I build interactive worlds, mostly for architecture. I've been chasing that since before I knew it was a job. Because I found it interesting.

// ALEPPO. WHERE I COME FROM

I grew up in Aleppo. My favorite things were space, mapping, figuring out how things worked, and video games.

The first time I disappeared into a screen I was six, losing a top-down racing game over and over until I won. It taught me a lesson: you fail at something until you don't.

The Sims came later and taught me another: a space isn't the walls, it's how people move through it.

One day I stumbled onto some architectural walkthroughs, I just stared. Complete awe. I knew I wanted to make that. Both my grandparents were architects, so maybe it was in the blood.

I learned 3D with whatever I could get: Xara 3D first, then 3ds Max back when the box still said Discreet. I found my way into online forums, and those led me to start running weekly community meetups where a handful of us traded tutorial CDs and taught each other. I picked up photography, video editing and graphic design.

Sharing is caring. That's what I learned from building a community.

// 2011. THE LONG WAY AROUND.

I signed up for the University of Fine Arts, but they didn't accept me. It felt like a loss at the time. It wasn't. That rejection led to my decision to leave Syria for Algeria to study, just a few months before the war started.

The studying never happened. Instead, I worked in a potato chips factory, where I saved up for my first real laptop. For years I taught myself from Google and YouTube: After Effects from Video Copilot, 3ds Max from Arrimus 3D, and VFX from Allan McKay.

The practice turned into a paycheck: my first real job as a motion graphics artist at a TV company. That led to VFX, and from there, out on my own as a freelancer.

Not everything we think is bad is actually bad. And if you really love something, you will find ways to do it.

// IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, SET IT FREE.

In 2014, Unreal Engine became free. Epic put it out under a line I've never forgotten, if you love something, set it free. That single decision changed my life. I'm grateful the engine went free, but just as grateful for the community around it, the people making lessons and answering my questions on the forums.

The first thing I built in it was a project to learn. Walking through an apartment in first person, changing the materials, lights and finishes live, was nothing like looking at a render of it. It lit me up (it brought me back to my childhood years, when I encountered those architectural demos). That little project found its way around the internet, shared by Epic and NVIDIA.

Show your work. People will find you.

// 2015. ISTANBUL.

I moved to Istanbul in 2015 and stayed. My work was online, and Istanbul was a better base for it: faster internet, easier to get paid. The food doesn't hurt either.

The work kept widening past architecture: VR in 2018, then automotive, aerospace, virtual production, game environments, R&D. The subject kept changing and the skill didn't. Real-time 3D might be one of the most transferable things a person can learn.

Combining your fascinations is a superpower.

// 2020. THE OBSTACLE IS THE WAY.

When COVID hit, work stalled, and I leaned into something I'd quietly wanted to do for years. I'd tried making educational videos back in 2015 and let the impostor feeling talk me out of it.

This time I stayed with it, and it turned out to be one of the things I love most. Part of it was a debt, I owed the communities that taught me, first in Aleppo, then online. The rest was simpler: teaching is the same instinct as setting the engine free, knowledge is better when it's accessible.

And it brought back more than I expected, sharing what I knew quietly turned into more clients than I ever imagined, a happy accident I didn't see coming. Watching someone use these tools to change their own work, the way I'd changed mine, never gets old.

I became an Epic Golden Instructor Partner in 2021. The next year, an Epic MegaGrant funded a run of new Unreal tutorials. And in 2024, Cesium backed a series teaching real-time 3D and geospatial for architects.

Somewhere in that stretch I also founded a studio. It grew, and we shipped good work. But over time our visions for it drifted apart, so I chose to walk away and start from scratch rather than fight over what we'd built.

If you can build once, you can build again.

// 2026. STILL A STUDENT AND THE ROAD AHEAD.

A decade in, and the part that still gets me out of bed is the same as when I was six: learning something I can't do yet.

For me it was never really about the render, or even the interactive part. It's about the problem the thing I'm building solves.

Lately that's pulled me deep into development. I spent late 2024 and all of 2025 in visual scripting and programming, and with AI making it possible to learn almost anything fast, I feel like a beginner again in the best way.

The road ahead is digital twins, IoT, 3D printing, robots, and whatever else I find interesting.

I'm also starting a new YouTube channel to share what I know. My life would be radically different if it weren't for other humans sharing their experience. So I see it as my duty to keep making lessons.

This site is where I learn new skills, write about what catches my curiosity, and collect the things I want to reference later.