Mazin Hamsters was Ganz's first foray into 3D — an interactive world where children could play and build their own unique hamster runs. The technical challenges were substantial: every asset needed to be precisely positioned within a rigid grid system (exact rotation and position) because users could connect every piece to every other piece in any configuration.
During performance profiling, Unity's IMGUI system was identified as a major bottleneck — impacting both developer workflows and runtime render performance. As part of a small team, I helped create a direct-to-device UI framework that corrected runtime performance and allowed designers' files to import directly into the engine, eliminating costly translation steps between design and implementation.
This UI work was the spark that ignited the next 13 years of my career building UI frameworks.