Update (2025/12/18): Added Bonus (React Three Fiber + GSAP (ScrollTrigger)) section
Intro
These days, I have been making my brain train...
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Really enjoyed this breakdown, especially the way you compared R3F, Three.js, and A-Frame through practical examples, and of course loved those memes. I’ve been trying to add a small interactive 3D orb to my portfolio, and this post clarified a few concepts I was struggling with (camera + material behavior in particular).
I actually just wrote about the first version of that project, but I kept the animation static for now because I couldn’t get GSAP to behave the way I wanted. Seeing your examples makes me want to take another shot at it in the next release.
If you're ever open to sharing a bit of guidance on handling simple 3D interactions or animation flows, I’d love to connect. Either way, thanks for putting this together, super helpful post!
Thank you for your compliment!😄 I am so glad to hear my post was helpful to others. Learning 3D animation was quite challenging, but it was more fun than difficult. I just started learning 3D animation from this post, but if there are questions, please add it to this comment field. Let's learn together!
Thanks! 🙏
In that case, here’s the part I’m stuck on:
I want my orb to respond to hover/drag (just simple scale + rotation), but I’m not sure whether it’s better to handle that through R3F’s built-in gesture events or let GSAP handle all the animations.
If you have any pointers on which approach is more stable for small interactive elements, or even better if you can guide me how to build that, I’d really appreciate it.
And totally agree, 3D is challenging, but the moment something finally works, it feels so rewarding. 😄
I researched your question. Since your project is using Next.js, how about starting with R3F simply? And if you want to create a more complex animation, add GSAP later? Here is a sample with detail comment that AI made.↓😎
React Three Fiber (hover, click, drag, rotate)
That makes a lot of sense, starting simple with R3F definitely will help me understand how the mesh and events behave.
In my case though, the orb is meant to move across sections with scroll, change scale, and rotate as part of the page flow, so I think GSAP (especially ScrollTrigger) might be unavoidable for the timeline side of things.
I’m planning to let R3F own the object and interaction, and use GSAP just to drive transforms via refs. If you’ve seen any good patterns for mixing the two cleanly, I’d love to learn more.
Really appreciate you taking the time to research and share a sample, this helped me clarify the direction a lot. 🙏
Sure. I didn't have time yesterday, but I will make r3f + GSAP sample and post it in this comment. So, don't miss it.😀
I failed to make R3F + GSAP animation at once.😅 So, I first made only GSAP (ScrollTrigger) CodePen sample with detail comments for learning. I'll get back to you after I make R3F + GSAP.
GSAP ScrollTrigger official doc. ↓
gsap.com/docs/v3/Plugins/ScrollTri...
GSAP (ScrollTrigger)
Wow this is amazing! This will be very helpful for me to understand and implement my own animation. I am very grateful for your continued guidance. Thank you very much.
First, I added R3F to GSAP (ScrollTrigger) CodePen sample with detail comments for better understanding.🖊️↓↓
R3F + GSAP (ScrollTrigger)
Next, I added Drug and Hover to R3F + GSAP (ScrollTrigger) CodePen sample with detail comments.✒️↓↓
R3F + GSAP (ScrollTrigger) + Drag, Hover
This is honestly exactly what I was missing, seeing how GSAP and R3F can be wired together cleanly makes things click for me.
Thank you so much for taking the time to break this down and share examples. I’m going to try implementing this in my orb animation and I’ll definitely share an update once I get it working.
Really appreciate your continued help 🙏
Your welcome! I also learned a lot too.
GSAP ScrollTriggerlooks useful for many scenes. I'm thinking to add it to my website creating now. I would like to learn more about 2D/3D animation, React, Next.js, and others. Let's make something fun together next time.😄Of course! Looking forward to learning together😄
Really enjoyed this breakdown! You explained the jump from 2D to 3D in such a simple way, especially the comparisons between Three.js, R3F, and A-Frame. The meme-style learning idea is fun too. Can’t wait to see the advanced 3D animation you’re working on next! 🚀🔥
Thank you for checking my article. I will do my best to create not only fun but also informative 3D animation.🎥
Very cool, thanks for sharing!
Thank you! Glad you like it.😄
Nice basic entry for 3D and 2D! I’m also starting to build my own portfolio with animation. This is great content for learning the basics!
Thank you for checking my post. Looking forward to see your animation too.🎨
This is such detailed breakdown.. Very easy to learn
Thank you for reading my post. It was hard to learn 3D animation, but more fun than hard.😄
Really enjoyed , Good job
Thank you for checking! I'm happy to hear you enjoyed.😄