I built a browser-based 3D modeler because I'm scared of Blender
Details
- External ID
- 47248176
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- I built a browser-based 3D modeler because I'm scared of Blender
- Website domain
- topomaker.com
- Launched
- March 4, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 5
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.1070110701107011
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
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!
Enrichment
- Theme
- interactive simulations and creative experiments
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Prosumer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- browser-based 3d modeling tool
- Manually corrected
- False
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 — 256 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #241 of 257 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 124 days after the earliest competitor.
- I built a browser-based 3D editor since I didn't want to learn Blender · hn · 2026-03-01 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.82
- Mesh3d.gallery · hn · 2026-04-02 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.53
- Sedon · hn · 2026-06-02 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Blender Copilot · hn · 2026-09-26 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- My tool generates 3D objects composed of separate, functional parts · hn · 2026-05-13 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- I vibe-coded a custom WebGPU engine for my MMO · hn · 2026-02-23 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Strange Attractors · hn · 2025-10-31 · 804 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- blender-to-web · github · 2026-09-12 · 25 upvotes · similarity 0.45
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
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