40percent-online_3DMouse

Home Page - Computer
Scan the QR code to join the room
The phone is connected, try moving around and see what happens in the Blender!
Sensitivity settings

Inspiration

Every time one of our team members would finish a commission for a client in Blender, they would struggle to show them how to navigate the environment and spend several minutes each time. This inspired us to design easy-to-use and quick-to-launch software to quickly and intuitively navigate 3D spaces.

What it does

Users scan a QR code shown on the computer webpage to pair their phone instantly. Once the blender.py script is running in Blender's Scripting workspace, the phone's gyroscope controls the 3D viewport in real time — tilt to rotate, swipe to pan, pinch to zoom — all without touching the keyboard.

How we built it

We built a low-latency WebSocket bridge between mobile devices and Blender using Express.js and Socket.IO. Phone sensor data (gyroscope, touch) is streamed to the desktop client, which directs the data into the blender.pyscript in the Blender application for viewport navigation.

Challenges we ran into

We initially couldn't access the phone's gyroscope because modern browsers require HTTPS for sensor permissions. Since we were testing on http, the API was blocked. We resolved this by deploying our backend to Cloudflare Pages with automatic HTTPS, which also taught us to prioritize secure contexts early when working with device APIs.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We created a user-friendly layout that is simple and colourblind-friendly, and the whole application is lightweight.

What we learned

We learnt how to host domains on Cloudflare, write pure JavaScript SPA and connect to Blender's API.

What's next for 40percent-online

Next, we'll expand the functionality of the program to other creative tools like Unity and Unreal Engine. We also plan to support additional input bindings for the software to expand the application's capability.