N3

Nothing graphics editor — 3D.

A minimal mesh editor focused on making hard-surface modeling easier to learn. Start with a shape, adjust its proportions, and edit its vertices when you need more control. Place imported assets alongside your geometry and inspect their materials and motion in the same workspace.

N3 is open source, macOS-first, and in early development.

Open web app · User guide · Animated walkthroughs · Contributing

Shape, explore, refine

• Start with a shape. Insert cubes, planes, circles, cylinders, cones, tori, spheres, and regular polyhedra. Adjust their dimensions and segment counts in Properties. Inspecting or selecting vertices keeps the shape's parameters; the first vertex change turns it into a mesh, and Undo restores the parameters.
• Work directly. Select objects or visible vertices, then move, rotate, and scale with handles, axis constraints, or exact numeric input. Use movement snapping for clean increments. Preview adjustments and undo an accepted edit in one step.
• Find your bearings. Navigate with a mouse or Mac trackpad. Drag the axis gizmo to orbit, or align to a planar view with rulers. Animated transitions help you follow the change in orientation. Local View isolates selected objects while you work, then returns to the full scene.
• Keep the workspace simple. Layers on the left, live properties on the right, and modeling tools over the viewport. Resize the panels or hide the interface when you want more room. Open Animation or Terminal in the shared Tool Dock when you need it; the dock starts closed.
• Bring assets into your scene. Place glTF/GLB assets beside native geometry. Move, rotate, scale, duplicate, or delete their placed objects with Undo. Their internal meshes, materials, and animation remain read-only. Use Material Preview for textured PBR materials, Solid for neutral shape inspection, or Wireframe for topology. Imported assets guide.
• Inspect motion. Explore clip tracks and keys in the animation timeline. Play, pause, or scrub to see joints and morph targets animate in the viewport. Select keys for inspection without editing them. Playback stays outside the document's Undo history. Animation guide.
• Use a local shell. Open Terminal in the Tool Dock to run shell commands with scrollback and a resizable text grid. Its session stays alive when you switch panels or close the dock. Shell commands have their own effects; N3's Undo does not reverse them.
• Keep your work readable. Import OBJ meshes and save editable .n3.json documents. One document unit is one centimeter; other input and display units do not resize the geometry.

The guide includes screenshots and animated tutorials generated from the application, with visible cursor, key, and gesture cues.

Try N3

Open N3 in your browser. Use a desktop browser with WebGPU available. The web app follows verified main builds and shares the editor UI and guide; native-only capabilities such as the shell are omitted.

Run N3 from source on macOS. Install Rust through rustup, just (verified with 1.46.0), and the macOS command-line developer tools. The repository selects Rust 1.98.1 through rust-toolchain.toml. From the repository root:

just run

This builds and opens N3 with the bracket sample. Start empty, edit Suzanne, inspect a textured bottle, or preview a skinned animation:

just run --empty
just run fixtures/obj/suzanne.obj
just run fixtures/gltf/WaterBottle/glTF-Binary/WaterBottle.glb
just run fixtures/gltf/SimpleSkin/glTF/SimpleSkin.gltf

Use N3 → File → Open… to replace the current document with an .n3.json, OBJ, glTF, or GLB file. Import… adds objects to the current document. Dropping an .n3.json file opens it; dropping an OBJ, glTF, or GLB file imports it alongside existing objects.

Save with N3 → File → Save or Save as…. Native .n3.json documents preserve primitive parameters, editable mesh topology, object transforms, and linked asset references. Imported OBJ geometry becomes editable mesh objects.

Linked source files are not embedded in the saved document. References are relative to the document when possible, and Save As keeps the same source origins. Keep the sources and their buffers/textures with your project. A missing source retains its object in Layers; restore the files and reopen to recover its preview. Reopening also picks up source changes.

To inspect a file with document editing disabled, launch explicitly in read-only mode:

just cargo run --locked -- --read-only fixtures/gltf/WaterBottle/glTF-Binary/WaterBottle.glb

Read the illustrated guide in your browser with just docs (requires Python 3). It opens a local preview of the checked-in documentation; press Ctrl-C in the terminal to stop the server.

Browser baseline

The same Rust editor and viewport also run in a browser through WebAssembly and WebGPU. To build and serve the local baseline:

just web-setup
just web

Use a desktop browser with WebGPU available. Native and web use the same workspace and user guide; unsupported host features are omitted. See development for setup, embedding, and platform limits.

Current scope

N3 currently supports object transforms, vertex editing, making a face from a triangle or a single flat outline, and explicit X-ray selection. Broader topology tools, edge/face selection, geometry snapping, and sculpting are future work. The browser build is a technical baseline; full browser and device coverage is still under evaluation.

OBJ import focuses on vertex positions and polygon faces. Materials, textures, UVs, and authored normals are not preserved, and OBJ export is not implemented. OBJ coordinates are interpreted as centimeters without an automatic scale guess. See format details before relying on an import workflow.

glTF/GLB preview supports core metallic-roughness materials, skins, morph targets, unlit materials, texture transforms, and punctual lights. Source cameras are retained, while the viewport uses N3's navigation camera. Unsupported required extensions fail explicitly; unsupported optional extensions produce diagnostics. Compression and advanced material extensions remain outside the glTF profile. Asset-content editing, glTF export, and OpenUSD support are deferred. Preview lighting and transparency have documented limits in the rendering profile.

The animation timeline inspects imported clips; it does not author tracks or move keys. Instances of the same source scene share playback. Terminal runs a local shell and does not provide an N3 scripting API.

Build with us

N3 is written in Rust with wgpu, winit, and egui. Start with contributing for setup and verification, or development for commands and format details.

License

MIT. Suzanne's upstream provenance and retained license are recorded in fixtures/README.md. Khronos glTF samples retain their licenses and pinned provenance in fixtures/gltf.