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.

The key capability: Needle Engine automatically generates interactive USDZ files at runtime for iOS. When users tap "View in AR" on iPhone or iPad, your scene is converted to USDZ on-the-fly — complete with animations, material changes, audio, and tap interactions. This is different from static USDZ export: your interactive behaviors built with Everywhere Actions are preserved.

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

It's the only thing I know that does Quick Look with one click and with interactions — that was amazing.

Martin F3D Generalist, Slovenia

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].

Open a configured product in QuickLook (no manual USDZ export)

A common pattern: build a web UI or product configurator with Needle Engine — a visitor browses and configures a product in the mobile browser (picking a model, materials, colors, size) — and then opens exactly what they configured in QuickLook on iOS.

You don't prepare or pre-export any USDZ files for this. Needle Engine's USDZExporter generates the USDZ at runtime from the current scene, so whatever the user configured is exactly what opens in QuickLook — with no Reality Converter step, no per-product export, and no build-time preparation. You just build your app.

Setup: add a USDZExporter component to your scene (commonly on the same object as WebXR). It has an Object To Export field: leave it empty to export the whole scene (the default — regardless of which object the component sits on), or assign a specific object to export just that object and its children. The component can also automatically add a "View in AR" button that, on iOS/iPadOS/visionOS, exports to USDZ and opens QuickLook.

To open a specific selected product from your own UI, assign it and trigger the export:

import { USDZExporter } from "@needle-tools/engine";
import { Object3D } from "three";

// e.g. when the user taps your own "View in your room" button
async function openInQuickLook(exporter: USDZExporter, product: Object3D) {
  exporter.objectToExport = product; // omit / leave unset to export the whole configured scene
  await exporter.exportAndOpen();     // builds the USDZ at runtime and opens QuickLook on iOS
}

Leave objectToExport unset to export the entire current scene — ideal when the configured result is the whole scene. Turn on the exporter's interactive option to also carry Everywhere Actions behaviors (animations, material changes, audio, taps) into the QuickLook file.

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

• iOS WebXR with App Clip — Full WebXR on iPhone and iPad
• AR Showcase Website — Interactive AR examples with a focus on iOS AR & QuickLook
• Everywhere Action Samples
• Image Tracking with Needle Engine