Bylonder

Blender, but with a (lovingly) hammered together web-native UI based on Babylon.JS for render pipeline and careful handling of each subsystem to make sure it works well on the web but doesn't have a learning curve for regular Blender users. You can load .blend files, save .blend files, or save Babylon / JS versions of the same scene(s), with as many features as possible bridged between the two.

Try it out and check out the manual below for some tutorials!

Open Bylonder | Manual | Babylon.js docs | Blender manual

Bylonder puts two communities' work in one place. Blender's modeling, modifiers, geometry nodes, rigging and animation run as Blender's C and Python, compiled to WebAssembly. Babylon.js draws the result in real time and turns it into a scene you can ship on the web. Nothing to install, and your projects stay in your browser.

Why it exists

I started with Blender as a kid, about 15 years ago, and grew up loving its community and its commitment to being free and state of the art at once. Later Babylon.js won me over as a developer: it is a joy to hack on, and it runs everywhere without an installer. Bylonder brings the two together. I build it for the plain happiness both projects give me, and to make my own art when time allows, such as the birds movie I am working on. I would love for others to enjoy it too, so feedback and contributions are very welcome.

Pose a rigged character	Simulate hair	Build materials from nodes

For Blender artists

The menus, panels, shortcuts and tools are Blender's, generated from Blender 5.2's own UI scripts, so what you know carries over: Tab into Edit Mode, G R S, Shift A, the N panel, the Outliner and the Properties editor all work as you expect. The operators behind them are Blender's own code, not lookalikes.

• Open .blend files and save your scene as one.
• Model in Edit Mode and Sculpt Mode; stack modifiers, including geometry nodes.
• Rig with armatures in Edit and Pose Mode, then animate in the Timeline, Dope Sheet and Graph Editor.
• Curves, text, particle hair and simulated hair.
• Run Python scripts, use the Python Console and install add-ons, with Blender's own bpy and numpy.
• Render stills and video in the browser, and edit them in the Video Sequencer.

What runs in real time is Babylon.js, not EEVEE or Cycles, so the picture differs from Blender's render engines. Every feature page says how far it goes.

For Babylon.js developers

Bylonder is a full scene editor for Babylon.js, with an interface many artists already know.

• Every project is code: an index.js that builds a Babylon scene. Edits made in the editor are saved on top of it.
• Export to .babylon or to a JavaScript module (File > Export), ready for your own app.
• Babylon's node editors (Node Material, Node Geometry, Node Render Graph, Node Particle) open inside the editor, next to Blender's nodes.
• Where both sides have a feature, you can choose who evaluates it per object (see Runtimes below). An armature can run as a Babylon Skeleton in the viewport and in your export.

New to Babylon.js? Start with the Babylon.js documentation and the Playground.

Try it

Open Bylonder in a desktop Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge). The splash screen offers example projects; each one also has a direct link:

Example	Open
Rigged Character	#example=rigged-character
Hair Dynamics	#example=hair-dynamics
Lava Sphere	#example=lava
3D Text	#example=text
Procedural City	#example=city

The Manual has a page per feature: steps with GIFs that recreate an example from an empty scene, and links to the matching pages of Blender's manual.

What is Blender's and what is Babylon's

Part	Who does it
Scene data (objects, meshes, armatures, materials, animation)	Blender, kept in Blender's own data structures
Editing: operators, modifiers, geometry nodes, tools	Blender's code
Interface: menus, panels, shortcuts	Blender's UI scripts, drawn by Bylonder
Drawing the viewport, materials, lights	Babylon.js
Rendering stills and video	Babylon.js
Export	Babylon formats (.babylon, JavaScript)

Some features can run either way, chosen per object. They are marked with the Bylonder icon:

• Blender: Blender's settings, Blender's evaluation. Matches desktop Blender.
• Babylon (mapped): Blender's settings, evaluated by Babylon's matching class. Small differences are listed in the UI.
• Babylon (native): Babylon's own settings, for features where Babylon's model is a complete alternative.

docs/runtimes.md describes the model.

Not there yet. EEVEE and Cycles and Blender's Compositor nodes are not available. Large scenes are slower than desktop Blender. The Blender coverage notes and the Blender Coverage view (Splash Screen) track what is in.

Develop

Node 20 or later:

npm ci
npm run module   # Blender's WebAssembly module, built by CI for this checkout
npm run dev      # dev server
npm test         # unit and integration tests
npm run build    # static site in dist/

The build is a static site: serve dist/ from any host. Pushes to main are tested and deployed to GitHub Pages (.github/workflows/pages.yml).

Where to read next:

• CLAUDE.md: conventions for contributors and coding agents.
• docs/blender-boundary.md: how Blender's code sees Bylonder's data.
• docs/runtimes.md: Blender and Babylon runtimes.
• docs/node-editors.md: Blender and Babylon nodes.
• README.backup.md: the previous, longer README with subsystem notes.

Contributing

Feedback, bug reports and ideas are welcome as issues, and pull requests are welcome too. A good bug report names the example or steps, the browser, and what you expected from Blender or Babylon.js. Before a pull request, run npm test, npm run build and npm run test:prod; the conventions are in CLAUDE.md.

License and thanks

GPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE). Bylonder is built on the work of the Blender Foundation and Blender's contributors (GPL) and of the Babylon.js team and community (Apache-2.0). It is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by either.