Working on something new. Co-founder of @Sketchfab. French entrepreneur 🇫🇷 Foil pumper 🏄♂️ Get my book 📘 https://xitter.cf/t.co/x40dCWehaf
Versailles
Joined January 2009
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A project I started over two years ago is finally out! The story of @Sketchfab, a startup memoir covering the full ten-year journey, with all its ups and downs, from inception to exit.
Some early reviews:
"Most startup stories get cleaned up after the fact. Alban tells his while it was still messy. The rejections, the years of barely making it work while competitors came and went. Sketchfab didn’t win by being loud. It won by building a community the giants couldn’t replicate, and staying alive long enough for the world to catch up. If you are building something early, keep this one close." - @brendaniribe
"If you're a founder, read this for what it actually feels like to build something through cycles that don't cooperate, with the giants circling and the market refusing to arrive on time. If you're an investor, read it for the reminder that the companies that endure rarely look like the ones we get excited about at the seed stage. And if you just want a good story about guys from Paris who, against the odds, built something patient and real, and then went home, that's here too." - @mattturck
"What a superb read! Alban recounts a story of success against all odds, how a small group of French engineers managed to beat all the tech giants in a highly technical field. This story of ingenuity and persistence, written in a sweet and funny way, will captivate and inspire most would-be entrepreneurs." - @Bliautaud
If you read it and like it, please let me know. This is my first book, I put a lot of work into it, and it will make my day.
Thank you to Cédric and PA, and the entire Sketchfab team - none of this story exists without you.
Special thanks to @brendaniribe, @Bliautaud, @cfaydi, Corentin, @mattturck, @MatthewEckert14, Mum & Dad, @plcorteel, @RenaudduPeloux, @sylvinus and Victoire for reading early drafts.
Available now on Amazon:
US shipping: amazon.com/dp/B0H58255CZ
FR shipping: amazon.fr/dp/B0H56BTX8C
Your local Amazon: relinks.me/B0H58255CZ
alban denoyel retweeted
When I was writing Unreal Engine 1, my time was divided as follows:
- Around 30% went to seriously deep coding on hard problems: assembly language texture mappers, C++ BSP trees, data persistence, object oriented systems design, and networking.
- Around 70% was just typing and refactoring large bodies of code needed for a complete engine feature set. This was not hard, and while I was doing it my mind was mostly on the deeper coding topics, thinking and planning for what's next. It didn't feel much different from vibe coding today, except that it was just me typing code on an IBM Model M keyboard rather than prompting it and reviewing the results.
So, it has always seemed perfectly logical that we would rely on AI for that 70%, once the AI could do it with a similar quality standard as we could, which has never been perfection. It came as no surprise that, after a few years of AI model evolution, it was able to take the reigns on that 70% and free up programmers' time for more valuable tasks.
What's more of a surprise is the emergence of AI as a sort of insta-Carmack able to solve hard technical problems quite cleverly and often cleanly, and that it's able to reason about and work in complex 3D scenes both by operating the tools and by directly understanding the raw data files.
I abandoned assembly language in 1998 when out-of-order CPUs made much simpler C/C++ code faster, and never I missed it. If prompting through architectural documents, concept art, and design plans can transcend typing code and tweaking vertices, that will enable developers to spend their time on higher-level, higher value technical and creative tasks.
What matters is the end product, whether it's a game or an engine. Anything developers can do to try out more ideas and make better software and games faster is a win for everyone.
alban denoyel retweeted
Underrated life advice: Be more enthusiastic. One of the most attractive traits is genuine enthusiasm. It's energizing to spend time around people who show real excitement for life. For people, ideas, and tiny moments. It takes courage to care so openly. Enthusiasm is contagious.
alban denoyel retweeted
Sometimes a demo is simply to remind the world that your competition has no desire to dream -- and no ability to evolve.
alban denoyel retweeted
Rebuilt the Roadster demo in a playable, highly accurate simulation that retains a lot of the IRL details:
tesla-ramp.vercel.app
alban denoyel retweeted
Should Europe leave frontier AI to the Americans and the Chinese?
The idea has gained ground in Europe. It is a fundamental mistake.
Build or surrender: for now, the choice is still ours.
Full article below.
alban denoyel retweeted
Believe it or not, people & companies are still using drive / box / dropbox to store / organize/ manage their 3D assets.
Solutions built for 2D, where you can’t even see an asset, let alone understand it.
If it’s you: you deserve something better.
Luckily, it’s coming.
My DMs are open 🤗
Tried with a couple of models, works great!
