Modern ed-tech platforms often suffer from low engagement due to static, flat interfaces. Next Academy required an experiential leap—a web platform where 3D interactive models could be manipulated in real-time, right in the browser, without forcing users into native apps. The core challenge was rendering high-poly 3D models and achieving 60fps on low-end mobile devices, while perfectly synchronizing DOM state (like React contexts) with WebGL context layers.
I spearheaded the migration to an isomorphic React/Three.js architecture utilizing `@react-three/fiber` and `@react-three/drei`. I compartmentalized the rendering loop, offloading heavy geometry computations to Web Workers. To optimize bundle sizes and Time-To-Interactive (TTI), I implemented aggressive level-of-detail (LOD) swapping and lazy-loaded complex shaders. The DOM UI was seamlessly hoisted above the canvas, ensuring that Next.js Server Components handled SEO and routing while the client efficiently maintained the Three.js scene graph. Postprocessing was conditionally applied based on the client's GPU tier.
- ✦Rendered 50k+ polygon scenes at 60fps on mobile browsers
- ✦Reduced initial chunk size by 40% via dynamic shader imports
- ✦Increased average user session duration by over 300%
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