Matthias Ewald / interactive systems & realtime 3D
Freelance technical artist and developer working where code, realtime graphics and interaction meet — from Unreal and Unity to VR/AR, visualization, game systems and emerging AI-assisted workflows.
Unreal Engine, Unity, shaders, VFX, visualization and the technical work that keeps interactive scenes responsive.
Gameplay, prototypes, VR/AR experiences and spatial applications designed to be explored instead of merely viewed.
Current R&D around AI-assisted iteration, developer workflows and intelligent interfaces for creative technical work.
Selected public work / archive + current direction
Browser game / personal project
A 90-second shooting gallery in the browser: goofy pirate birds fly across a scrolling alien desert at three depths, and the farther a bird, the more it is worth. It follows the rules of the 1999 classic Moorhuhnjagd, with every name, picture, sound and joke original.
Evolution simulation game / personal project
A hex-based insect colony simulation you watch rather than command: autonomous workers forage, build, breed and defend the nest, and every insect’s behaviour, body and small neural brain come from a genome that evolves across generations.
WebGPU audiovisual instrument / personal R&D project
A real-time audiovisual instrument built on WebGPU. Eight GPU simulation families, from flocking and slime mould to reaction-diffusion, particle ecologies and raymarched fractals, share one rendering, modulation and compositing architecture, and audio, MIDI, OSC and tempo play it like a synthesizer.
Developer tooling / AI coding agents
A Windows-first scaffolder that turns any folder into a repository ready for AI coding agents: an agent manual, safety rules that are enforced rather than just written down, git hooks and verification gates from day one, all in one wizard run.
Browser falling-block game / AI agent experiment
A flashy falling-block game for the browser whose playable version was built by one Claude Opus agent from a single prompt in under an hour, with no revisions, on a repository set up with AgentAutoSetup.
Open-source tool / native Windows app
A deliberately lightweight Windows 11 resource monitor: a single self-contained C++ executable that shows CPU, GPU, RAM, temperatures, network and disk I/O in a compact desktop widget.
Trade-show VR experience
A trade-show-ready VR experience for Oculus Quest that presents a rentable event space and all its configurations, controlled by sales staff through an iPad companion app.
Interactive room visualization / sales tool
An interactive realtime visualization of macom’s “future work” room types, for sales laptops and VR. It shows the installed AV technology in a convincing spatial impression and gives customers a solid basis for decisions.
Visualization & simulation software
Software that turns spaces, processes and real-world data into interactive realtime 3D: draw and furnish rooms, simulate processes, change parameters and see the effect immediately, on screen or in VR.
InnoGamesJam #12 / Hamburg
A competitive twin-stick shooter for the jam theme “Spooktacular”: little witches hunt for Halloween candy, in a stylised look full of effects and physics interactions.
Official TV quiz show game / technical art
The official game of the ARD quiz show, for one to four players alongside Kai Pflaume, Bernhard Hoëcker and Elton.
Cultural heritage / augmented reality
An augmented reality app for iOS honouring engineer William Lindley’s 210th birthday: Lindley appears in person and explains the water supply and sewer system he designed for Hamburg.
Cultural heritage / virtual reality
A virtual reality experience of Hamburg’s historic warehouse district around 1900, part of the city’s cultural digitisation strategy. Shown at the Dialoghaus Hamburg for five months.
HAW Hamburg / master project
A cooperative survival submarine game with VR support. Survive the descent into the deep-sea abyss by gathering resources, handling dangerous encounters and keeping the submarine intact, which only works with strong teamwork.
Roguelike dungeon crawler / personal project
A turn-based roguelike with tabletop rules: every floor is generated from a seed, hidden under fog of war, and full of loot, locked chests, traps and fire that spreads. Two action points per turn decide whether you move, strike, kick or drink a potion, and every choice counts.
Services
Advise
Finding where AI and automation really save time in your team: reviewing workflows, choosing and setting up coding agents and tool pipelines, and getting the systems behind them running reliably.
Build
Turning a new idea into something people can try: playable game and XR prototypes, interactive demos and visualizations. AI-assisted workflows keep iteration fast, so you can learn from a working version before the big decisions.
Support
Support inside an existing Unreal Engine or Unity production, where art meets engineering: shaders, realtime VFX, lighting, performance work and tools that make the team faster.
About
Since 2024: realtime development, interactive applications, visualization, VR/AR and game development, based in the Nürnberg metropolitan region.
CEO and technical artist from 2020 to 2022, then technical artist part-time until 2023. Interactive 3D visualization around virtual prototypes and AR/VR planning experiences, including the MINDflow visualization software.
A Hamburg studio for VR, AR and MR, visualization, games and interactive media, with projects such as macomVIZ and William Lindley AR.
Technical art at Strixlab in Hamburg, then freelance. In 2017 also part-time at HAW Hamburg, building a virtual reality project for the city of Hamburg.
Game development, programming and content integration, with tutoring activity around technical art, shaders and lighting.
Studies in Multimedia and Communications in Ansbach, internships as a 3D animator in Schwabach and Munich, and product visualization as a working student at Pfannenberg in Hamburg: the visual foundation underneath the engineering work.
Background
My path runs from 3D and game development into technical art, realtime visualization and interactive software. I studied Multimedia and Communications in Ansbach and Games at HAW Hamburg. In Hamburg I co-founded two VR/AR-focused companies, Shape-Shift and mindfine, and led both as CEO. Today I work freelance from Nürnberg and do tree care as a side job. Finding the balance between nature and technology, art and science has always been a goal in my life.
My focus lies on Unreal Engine, Unity, C++, C#, TypeScript, WebGL, realtime VFX, VR/AR and visualization — a mix that describes how I like to work: close to both the image and the system producing it. I love experimenting with generative art and procedural systems. Another hobby of mine is producing electronic music, a process that is as technical as it is creative and emotional.
Working principle
Build something people can experience early — then let the prototype expose what the plan was missing.
Open channel
Available for AI and automation consulting, prototype development and technical art.
© 2026 Matthias Ewald. Built with Jekyll + Tailwind + Vite.
Nürnberg · realtime systems
