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I built a browser-based 3D modeler because I'm scared of Blender

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process demo - https://i.redd.it/fbhlwsq1gcmg1.gif render demo - https://i.redd.it/smddwtryhcmg1.gif in-app demo - http://app.topomaker.com/demoAfter long stretches in 2d animation and film, recently I've been really drawn to 3d. It's closer to the way my brain thinks and I feel like it has so much power to realize cool ideas. Naturally, I kicked off a google search and fired up Blender. After an hour, I went on a walk and got sad realizing I'm going to have to become a master before I can do anything fun. That's when my dev ego brain struck the usual phrase "i'll just build my own".So, I built Topomaker (name tentative), which is a minimal browser-based 3D modeler and animator. You can color individual faces, build simple characters or objects, animate them on a timeline, and export to gif, mp4, glb, or obj. The goal wasn't to make a Blender competitor, but more of a sketchpad or alternative. Something you can just doodle in, make some funny animations or characters for a small game with a closer connection to the web since thats my programming language of choice. Anyone who's tried to get Blender assets to match up in a Three.js environment knows the process — I wanted something that just lives in that ecosystem natively.I just started it a couple weeks ago so there are probably tons of bugs, but feel free to play around with it and let me know what you think!

HN · launched Mar 4, 2026 · 5 upvotes (top 89%) · 0 views

Niche: 3d modeling and rendering software · 145 launches, 21 in the last 7 days ▼ -13% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags

  • Horizontal
  • Content generation
  • Prosumer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

Could you build this?

No A complete browser-based 3D modeling and animation engine demands advanced computer graphics programming, 3D mathematics, and custom WebGL/WebGPU shaders.

What it would actually take: Building TopoMaker requires custom geometry kernels in WebGL/WebGPU or Rust compiled to WebAssembly, implementing half-edge mesh data structures for topology manipulation (extrusions, bevels, subdivision surfaces). It also requires a custom scene graph, inverse kinematics for rigging/animation, and spatial acceleration structures (BVH) for real-time ray-picking and rendering. This requires specialized 3D graphics engineers with deep knowledge of computational geometry.

Discussion

1 comment analyzed.

Concerns raised: open source availability

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 526 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #493 of 527 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 124 days after the earliest competitor.

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