Documentation

With Needle Engine, you can create fully interactive 3D websites. They can be deployed anywhere on the web and get optimized automatically by the Needle Engine Build Pipeline.

Needle Engine is available as a download for Unity, for Blender, and for web projects without an editor integration.



Needle Engine for Unity

Supported Unity versions: 2021.3 LTS, 2022.3 LTS

Next Steps

  • Drop the downloaded .unitypackage file into a Unity project and confirm that you want to import it.

  • Wait a moment for the installation and import to finish. A window may open stating that "A new scoped registry is now available in the Package Manager.". This is our Needle Package registry. You can safely close that window.

  • Explore Samples – Select the menu option Needle Engine > Explore Samples to view, open and modify all available sample scenesopen in new window.

Video Tutorial: Starting from a fresh Unity project
Create a new scene from a Scene Template

We provide a number of Scene Templates for quickly starting new projects.
These allow you to go from idea to prototype in a few clicks.

  1. Click on File > New Scene

  2. Select one of the templates with (needle) in their name and click Create.
    We recommend the Collaborative Sandboxopen in new window template which is a great way to get started with interactivity, multiplayer, and adding assets.

  3. Click Play to install and startup your new web project.

20220822-140539-wqvW-Unity_oC0z-needle

Create a new scene from scratch

If you don't want to start from a scene template, you can follow these steps.
Effectively, we're going to recreate the "Minimal (Needle)" template that's shipping with the package.

  1. Create a new empty scene

  2. Set up your scene for exporting
    Add an empty GameObject, name it "Exporter" and add an ExportInfo component to it.
    In this component you create and quickly access your exported runtime project.
    It also warns you if any of our packages and modules are outdated or not locally installed in your web project.

Note

By default, the project name matches the name of your scene. If you want to change that, you can enter a Directory Name where you want to create your new runtime project. The path is relative to your Unity project.

  1. Choose a web project template Now, select a web project template for your project. The default template is based on Viteopen in new window, a fast web app bundler.

  2. Click Play to install and start your new web project




Needle Engine for Blender

Supported Blender versions: 4.0+


  • The Blender add-on 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.

See Needle Engine for Blender for a full list of features and instructions on getting started.




Needle Engine without Editor Integration

You can work directly with Needle Engine without using any Integration. Needle Engine uses three.jsopen in new window as scene graph and rendering backend, so all functionality from three.js is available in Needle as well.

You can install Needle Engine from npm by running:

npm i @needle-tools/engine

For quick experiments, we provide a convenient link to create a new project ready to start, powered by StackBlitzopen in new window:
engine.needle.tools/newopen in new window

If you're not using npm or a bundler, you can instead add a prebundled version of Needle Engine to your website:

https://unpkg.com/@needle-tools/engine/dist/needle-engine.min.js or
https://unpkg.com/@needle-tools/engine/dist/needle-engine.light.min.js (no physics module, smaller)




Third-Party Dependencies

Needle Engine uses Node.js to manage, preview and build the web app that you are creating locally on your computer.
It is also used for uploading (deploying) your website to the internet. Please download it from the official website:

Questions?

The local website shows a warning: website not secure

You might see a warning in your browser about SSL Security depending on your local configuration.
This is because while the connection is encrypted, by default there's no SSL certificate that the browser can validate.
If that happens: click Advanced and Proceed to Site. Now you should see your scene in the browser!

Something is not working as expected? Where can I see logs?

Keep an eye for console warnings! We log useful details about recommended project settings and so on. For example, your project should be set to Linear color space (not Gamma), and we'll log an error to the Unity console if that's not the case.

Please also have a look at our FAQ if your question is not answered here.

What's next?

In case you need more troubleshooting help, please see the Questions and Answers section.
You can also join our Discord Communityopen in new window or Forumopen in new window