needle-engine-support

Needle Engine

• Fix: vite build pipeline plugin

Unity Integration

• Fix: run npm install with include optional sharp for build pipeline

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Fix: Issue where OrbitControls setTarget not working as expected sometimes due to first frame matrices not being updated yet
• Fix: Gizmos sometimes rendering for 2 frames instead of just 1
• Change: WebXRImageTracking now applies some smoothing based on jitter amount
• Change: Bump gltf-build-pipeline package to 2.1

Unity Integration

• Fix: Issue where context menu export would not clear internal cache that prevented re-exporting the same file multiple times
• Fix: Export context menu handle case where directories can not be deleted because they're locked by a CLI tool
• Change: Dont write progressive texture max size if no specific settings are found because we then want it to be handled by the build pipeline package (depends on the usecase etc)

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Fix: needle menu CSS blur in safari
• Fix: USDZ - move Animation component animations into correct sequence depending on whether it should loop or not
• Fix: QuickLook button being created by WebXR despite usdzExporter.allowCreateQuicklookButton explicitly being off
• Fix: Issue in vite plugin for Node 16 where fetch wasn't supported yet
• Fix: AudioListener should remove itself when disabled

Unity Integration

• Minor WebXR component tooltip improvements

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: OrbitControls clickBackgroundToFitScene property that can be used to allow autofitting when users click on the background. By default it is set to 2 clicks
• Add: Vite plugin option to open browser with network ip address when the server starts by setting needlePlugins(command, config, { openBrowser: true }) in vite.config.js
• Fix: USDZ image tracking orientation corrects for node world matrix now, resulting in proper placement relative to the image
• Fix: WebARSessionRoot matrix and invertForward were not correctly applied for USDZ export
• Change: WebXR Image Tracking orientation was rotated by 180°. Now it's consistent between iOS USDZ and Android WebXR. If you're using image tracking, you might have to rotate your content 180° to adjust to the new orientation.

Unity Integration

• Add: OrbitControls clickBackgroundToFitScene property that can be used to allow autofitting when users click on the background. By default it is set to 2 clicks

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: Gizmos.DrawWireMesh
• Fix: use lowpoly raycast mesh again when available
• Fix: USDZ - issue where image tracking orientation was inconsistent between Android and iOS
• Change: USDZ - better logs when unsupported animation tracks are used during export (e.g. .activeSelf or material animations).
• Change: USDZ - show balloon warning when exporting unsupported track types

Unity Integration

• Add: ImageTracking now renders gizmo texture on tracked object

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: ScreenCapture deviceFilter and deviceName properties that simplify camera selection
• Fix: Avatar hands being visible in screenbased AR
• Fix: USDZ workaround for Apple bug FB13808839 - skeletal mesh rest poses must be decomposable in RealityKit
• Fix: Issue where Lightmap LOD textures did not load
• Fix: Issue where Custom Shader LOD textures did not load
• Change: Powered by Needle tag can be hidden with indie license

Unity Integration

• Add: ScreenCapture deviceName field and dropdown for simplified camera selection
• Change: Powered by Needle tag can be hidden with indie license using the Needle Menu component

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Fix: Issue where deactivated SpriteRenderer would not be included in USDZ
• Fix: Minor @serializable warning in SpriteRenderer
• Fix: SpriteRenderer progressive textures
• Change: bump gltf-progressive package which includes a vanilla three.js example and fixes issue where texture settings were not re-applied correctly after having loaded the texture LOD (e.g. filter)

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: WebXRImageTracking hideWhenTrackingIsLost option to configure if objects should stay visible or hide when tracking is lost
• Add: WebARSessionRoot autoPlace option to allow automatically placing the scene content on the first XR hit
• Fix: WebXR component createQRCode options now respects Needle Menu QR code option
• Fix: Bump gltf-progressive package to support updating LODs when using postprocessing effects
• Fix: AR placement being prevented by other scripts that caused the event being used
• Change: QR code now warns when being used for scanning a localhost address

Unity Integration

• Add: WebXRImageTracking hideWhenTrackingIsLost option to configure if objects should stay visible or hide when tracking is lost
• Add: WebARSessionRoot autoPlace option to allow automatically placing the scene content on the first XR hit

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: onClear (invoked e.g. when <needle-engine src> changes) and onDestroy hooks (invoked when the needle engine context is disposed)

Unity Integration

• Fix: Compilation on Linux due to wrong compiler directive
• Fix: Disabling Allow Progressive Loading in the ProgressiveLoadingSettings component now prevents progressive textures from being generated
• Change: OrbitControls exposes zoomspeed and zoomToCursor + add some more jsdoc comments
• Change: CodeWatcher now watches .tsx files as well

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: expose clearOverlayMessages method
• Fix: SyncedTransform should not set kinematic if overridePhysics is false
• Fix: CustomShader Screenspace support for shaders exported from Unity 2022
• Change: enable preload on audio sources dynamically created by PlayAudioOnClick
• Change: improve URL name parsing for loading screen for blob URLs

