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
	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
	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

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Recent Changes

[4.12.0-beta.1] - 2025-12-04

• NEW: Intellisense support for the <needle-engine> web component and its attributes, both in HTML and in code. The custom-elements.json allows for VSCode intellisense support, while HTMLElementTagNameMap and get/setAttribute overloads bring code completion and documentation.
• Add: exposed createCollider API for the Rapier physics engine
• Add: an beforeLODExport callback for USDZ export. This allows overriding which LOD level gets exported per object.
• Add: ?spector=#frame URL parameter to enable a Spector.js capture on the specified frame number after page load. Make sure to install the Spector.js browser extension. You can optionally specify a frame number for capturing: ?spector=15.
• Add: auto-registration of custom elements for easier discovery of available web components in Needle Engine. You can disable this feature by setting noCustomElementData to false in vite config. To manually register custom elements data, add it to your workspace or .vscode/settings.json via the html.customData setting.
• Improve: detection of user interactions to enable media playback
• Improve: JSDoc documentation for Everywhere Actions and other components
• Fix: issue with callbacks on freshly destroyed components when leaving XR sessions
• Fix: Instancing issue with growing vertex/index buffers when not necessary
• Fix: Instancing and texture LODs
• Fix: Issue with <needle-engine> element being moved in the DOM
• Fix: Better type declarations in package.json

[4.11.5] - 2025-10-31

• Fix: Timeline cloning with instantiate (forum 2733)
• Fix: Renderer sharedMaterials being null in awake
• Fix: Issue where lightmapped materials were cloned
• Fix: Apply lighting intensity multiplier in root scene
• Fix: GLTF extensions when loading scene with Blob URL
• Improve JSDoc documentation

[4.11.4] - 2025-10-24

• Add: qrcode-logo-src attribute to <needle-engine> web component to override the logo displayed in the QR code button. Requires PRO license.
• Improve JSDoc documentation

[4.11.3] - 2025-10-21

• Fix: See-Through with MeshPhysicalMaterial

For all changes visit Github Releases