Send in your ideas. Deadline June 1, 2026
Grant
Theme fund: NGI0 Commons Fund
Start: 2026-04

F3D Animations, Rendering and Integrations

Cross-platform, fast and minimalist 3D viewer

F3D is an open source, community-driven, cross-platform, fast and minimalist 3D viewer. Already integrated into many Linux distributions, F3D is packed with features that let users visualize and render their 3D models efficiently. F3D supports dozens of file formats and aims to be the go-to solution for simply taking a look at any 3D model, it also supports thumbnails and integrates well in the experience of many desktop environments. F3D is also the libf3d, a C++ API to simply and efficiently render 3D models, with C, Python, Java and Javascript bindings. As such, the libf3d is available as a python wheel on pypi, as an npm package to make F3D available as web 3D viewer, and will soon be available as a mobile app. The F3D community thrives to be inclusive and welcoming, with a clear contribution and maintenance process where everything is discussed openly with any interested parties as well as a dedicated mentoring track. This project will make a large set of improvements in many places, from web rendering and animation enhancements to improving integrations (including proper libf3d integration in FreeCAD), packaging, a friendlier and better usable user interface, polyscope-like features, support for new file formats, better CI and much more.

Run by F3D-APP FOUNDATION

Logo NLnet: abstract logo of four people seen from above Logo NGI Zero: letterlogo shaped like a tag

This project was funded through the NGI0 Commons Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 101135429. Additional funding is made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).