteRenderer index issue when animated where animation precision issue was causing the wrong sprite to be selected (issue)
• Fix: Scaling scene in AR with multitouch causing camera projection issue for a frame (issue)

[4.9.1] - 2025-09-11

• Update ScrollFollow component documentation
• Update Renderer sharedMaterial typescript type

For all changes visit Github Releases