Needle Engine for Blender

Thank you for using Needle Engine for Blender Alpha.
With this addon you can create highly interactive and optimized WebGL and WebXR experiences inside Blender that run using Needle Engine and three.js.
You'll be able to sequence animations, easily lightmap your scenes, add interactivity or create your own scripts written in Typescript or Javascript that run on the web. You own your content!

Automatically export HDRI environment lights directly from blender. Save to reload your local server

Create and export animator statemachines for controlling complex character animations

Content Overview

• Preface
• Download and Installation 💿
  • Step 1 • Install Blender 3.6, 4.0, 4.1 or 4.2
  • Step 2 • Install Node.js (optional but recommended)
  • Step 3 • Download and Install the addon
• Getting Started 🚩
  • Project Panel overview
• Blender Settings
  • Color Management
• Environment Lighting
  • Add your custom HDRi / EXR environment lighting and skybox
• Export
• Animation 🏇
  • AnimatorController
  • Timeline — nla tracks export 🎬
• Interactivity 😎
  • Custom Components
• Lightmapping 💡
• Texture Compression
• Updating
• Debugging / Reporting a problem
  • Integrated Bugreporter

Preface

Please note: The current state of the exporter for Blender is in the alpha phase - which means that some features you may know from the Needle Engine Unity Integration may not yet be implemented. Your feedback is invaluable when it comes to deciding which of those features should be prioritizes.
If you have feedback for us please let us know in discussions or in our discord community!

If you find bugs or see errors please open an issue or ask on discord.

Download and Installation 💿

Step 1 • Install Blender 3.6, 4.0, 4.1 or 4.2

Step 2 • Install Node.js (optional but recommended)

Step 3 • Download and Install the addon

The Blender addon is downloaded as a zip file.
In Blender go to File / Settings / Add-ons and click the Install button.
Then select the downloaded zip to install it.

• Optional: Download Blender Samples

Getting Started 🚩

• Download Blender Samples

First create or open a new blend file that you want to be exported to the web.
Open the Properties window open the scene category. Select a Project Path in the Needle Engine panel. Then click Generate Project. It will automatically install and start the server - once it has finished your browser should open and the threejs scene will load.

By default your scene will automatically re-exported when you save the blend file.
If the local server is running (e.g. by clicking Run Project) the website will automatically refresh with your changed model.

When your web project already exists and you just want to continue working on the website
click the blue Run Project button to start the local server:

Project Panel overview

1. The path to your web project. You can use the little folder button on the right to select a different path.
2. The Run Project button shows up when the Project path shows to a valid web project. A web project is valid when it contains a package.json
3. Directory open the directory of your web project (the Project Path)
4. This button re-exports the current scene as a glb to your local web project. This also happens by default when saving your blend file.
5. Code Editor tries to open the vscode workspace in your web project
6. If you work with multiple scenes in one blend file you can configure which scene is your "main" scene and should be exported to the web. If any of your components references another scene they will also be exported as separate glb files.
7. Use the Build: Development or Build: Production buttons when you want to upload your web project to a server. This will bundle your web project and produce the files that you can upload. When clicking Build: Production it will also apply optimization to your textures (they will be compressed for the web)
8. Open the documentation

Blender Settings

Color Management

By default the blender viewport is set to Filmic - with this setting your colors in Blender and in three.js will not match. To fix this go to the Blender Render category and in the ColorManagement panel select View Transform: Standard

Environment Lighting

You can change the environment lighting and skybox using the Viewport shading options.
Assign a cubemap to use for lighting or the background skybox. You can adjust the strength or blur to modify the appearance to your liking.

Note: To also see the skybox cubemap in the browser increase the World Opacity to 1.

Note: Alternatively you can enable the Scene World setting in the Viewport Shading tab to use the environment texture assigned in the blender world settings.

Alternatively if you don't want to see the cubemap as a background add a Camera component to your Blender Camera and change clearFlags: SolidColor - note that the Camera backgroundBlurriness and backgroundIntensity settings override the Viewport shading settings.

Add your custom HDRi / EXR environment lighting and skybox

Export

To exclude an object from being exported you can disable the Viewport and the Render display (see image below)

Animation 🏇

For simple usecases you can use the Animation component for playback of one or multiple animationclips.
Just select your object, add an Animation component and assign the clip (you can add additional clips to be exported to the clips array.
By default it will only playback the first clip assigned when playAutomatically is enabled. You can trigger the other clips using a simple custom typescript component)

AnimatorController

The animator controller can be created for more complex scenarios. It works as a statemachine which allows you to create multiple animation states in a graph and configure conditions and interpolation settings for transitioning between those.

