Orrery

Double-click a model. Look at it.
A fast, tiny 3D model viewer for FBX, glTF and GLB on Windows:
one 3.6 MB exe, no installer, and no network access at all.

Website · Download · Issues · Changelog · MIT license

Why Orrery

Looking at a 3D asset should not mean starting a DCC tool or a game engine. Orrery opens the file the moment you double-click it: framed, lit, measured and already playing its first animation. The overlay answers the questions you have about a model you just downloaded or exported (how heavy is it, did its textures come along, what units is it in, which clips does it carry), and a banner says clearly what went wrong when something did, while the mesh is still shown.

It treats every model as a file from a stranger: the viewer reads only the model and the images and buffers it needs, and it cannot reach the network.

Features

Opens and frames	Opens the file passed as the first argument; drag and drop another file onto the window to switch. Auto-framing, orbit / pan / zoom, studio lighting with an environment map. Dark window from the first frame and a loading screen (icon, file name, status).
Info overlay	Triangles, meshes, materials, textures (loaded and missing), bounding-box size and animation clips.
Animation playback	Plays the first clip at once. Play/pause (Space), timeline scrubber, speed 0.25x to 2x, loop, clip list and lock root, which keeps the root bone in place.
Borrow clips	Add animations... or Shift+drop another FBX/GLB to bind its clips to the loaded model by bone name: exact first, then normalised (case, spaces, underscores, mixamorig:, Armature| ignored). Missing bones are dropped and a summary such as matched 52/65 bones is shown, with a warning when few match. Position tracks are rescaled by the median bone-length ratio (FBX cm vs m) and applied relative to the rest pose. This is name binding, not a full retarget.
Finds textures	Embedded (GLB, FBX), paths relative to the model (including backslashes and ..), the exact absolute path written in an FBX, TGA, and a fallback search by file name (or the same name with another image extension) in the model's folder tree and its parent's. Missing ones are listed.
Safe by design	Read-only access to the open model, its images and glTF .bin buffers; every remote URL blocked; strict Content-Security-Policy. See Security.
Lives in Explorer	register.ps1 adds Orrery to Open with for .fbx, .glb and .gltf, per user, no admin rights.

Key	Action
R	Reset view
G	Toggle grid
W	Toggle wireframe
B	Dark / light background
Space	Play / pause

Missing textures are named in a banner; the mesh is still drawn.	Add animations binds clips from another file by bone name and says how many matched.

_{Real captures of orrery.exe with an original model; see docs/SCREENSHOTS.md.}

Get started

1. Download orrery-<version>-windows-x64.zip from the latest release (about 1.2 MB) and unzip it to a folder you will keep; the file association stores the exe's path.
2. Optional: run register.ps1 (right-click, Run with PowerShell, or powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File register.ps1) to add Orrery to the Open with list for .fbx, .glb and .gltf.
3. Make it the default once: right-click a model file, Open with, Choose another app, Orrery, Always.

The exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn on the first run: choose More info, then Run anyway. The WebView2 runtime is required; it is preinstalled on Windows 10 and 11.

How it works

 orrery.exe (Rust: tao window + wry WebView2, ~3.6 MB, three.js r186 embedded)
   ├─ /       the embedded viewer page (index.html, viewer.js, three.js), on app.localhost
   ├─ /m/     files next to the model: the model itself, images, .bin        ─┐  src/resolve.rs:
   ├─ /t/     texture paths written inside the model (absolute, ..), images ─┘  checked, read-only
   └─ IPC     title, log lines, screenshot data; navigation and new windows denied

 viewer.js (three.js)
   GLTFLoader / FBXLoader / TGALoader → framing, lighting, overlay, AnimationMixer
   remote URLs in a model → replaced and reported as "remote resource blocked: <url>"

Security

Orrery only reads files, and only these: the model that is open, image files (png, jpg/jpeg, tga, bmp, webp, gif, ktx2) and glTF .bin buffers. Every served file must, after links and junctions are resolved, be inside the model's folder or its parent folder; the one exception is an image whose exact absolute path is written in the model file. Other file types, other model files, UNC paths and drive-relative paths are refused (unit tests in src/resolve.rs).

It never touches the network: the page has a strict Content-Security-Policy ('self', data:, blob: only), every URL with a scheme other than data: or blob: (http(s), ftp, ws, ...) found in a model is blocked and reported as "remote resource blocked: ", and navigation away from the app and new windows are denied.

Build from source

Requires a Rust toolchain and the WebView2 runtime (present on Windows 11).

cargo build --release

The exe is target/release/orrery.exe (about 3.6 MB, three.js is embedded). Run the unit tests with cargo test --release. scripts/package-release.ps1 builds the release zip with local paths stripped and prints its SHA-256.

Optional flags (used by scripts/smoke-test.ps1): --log <file> appends load results; --screenshot <png> saves the rendered view and exits; --lib <file> adds an animation library after loading; --wait <ms> delays the screenshot.

Register as a handler (current user, no admin)

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File register.ps1
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File unregister.ps1

register.ps1 uses dist\orrery.exe if it exists, otherwise target\release\orrery.exe; pass -Exe <path> to register another copy (copy the exe somewhere permanent first, the registry stores its path). It writes only under HKCU\Software\Classes (ProgID Orrery.Model, Applications\orrery.exe, and OpenWithProgids for .fbx, .glb, .gltf). Windows does not allow programs to set the default app silently, so choose it once as described above.

Icon

assets/icon.svg (48 px and up) and assets/icon-small.svg (16 to 32 px) are rendered into assets/orrery.ico by tools/make-icon:

cargo run --release --manifest-path tools/make-icon/Cargo.toml -- .

Website

website/ is the static homepage at orrery.renner.dev, deployed by the manual Website Pages workflow. See website/README.md.

Limitations

• FBX is read by three.js FBXLoader, which supports FBX 7.x; older versions (for example 6.1) fail with an error message.
• PSD textures cannot be decoded (a TGA/PNG with the same name is used if found). Missing-texture search covers only the model folder tree (5 levels) and its parent folder tree (4 levels); links and junctions are not followed.
• Parsing runs on the main thread: a very large FBX (for example a 40-clip library) can take several seconds; the loading screen is shown during the parse (its spinner is a CSS compositor animation, whether it keeps moving under a long parse was not verified) and the page is not interactive until the parse ends.
• Animation libraries need the same bone names; rigs with different names (for example Mixamo vs Unreal-style) do not match.
• No KTX2/Draco/Meshopt decoders are bundled; glTF files using those extensions will not load.
• Windows only.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.

Orrery bundles three.js r186 and fflate (both MIT), links 101 Rust crates under permissive licences (MIT, Apache-2.0, Unicode-3.0, Zlib, BSD-style and similar) and statically links the Microsoft WebView2 SDK loader (BSD-style licence). Their licence texts and copyright notices are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES, which ships in every release zip; regenerate it with tools/gen-notices/gen-notices.ps1 after dependency updates. The website serves the same three.js files, with notices in website/vendor/LICENSES.txt.