Vecto3d: Turn Flat SVGs Into 3D Objects Without Leaving Your Browser
You've got an SVG—a logo, an icon, some flat piece of vector art—and you want to see it with actual depth. Maybe for a mockup, maybe for a 3D print, maybe just because flat feels boring. Normally that means firing up Blender, importing, extruding, tweaking materials, and losing an afternoon to a learning curve you didn't ask for. Vecto3d skips all of that. It's a free, open-source tool that takes your SVG and turns it into a 3D object right in the browser, no install and no account required.
What It Does
Vecto3d is a browser-based editor for giving flat SVG artwork depth, material, lighting, and motion. You upload, drag and drop, or paste an SVG—or start from one of the built-in examples—and the tool extrudes it into a 3D model you can manipulate in real time. Uploaded files stay in your browser, which is a nice touch if you're working with anything you'd rather not hand off to a server.
The stack is modern and unsurprising in a good way: Next.js and React up top, Three.js and React Three Fiber for the 3D rendering, TypeScript and Tailwind underneath, with shadcn/ui and Radix handling the interface. Editor state lives in Zustand, Framer Motion handles UI animation, and there's a small detail I appreciate—Cuelume for synthesized interaction sounds. It's a considered set of choices, not a pile of dependencies thrown at a problem.
Why It's Cool
The workflow is refreshingly short. The README lays it out in four steps: add an SVG, shape it, finish it, export it. That's it. There's no project setup, no scene graph to learn, no node editor. You adjust depth and bevel until the geometry looks right, pick a material and environment, and you're done. For a tool like this, the absence of ceremony is the feature.
The controls are genuinely compact. Geometry, material, environment, display, and export each get their own section, and the same controls work on desktop and mobile. You're not getting a watered-down mobile experience—the README is explicit that it's the same compact control set across both. That matters more than it sounds like it should, because a lot of browser-based 3D tools fall apart the moment you leave a keyboard.
The export options cover real use cases. This is where Vecto3d earns its keep:
- PNG for high-resolution stills
- MP4 and GIF for recorded model rotations
- STL for 3D printing and fabrication
- GLB and GLTF for portable 3D models
That STL export is the one that caught my eye. There's a whole category of people who want to turn a 2D logo into a printable object, and the typical path involves several tools and a fair amount of frustration. Here it's a dropdown. The MP4 and GIF recording uses the live WebGL preview directly—turn on auto-rotate in the export panel, set your speed and duration, and record.
The material and lighting system is more than a gimmick. You get presets, but you can also tune roughness, metalness, clearcoat, and color. Multiple lighting environments with adjustable intensity, a custom preview background, and an optional bloom effect round it out. It's enough control to get something that looks intentional without turning into a shader authoring tool.
Real-time everything. Depth, bevel thickness, bevel size, smoothness—all adjustable in real time. You can rotate the model in the viewport, reset changes, or go fullscreen. The feedback loop is tight, which is exactly what you want when you're dialing in geometry.
How to Try It
The fastest path is the hosted version—head to vecto3d.xyz and drop an SVG in. No signup, nothing to configure.
If you want to run it locally or contribute, Vecto3d uses Bun as its package manager:
git clone https://github.com/lakshaybhushan/vecto3d.git
cd vecto3d
bun install
bun run dev
Then open http://localhost:3000.
Before opening a pull request, the README asks you to run the checks:
bun run lint
NODE_ENV=production bun run build
The repo lives at github.com/lakshaybhushan/vecto3d. It's also part of the Vercel OSS Program, if that's a signal you care about.
Final Thoughts
Vecto3d isn't trying to be Blender in a browser, and that's the point. It's a focused tool that does one thing well: take flat vector art and give it dimension, then get out of your way. If you're a designer who needs a quick 3D mockup, a developer who wants a printable version of a logo, or just someone curious about what your SVG looks like with a bit of metalness and a nice environment map, this is worth ten minutes of your time. The fact that it's open source and runs entirely client-side makes it easy to recommend without caveats. Give it a spin—your SVGs have been flat long enough.