Creating an AnimatorController

The AnimatorController editor can be opened using the EditorType dropdown in the topleft corner of each panel:

Creating a new animator-controller asset ☝ or select one from your previously created assets

Graph overview

1. Use Shift+A to create a new AnimatorState
2. The Parameters node will be created once you add a first node. Select it to setup parameters to be used in transitions (via the Node panel on the right border)
3. This is an AnimatorState. the orange state is the start state (it can be changed using the Set default state button in the Node/Properties panel)
4. The Properties for an AnimatorState can be used to setup one or multiple transitions to other states. Use the Conditions array to select parameters that must match the condition for doing the transition.

Using an AnimatorController

To use an AnimatorController add an Animator component to the root object of your animations and select the AnimatorController asset that you want to use for this object.

You can set the Animator parameters from typescript or by e.g. using the event of a Button component:

Timeline — nla tracks export 🎬

Exporting Blender nla tracks to threejs.
Add a PlayableDirector component (via Add Component) to a any blender object. Assign the objects in the animation tracks list in the component for which you want the nla tracks to be exported.

Code example for interactive timeline playback

Add this script to src/scripts (see custom components section) and add it to any object in Blender to make a timeline's time be controlled by scrolling in the browsers

import { Behaviour, PlayableDirector, serializable, Mathf } from "@needle-tools/engine";

export class ScrollTimeline extends Behaviour {

    @serializable(PlayableDirector)
    timeline?: PlayableDirector;

    @serializable()
    sensitivity: number = .5;

    @serializable()
    clamp: boolean = false;

    private _targetTime: number = 0;

    awake() {
        this.context.domElement.addEventListener("wheel", this.onWheel);
        if (this.timeline) this.timeline.pause();
    }

    private onWheel = (e: WheelEvent) => {
        if (this.timeline) {
            this._targetTime = this.timeline.time + e.deltaY * 0.01 * this.sensitivity;
            if (this.clamp) this._targetTime = Mathf.clamp(this._targetTime, 0, this.timeline.duration);
        }
    }

    update(): void {
        if (!this.timeline) return;
        const time = Mathf.lerp(this.timeline.time, this._targetTime, this.context.time.deltaTime / .3);
        this.timeline.time = time;
        this.timeline.pause();
        this.timeline.evaluate();
    }
}

Interactivity 😎

You can add or remove components to objects in your hierarchy using the Needle Components panel:

For example by adding an OrbitControls component to the camera object
you get basic camera controls for mobile and desktop devicesAdjust settings for each component in their respective panels

Components can be removed using the X button in the lower right:

Custom Components

Custom components can also be easily added by simply writing Typescript classes. They will automatically compile and show up in Blender when saved.

To create custom components open the workspace via the Needle Project panel and add a .ts script file in src/scripts inside your web project. Please refer to the scripting documentation to learn how to write custom components for Needle Engine.

Note

Make sure @needle-tools/needle-component-compiler 2.x is installed in your web project (package.json devDependencies)

Lightmapping 💡

Needle Lightmapping will automatically generate lightmap UVs for all models marked to be lightmapped. For lightmapping to work you need at least one light and one object with Lightmapped turned on.

Please keep in mind:

You are using an early preview of these features - we recommend creating a backup of your blend file when using Lightmapping at this point in time. Please report problems or errors you encounter in our discord 🙏

You can download the original blend file from the video here.

Use the Needle Object panel to enable lightmapping for a mesh object or light:

For quick access to lightmap settings and baking options you can use the scene view panel in the Needle tab:

Alternatively you can also use the Lightmapping panel in the Render Properties tab:

Texture Compression

The Needle Engine Build Pipeline automatically compresses textures using ECT1S and UASTC (depending on their usage in materials) when making a production build (requires toktx being installed). But you can override or change the compression type per texture in the Material panel.

You can modify the compression that is being applied per texture. To override the default compression settings go to the Material tab and open the Needle Material Settings. There you will find a toggle to override the texture settings per texture used in your material. See the texture compression table for a brief overview over the differences between each compression algorithm.

Updating

The lightbulb in the Needle Project panel informs you when a new version of the addon is available.
Simply click the icon to download the new version.

Debugging / Reporting a problem

If you run into any problems we're more than happy to help! Please join our discord for fast support.

Please also check the logs in Blender. You can find logs specific to the Needle Engine Addon via Help/Needle in Blender.

Integrated Bugreporter

You can also automatically create and upload a bugreport directly from Blender (this currently requires a node.js web project being setup). Uploaded bugreports will solely used for debugging, they are encrypted on our backend and will deleted after 30 days.