Everywhere Actions

Unity

Blender

What are Everywhere Actions?

Needle's Everywhere Actions are a set of carefully chosen components that allow you to create interactive experiences without writing code.

Build experiences that work across all platforms:

Supported Platforms

Platform	Support	Notes
Desktop	✅ Full support	Windows, macOS, Linux
Mobile	✅ Full support	Android & iOS browsers
VR Headsets	✅ Full support	Quest, Vive, Index, etc.
AR Devices	✅ Full support	ARCore, ARKit devices
iOS WebXR	✅ Full native AR	Via Needle Go App Clip
iOS QuickLook	✅ Supported	Apple Vision Pro, iPhone, iPad

How do I use Everywhere Actions?

For iOS support add the USDZExporter component to your scene. It is good practice to add it to the same object as the WebXR component (but not mandatory)

To add an action to any object in your scene
select it and then click Add Component > Needle > Everywhere Actions > [Action].

List of Everywhere Actions

Samples

Musical Instrument

Demonstrates spatial audio, animation, and interactions.

Simple Character Controllers

Demonstrates combining animations, look at, and movement.

Image Tracking

Demonstrates how to attach 3D content onto a custom image marker. Start the scene below in AR and point your phone's camera at the image marker on a screen, or print it out.

Read more about Image Tracking with Needle Engine

Interactive Building Blocks Overview

Create your own Everywhere Actions

Creating new Everywhere Actions involves writing code for your action in TypeScript, which will be used in the browser and for WebXR, and using our TriggerBuilder and ActionBuilder API to create a matching setup for Augmented Reality on iOS via QuickLook. When creating custom actions, keep in mind that QuickLook has a limited set of features available. You can still use any code you want for the browser and WebXR, but the behaviour for QuickLook may need to be an approximation built from the available triggers and actions.

Triggers and Actions for QuickLook are based on Apple's Preliminary Interactive USD Schemas

Code Example

Here's the implementation for HideOnStart as an example for how to create an Everywhere Action with implementations for both the browser and QuickLook:

import { Behaviour, UsdzBehaviour, BehaviorModel, TriggerBuilder, ActionBuilder, BehaviorExtension, USDObject, USDZExporterContext } from "@needle-tools/engine";

export class HideOnStart extends Behaviour implements UsdzBehaviour {

    start() {
        this.gameObject.visible = false;
    }

    createBehaviours(ext: BehaviorExtension, model: USDObject, _context: USDZExporterContext) {
        if (model.uuid === this.gameObject.uuid)
            ext.addBehavior(new BehaviorModel("HideOnStart_" + this.gameObject.name,
                TriggerBuilder.sceneStartTrigger(),
                ActionBuilder.fadeAction(model, 0, false)
            ));
    }

    beforeCreateDocument() {
        this.gameObject.visible = true;
    }

    afterCreateDocument() {
        this.gameObject.visible = false;
    }
}

Low level methods for building your own actions

To see the implementation of our built-in Everywhere Actions, please take look at src/engine-components/export/usdz/extensions/behavior/BehaviourComponents.ts.

References

• Apple's Preliminary USD Behaviours

Further reading

• Visit our AR Showcase Website that has many interactive AR examples with a focus on iOS AR & Quicklook
• Needle Engine Everywhere Action Samples
• Image Tracking with Needle Engine