Installation

Zephyr3d ships as ES6 modules, installed through npm and used with a bundler such as Vite or Webpack.

Which packages do I need

The engine is split into several packages and you rarely need all of them. Find your case below:

What you want to do	Install
Build a 3D app with the Scene API (most common)	@zephyr3d/base + @zephyr3d/scene + one backend
Write your own renderer on the Device API	@zephyr3d/base + @zephyr3d/device + one backend
Load glTF/FBX source models at runtime	add @zephyr3d/loaders
Need a debug GUI panel	add @zephyr3d/imgui

At least one backend package is required; it decides which graphics API the engine runs on:

• @zephyr3d/backend-webgl — provides both the WebGL and WebGL2 backends; the most compatible option.
• @zephyr3d/backend-webgpu — the WebGPU backend, with better performance. Some advanced features (ABuffer OIT, compute shaders) are only available here.

You can install both and choose at runtime based on device capability — see Your First Application.

The common combination

For a 3D application that should run on WebGPU where available and WebGL otherwise:

npm install --save @zephyr3d/base @zephyr3d/scene @zephyr3d/backend-webgl @zephyr3d/backend-webgpu

Note that @zephyr3d/scene depends on @zephyr3d/device, which your package manager installs automatically — you do not need to declare it.

What each package does

• @zephyr3d/base

  Foundation module: math library (Vector3, Matrix4x4, Quaternion, ...), virtual file system, events, reference counting. Nearly every project uses it.

• @zephyr3d/device

  The graphics API abstraction and the shader generator. With the Scene API it is an indirect dependency; you only depend on it directly when writing your own render pipeline.

• @zephyr3d/backend-webgl / @zephyr3d/backend-webgpu

  The concrete backend implementations, as above.

• @zephyr3d/scene

  The Scene API: scene graph, materials, lighting, shadows, animation, post-processing and resource management. The high-level framework, suited to getting things done quickly.

• @zephyr3d/loaders

  Importers for source model formats — glTF/GLB, FBX, Alembic and others. If you use the editor workflow and load models as prefabs (.zprefab), you do not need this package, which also keeps your bundle smaller. See Resource Loading and Model Import for the tradeoff.

• @zephyr3d/imgui

  ImGui bindings, useful for debug panels and tooling UI.

Next

With the packages installed, write your first application.