Enable Babylon Scene Inspector/Explorer in Babylon Viewer for SharePoint

Hello Babylon.js Team,

First of all, thank you for your amazing work on Babylon.js and the Babylon Viewer! Your tools make it so much easier to work with 3D content on the web.

I would like to request a feature for the Babylon Viewer, specifically when it is used within SharePoint:
Currently, it is not possible to activate the Babylon Scene Inspector (Scene Explorer) in the Babylon Viewer as embedded in SharePoint. For technical writers, developers, and power users, it would be extremely helpful to access the scene structure, object names, hierarchies, and material properties directly in the viewer—without having to download the model or use an external sandbox.

Description:
Currently, it is not possible to activate the Babylon Scene Inspector (Scene Explorer) within the Babylon Viewer as used in SharePoint. For technical writers, developers, and power users, it would be extremely helpful to access the scene structure, object names, hierarchies, and material properties directly in the viewer—without having to download the model or use an external sandbox.

Motivation:

  • In SharePoint, 3D models (e.g., glTF/glb) are widely used for technical documentation, review, and collaboration.

  • The Inspector provides significant value for analyzing, debugging, and documenting 3D models.

  • Many users (technical writers, engineers, developers) would benefit from being able to inspect the scene structure directly in the browser, without extra tools or local environments.

Feature Request:

    • Please provide an option to enable the Inspector/Scene Explorer in the Babylon Viewer (e.g., via a button, keyboard shortcut, or URL parameter), even when the viewer is embedded in SharePoint.

    • Ideally, this should be a configurable option for admins or power users, so the Inspector can be shown when needed.

    • Optionally, add permission controls so the Inspector is not visible to all end users by default.

Benefits:

    • Makes working with complex 3D models in SharePoint much easier.

    • Saves time and reduces errors, as no export or local tools are required.

    • Increases the attractiveness of Babylon Viewer for enterprise and technical use cases.

Reference:

Thank you very much for considering this request!
Keep up the great work, and best regards, Nicolas

cc @ryantrem

Thanks for the details! Technically this may be easier to do with the new Inspector v2 we are working on, but the other challenge is on the product side. Inspector is much bigger than the Viewer, so pulling this code into a product like SharePoint would need consideration from the product team. Also, Inspector has it’s own UI system, which might clash with the product (as again, Inspector is really intended to be a diagnostic tool), and again would need consideration from the product team.

One thing we have discussed a little bit is the idea of having a Chrome/Edge extension that is effectively the Babylon inspector that could “attach” to a canvas/scene on the current page (e.g. does not require inspector integration into a specific web app using Babylon). There are some tricky technical challenges with making something like this work, so I’m not sure yet if it is actually practical, but still thought it would be worth sharing the idea for the sake of discussion of options.