Spline

Spline is the 3D design tool that made me reconsider what's possible in a web browser. If you've ever seen a landing page with an interactive 3D object that responds to your scroll or mouse, it was probably made in Spline. Real-time 3D modelling, animation, and interactive design — all in your browser, all collaborative like Figma, all exporting to web-ready formats that actually run smoothly. For founders the use case is specific but valuable. Hero sections that have an interactive 3D object instead of a static screenshot. Product visualisations for physical products. Animated brand mascots. Loading screens with character. Anywhere your marketing site needs to feel premium and modern without hiring a 3D artist for $5K. The magic is the integration. Build a 3D scene in Spline, hit export, get an embed code or a React component. The object loads in your site, responds to interactions, plays animations on scroll. The runtime is optimised — typical Spline objects load in under a second and run at 60fps even on mobile. Compared to Three.js where you'd write the same scene by hand in 200 lines of code, Spline is dramatically faster for non-developers and not-3D-experts. The free tier is generous. Unlimited public projects, 2 collaborators, basic export options. Pro at $9/month adds private projects, more export formats (FBX, GLB), and removes branding. Super at $19/month adds advanced features like physics, custom lighting, and animation timeline. For most indie founders, Pro is plenty. Where Spline excels beyond marketing: prototyping. Design a physical product (a phone, a chair, a packaging design) in 3D and share an interactive prototype with manufacturers, investors, or customers before you commit to a CAD model. Designers also use Spline for moodboarding 3D scenes that inform their 2D designs. The trade-offs: Spline is a designer tool, not a developer tool. The code it exports works but isn't always optimised for your specific stack. Mobile performance can be uneven on lower-end devices (3D in the browser is hardware-dependent). And the learning curve for 3D is real if you've never done it before — basic camera controls, lighting, and material concepts take a few hours to internalise. My take: if your brand could benefit from feeling 'one notch more premium' than a typical SaaS landing page, try Spline. The free tier lets you build a hero-section asset in an afternoon. Even bad Spline scenes look 10x more interesting than yet another product screenshot.