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
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.

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
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

Recent Changes

[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

[4.11.2] - 2025-10-20

Change: Animation component disable randomStartTime
Change: Vite build build pipeline plugin increased default max wait time to 60 seconds.
This time is now exposed via needlePlugins user config, e.g. to increase it to 5 minutes write needlePlugins(command, needleConfig, { buildPipeline: { maxWaitDuration: 300_000 } }) in your vite.config.js.