Meet the team: Q&A with 3dverse co-founder and CTO — Houssem Achouri
On this week’s edition of Meet the Team, we dive into the vision for 3dverse with CTO & Co-Founder Houssem Achouri.
How did you start the 3dverse journey?
Back when I was 14, I often played the game Counter-Strike. I was in a cybercafé, and the guy sitting next to me was showing his friend the custom map he had made for the game. I overheard the conversation and immediately went, ‘Wait, what! You can build your universe for the game. How do you do that?”. When I discovered how to create my maps using Valver Hammer Editor, I wondered how you create the software. I started learning about programming and C++. I found my passion for engines and the coding framework vs. creating an actual game.
Source: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Hammer_Editor#/media/File:Hammer35.png
Flash forward a few years, and I started my career at Gameloft. Then, I worked in the medical industry for a company that utilized game software to build their ultrasound simulator.
That experience touched on every aspect of creating game software. Then I worked for a large gaming company, and that is when I realized that the tools used were too complex and limited collaboration, which hindered game production. Each developer worked independently, and everything was put together, which wasn’t optimal. That was the catalyst of 3dverse and where the idea for the platform came from. There had to be a way to collaborate in real-time and build games while seeing what your colleagues are doing simultaneously instead of complicating the process and making collaboration extremely difficult.
Long story short, in 2018, after meeting Sylvain (our other co-founder) and speaking with Pierre Adrien (the third co-founder), we officially started 3dverse from scratch. I was already toying with my own engine named FTL engine. What do you do with a 3D FTL engine? You explore the 3D universe ⮀ 3dverse.
And that’s how it all started!
What is your role within the team?
Ensure everything is balanced within the company, whether it’s the team, technology, or the business in general.
If you could describe 3dverse in 3 words, what would they be?
Insane, daring, future proof.
What is your vision for 3dverse?
I don’t mind changing the industry and don’t build the technology for that, but for my vision — in one word, it would be metaverse (it is the metaverse before the metaverse was cool and back to uncool :P). That was the vision when we started it all. And it hasn’t changed at all. The concept is a 3D internet to reference accessible 3D worlds from anywhere.
One of his inspiration’s. Source: Hyper reality by KEIICHI MATSUDA (http://hyper-reality.co)
What do you think is the biggest opportunity for the company?
A decentralized “3d internet” where you can navigate seamlessly from a 3d universe to another. With each of those universes owned and managed on their own.
What is your favourite 3dverse Platform feature?
The fact that scenes are connected. If you move one element in a scene, it moves in real-time (live) in another. So, all players in the scene see the move. In other words: the concept of self-referencing and scene recursion.
(Editor’s note: The 3dverse Platform is a proprietary Cloud-Based Real-Time 3D renderer. It powers applications such as 3dverse Collaborate — 3dverse.com/collaborate)
Quickfire questions!
Favorite superhero?
Son Goku. He always finds a way to surpass his limits, from a new super transformation to a new ki move.
Last meal on Earth?
I would do other things than eat.
Podcasts or Books?
Agatha Christie-type books
The last movie you watched?
Tetris