Thanks @pissang1 🙏
My WebGPU path tracer is open source! 🎉
Physically based rendering, running right in your browser. MIT licensed.
- WebGPU compute shader path tracing, with WebGL 2 fallback
- Two-level BVH built using parallel Web Workers, based on TinyBVH. A 4.6M-triangle scene's BVH builds in just 0.5s on my M4 Max
- Clean results from just a few samples with OIDN denoising
- OpenPBR 1.1 materials
- Physical camera with f-stop depth of field, AgX tone mapping, and bloom
- Drop-in Three.js scene synchronization
github.com/pissang/mutracer
I keep telling founder about #2.
Every week I receive intro requests from founders saying they are raising a round and would love an intro to my vc network.
There is very little chance that a vc who got introduced to you today will invest within a month.
Met @Bliautaud and @Jameswise 2 years before they invested. Met @mattturck 2 years before he invested.
It’s a different era. But time is the best due diligence.
Three pieces of fundraising advice I'm giving to founders right now.
There's a lot of talk about creating hype, but nothing can replace fundamentals. This is my sure-fire, straightforward and simple advice for pulling together a great round:
1. Hit a business milestone first.
Every company wants to hire more people and grow revenue. That isn't a reason on its own.
A good reason sounds like "we hit this milestone and we're ready for the next one." Something big enough has happened that it's worth telling people about.
When I backed @mateus_cr123 and @getenter_ai, they'd just signed their first large enterprise customer. Mateus also brought on two great co-founders, Henrique and Michael. They were ready to scale the enterprise motion. That was their compelling answer to "why now?"
2. Build relationships before you need the money.
Every investor wants to partner with a great company. Our problem is time and mental bandwidth. Founders who stand out take the time to educate us on why their company is the special one.
I got to know @alanjaimem for over a year before he raised for @Draftea_Mexico. In that time I saw how he thinks, communicates, and leads. By the time he was ready to raise, it was a straightforward yes.
3. Get smart people to understand and share your story.
Customers are some of the best people to do this. So are employees and others close to the company.
@Waymo is the best example I've seen. Long before we partnered with them, friends kept telling me about how much they loved their rides. Then I became a daily user.
When smart people understand the story and share it on their own, investors start hearing it from someone other than the founder.
That's the simplest way to create fundraising pull.
alban denoyel retweeted
Fortnite is coming to Linux!!
We are already working with the folks at @EpicGames to ensure that @Omarchy is ready on day one with all the security requirements.
Amazing what's possible when you nag @TimSweeneyEpic for years 😂
store.epicgames.com/news/epi…
alban denoyel retweeted
We vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher to be faster than the other guy.
Don't believe us? Test it out for yourself in Preview:
launcher.epicgames.com
alban denoyel retweeted
We just open-sourced an entire 3D team for Blender.
Introducing the Scenario plugin.
Use it inside Blender, or let Claude Code run it through MCP.
📁/scenario-plugin
┃
┣ 📁 Concept Artist
┃ ┣ 📁 Concept Art From a Prompt
┃ ┗ 📁 References From Your Viewport
┃
┣ 📁 3D Artist
┃ ┣ 📁 Meshes From Text or a Photo
┃ ┗ 📁 Retexture or Remesh the Selected Mesh
┃
┣ 📁 Animator
┃ ┣ 📁 Rig the Selected Character
┃ ┗ 📁 Motion From Text
┃
┣ 📁 Surfacing Artist
┃ ┣ 📁 PBR Materials Onto Any Slot
┃ ┗ 📁 Maps From a Photo
┃
┣ 📁 Layout Artist
┃ ┣ 📁 Greybox From a Description
┃ ┗ 📁 360 Worlds and Skies
┃
┣ 📁 Camera Operator
┃ ┣ 📁 Camera Path From a Sentence
┃ ┗ 📁 Orbits, Dollies, Cranes and Flyovers
┃
┣ 📁 Render Artist
┃ ┣ 📁 Viewport to Finished Still
┃ ┗ 📁 Playblast to Finished Shot
┃
┗ 📁 Sound Designer
┣ 📁 Music, Voice and SFX
┗ 📁 Dropped on Your Sequencer
Comment "BLENDER" and I'll send you the GitHub repo.
alban denoyel retweeted
We have a huge pivot underway here at Epic, moving developers around to retool for maximum AI acceleration.
The aim isn't to do the same stuff with fewer people, but to enable everyone here to build MORE and BETTER stuff, and to bring the benefits to all teams using Unreal.
alban denoyel retweeted
Announcing ZML/LLMD 20261009.0, with a focus on performance zml.ai/posts/llmd-20261009.0…
