4.0.3-alpha

Needle Engine

• Add: OBJLoader now automatically loads mtl files
• Add: OBJLoader materials are now fixed like FBX materials

Unity Integration

• Add: NeedleCloudAsset component. Initial version to load Needle Cloud into the Unity Editor and Needle Engine runtime. To use just add the NeedleCloudAsset component to a GameObject in Unity.
• Fix: EDU license handling

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Links

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Needle Engine Blender Addon 0.52.1

• Fix: Issue where restarting the server would fail

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4.0.2-alpha

Needle Engine

• Add: Support for custom scripts on WebXR custom hands
• Fix: OrbitControls should not listen to window.body for key events

Unity Integration

• Add: Basic WebXR hand models and assign as default models in the XRControllerModel script

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Links

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4.0.1-alpha

Needle Engine

• Fix: Objects spawned with syncedInstantiate should automatically be removed when disconnecting from the networking room
• Fix: Issue where objects rendered with instancing enabled were not visible in screenshots

Unity Integration

• Change: Update Editor UI styles

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Links

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3.51.2

Unity Integration

• Fix: Don't show update dialogue for newly available alpha versions

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Links

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4.0.0-alpha

Needle Engine

• Add: Builds can now be compressed on Needle Cloud instead of locally. Set the NEEDLE_CLOUD_TOKEN environment variable to your Cloud access token to enable this. This allows running compression in CI build pipelines, for example in a Github Action. Needle Cloud access tokens can be obtained on https://cloud.needle.tools/team.
• Add: DropListener now optionally supports networking when allowNetworking is on. Dropped files will be network-synced if the file size does not exceed a certain size (50 MB for projects on paid plans; 5 MB for projects free plans).
• Fix: Previously, when changing a @syncField property, only the last changed property was synchronized to the server. This is now fixed. Note that this is a breaking change: previously networked server state with the @syncField attribute in Needle Engine 3.x projects will not be loaded in Needle Engine 4.0.
• Change: EventList now takes a generic type code hints when using myEventList.addEventListener(...) e.g. new EventList<string>()
• Change: The default networking server is now located at networking.needle.tools
• Change: The DropListener API has changed
• Change: OrbitControls useKeys is now false by default since the underlying three.js OrbitControls incorrectly capture ALL keyboard events on the page.
• Change: Loading speed improvements and improved Lighthouse score
• Change: md5 hashing results are now S3-compatible

Unity Integration

• Add: Projects can now be deployed to Needle Cloud directly from Unity. Needle Cloud supports build versioning, tagging, sharing and more. Learn more at https://cloud.needle.tools.
• Change: License authentication is now much easier and uses Needle Cloud authentication

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Links

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3.51.1

Needle Engine

• Fix: DragControls snap to surface setting should use world normal
• Fix: Needle Menu missing focus-visible for overflow menu button
• Fix: Needle Menu :focus-visible on menu elements barely being visible
• Fix: edge case where we still showed the QR code when only the WebXR component is on and we're on mobile
• Fix: detect URL content format using "Content-Type" header as well
• Fix: double quotes in USDZ displayName need to be escaped
• Fix: don't fetch when we already know fetch won't work due to cross-origin isolation
• Change: for QuickLook, use "View in AR" instead of "Download for AR" even for cases where we're not sure if the device actually supports QuickLook – rel="ar" is not reliable
• Change: disable Needle logo being clickable during loading because users click it accidentally and then they're lost
• Docs: add @group Component to components since TypeDoc doesn't do inheritance as expected

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Links

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3.51.0

Needle Engine

• Add: API docs for networking methods
• Add: USDZ export automatically creates "hold" animations now to prevent animation snapping
• Add: USDZ export now supports ShadowCatcher component and materials
• Add: USDZ export now contains more meta-info about exported animations
• Add: Log warnings on USDZ export for overlapping animation roots so hierarchy can be manually adjusted
• Add: Use ?debugusdzbehaviours to log more information and Behaviour Graphs during USDZ export. A graph in mermaid format will be logged into the console, which can be pasted into https://massive-mermaid.glitch.me or other viewers.
• Fix: USDZ animation rounding error edge cases for long-running animations (>20.000 frames)
• Fix: USDZ export only adds physics extension now if required to work around QuickLook issue (FB15925487) for animated objects with physics components
• Fix: USDZ exporter adds rest poses properly again
• Fix: Developer console is now more robust against network errors, e.g. offline PWA usage
• Fix: Canvas parent element size now matches the canvas size

Unity Integration

• Add: Unity 6 compatibility
• Add: add some missing Deploy To component icons
• Remove: WebGL1 custom shader export

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Links

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Needle Engine Blender Addon 0.52.0

• Fix: Blender 4.3 plugin hooks

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3.50.0-pre

Needle Engine

• Add: PWA plugin now works with gzip compression
• Add: Asynchronous overload for screenshot2 method that returns a Promise<Blob>
• Add: USDZExporter supports animator.minMaxOffsetNormalized and animation.minMaxOffsetNormalized for QuickLook now
• Add: USDZExporter vertex color export. Use unlit white materials with only vertex colors to export as displayColor without a material. This is supported on iOS 18+ and visionOS 2+.
• Fix: automatically instanced/batched meshes are not exported twice in USDZ anymore.
• Change: "Open in QuickLook" is now "View in AR" to be more consistent
• Change: Deprecate device utilities outside the DeviceUtilities namespace, use the methods directly from the namespace instead (e.g. DeviceUtilities.isSafari())
• Change: legacy Object3D.transform wrapper that returns itself

Unity Integration

• Change: Bump UnityGLTF dependency to 2.14.1

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Links

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