Unity Integration

• Fix: DeployToItch needs to disable gzip temporarely

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: static ContactShadows.auto
• Add: ContactShadows autoFit option to automatically fit the contact shadows at startup and fitShadows() method for applying autofit manually
• Change: Improve PWA logging and rename Vite pwaOptions to pwa in needlePlugin
• Change: Improve loading screen rendering

Unity Integration

• Change: bump UnityGLTF dependency to 2.12.0

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: INeedleGLTFExtensionPlugin.onLoaded hook providing access to the loaded glTF when registering custom extensions
• Add: PWA ability to specify updateInterval (number in ms or undefined) for auto-updating apps while running
• Fix: WebXRImageTracking now restores tracked objects to their previous state after exit AR
• Fix: WebXRImageTracking extra check in session enabled features if image tracking is even enabled. Otherwise I did get tons of errors in mobile VR
• Fix: Input system now handles mouse wheel during pointer lock
• Fix: Simplify and improve PWA generation and passing workbox config to vite-pwa
• Fix: AnimatorController with multiple layers: don't select start state in another layer
• Fix: AnimatorController handle empty state to stay in last animated previous pose
• Bump gltf-progressive dependency for fixes regarding transparent materials as well as VRM materials
• Bump gltf-build-pipeline dependency to 1.5 alpha for VRM support

Unity Integration:

Change: improve better skybox shader by using a global texture instead of per-material

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Fix: Camera should not set skybox from scene again automatically if there's a background skybox already
• Fix: Multi-material LOD meshes
• Change: Only set GLTFLoaders if none others are already set
• Change: vite userconfig expose "allowHotReload" in jsdoc types (third argument in needlePlugins)

Unity Integration

• Fix: Prevent export of top-level GltfObject components in disabled hierarchy

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: @needle-tools/gltf-progressive dependency that handles loading progressive meshes and textures.

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Fix: USDZ animation loops didnt work in some cases
• Fix: Properly apply and revert arScale on USDZ export
• Fix: Correctly apply WebXR arSceneScale on USDZ export even when no USDZExporter is present
• Fix: Hand models not being displayed on VisionPro – invalid data passed into registerExtensions leading to exception
• Fix: time.timescale set to 0 now fully pauses physics simulation
• Fix: @syncField now properly applies room state once on connection
• Fix: Timeline reset previously active animation actions then being disabled (e.g. when switching to another active timeline)

Unity Integration

• Change: Improve warnings when not connected to the internet

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Fix: USDZExporter bug where geometry was getting duplicated on export when the same mesh was used multiple times
• Fix: USDZExporter duplicate export of scene start triggers
• Change: Improve USDZExporter animation export validation and improve handling of empty TransformData slots
• Change: Improve USDZ animation export allowing RegisteredAnimationInfo to also register a null clip for targeting the rest pose (e.g. empty state)
• Change: Improve USDZ time formatting
• Change: Invoke engine lifecycle hooks in the order in which they were registered (e.g. onStart(ctx => ...))

Unity Integration

• Add: DeployToFTP Server asset now has a port option that can be configured if necessary
• Add: DeployToNetlify does now render a info label while uploading
• Change: log error if trying to perform a distribution build without having a web project setup

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: More API documentation
• Add: VideoPlayer can now play m3u livestream links
• Fix: WebARBackground now checks if camera-access is granted
• Change: Progressively loaded assets now postfix urls with the content hash of the assets if available to make sure the correct version is loaded and not a old version from cache
• Change: VideoPlayer setting url now immediately updates the videoplayback

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Add: SceneSwitcher support for adding the ISceneEventListener on the sceneSwitcher gameObject
• Fix: OrbitControls should not update on user input when the camera is not currently active
• Change: OrbitControls middle click/double click does not change camera position anymore and just set the look target

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Fix: Collider filtermask bug where it did previously override membership settings in certain cases
• Change: Menu now removes the buttons for very small sizes
• Change: this.context.physics.engine.raycast and raycastWithNormal api changed to take an options parameter instead of single values. It now also exposes rapier's queryFilterFlags, filterGroups and the filterPredicate options. It can now be called with e.g. this.context.physics.engine.raycast(origin, direction, { maxDistance: 2 })

Unity Integration

• Change: Move all Needle Engine components in Needle Engine/ addComponent menu and improve searchability

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples

Needle Engine

• Fix: Regression in progressive mesh for multi material objects / multiple primitives per mesh
• Change: Improve LOD level selection based on available mesh density per level
  Level of detail switching now finds a good match for screen and mesh density that results in more consistent on-screen triangle density. This change also improves LOD switching for low-poly meshes considerably.
• Change: ScreenCapture now respects if user is in viewonly networked room

Unity Integration

• Add: New "Better Cubemap" shader that allows to blur the skybox in the editor and change intensity.
  You can upgrade from skybox materials that currently use Skybox/Cubemap.
  Upgrade options are in the material inspector and on the Camery Skybox Data component in a scene.
• Add: Improved image-based lighting workflow on 2023.x+ when using the new "Better Cubemap" shader

Links

Download for Unity • Download for Blender • Documentation • API • Live Samples