Coding for 3D Applications and Immersive Content

Coding for 3D Applications and Immersive Content

By Andres Poplawski, Senior Software Engineer at echo3D

Hey there, tell us about your background!

I’ve programmed as a fun hobby since my first programming class in high school. I kept taking programming courses in college even though I majored in something completely different (chemical engineering). A couple years into my career I got the opportunity to program professionally and it clicked that this is what I really should be doing.

Since then I’ve been fortunate enough to work with amazing teams and contribute to a wide variety of fascinating programming projects: spinning up modern platforms for the web, immersive games and installations coordinating projectors, robotics, lighting and sounds and even engineering the hardware and software for rides at theme parks like Universal Studios.

What do you work on?

At echo3D we specialize in providing tools for storing and streaming 3D content (think models, videos and images) to help game and application developers create even better experiences. I get to work on a wide variety of platforms and projects because 3D content goes everywhere — mobile, web, games and more. Currently I’m working on creating and improving the tools that let game developers use our platform within the same game engines they use to make their games. This means I can find myself working all over our own technology stack that includes our server backend, our web frontend, our API and the game engines themselves.

How do you use coding in your industry/projects?

It is everywhere! Managing our customer data, providing an interactive web console, monitoring our platform performance, and streaming complex 3D models from the cloud into your game are just some of the things we rely on our code to do.

Any tips for young coders?

• Focus on what you find fun.
• Get a raspberry pi or an arduino — they’re great for giving you a sense of what your code can make a machine “do” and you can make such cool fun things with them. You’ll learn some valuable bits of circuit and electrical engineering too.
• Don’t try to keep up with every new bit of tech or platform because it will exhaust you but always look out for new solutions to things that annoy you.
• On a good day you’ll feel like an elite master of all things programming. On a bad day you’ll feel like a fraud and wonder if you really know anything at all. This is normal.
• When you’ve been really stuck on a tough problem, walk away and come back after a few hours or a good night’s sleep.
• Last but most important — find joy in teaching fellow developers and allow yourself to learn from anyone regardless of title. A smug programmer sucks all the life out of a room!

What tools and programming languages do you use?

Typescript, Javascript, Java, C#, Tomcat, Angular, Node, Unity, Unreal