Michael Bitsakis

Founder & CEO, GDRS Studios · Technical Director / ML/AI Engineer at Devoted Studios

I founded GDRS in 2008 in Greece and have spent 17+ years building production technology — OpenGL real-time rendering, Houdini and Python pipeline tools at Pluto VR, Unity architecture for OxfordVR and Decentraland, and since 2022 technical direction and ML/AI engineering across 80+ co-dev engagements at Devoted Studios. Unity Certified Programmer. Published on 80.lv. Build technology that survives production — custom Unreal and Unity tooling, pipeline automation, and applied AI that ships to milestones, not demo reels. You work directly with me: honest scope, clear milestones, and handoff your team can maintain. B2B contracting only (milestone-based, NDA-friendly). Not open to full-time employment.

UnrealPythonEditor toolsPipelinesHoudiniTech artML/AIAutomationDeploymentUnityArchitectureVR/XRCo-devTech leadAAASecurityBug bountyHardening

Experience

Devoted Studios — Technical Director Internal Team — ML/AI Engineer

Aug 2023 – Present · Remote · Current

ML/AI training, testing, and deployment; web apps and frameworks; cybersecurity and penetration testing.

ML/AICybersecurityWeb AppsUnreal

Devoted Studios — Technical Director Internal Team

Apr 2023 – Present · Remote · Current

Project management, system architecture, pipelines, optimization, tools, and shaders.

ArchitecturePipelinesToolsUnreal

Devoted Studios — Technical Director · Tech Lead · TA

Nov 2022 – Present · Remote · Current

System architecture, pipeline design, optimization, and technical art tooling.

Tech LeadOptimizationShadersUnreal

iGoKartSimRacing — Software Engineer

Oct 2021 – Present · Greece · Current

Software engineering for sim-racing applications.

Software EngineeringUnreal

Decentraland — Unity Engineering Senior TA

Sep 2022 – Jan 2023 · Remote

Senior technical art and Unity engineering for the decentralized metaverse platform.

UnityMetaverse

OxfordVR — Lead Unity Engineer

Mar 2022 – Sep 2022 · Remote

Full architecture redesign for the GameChange medical VR application; onboarding, training, and tooling for junior and senior developers.

UnityArchitectureVRMedical

Individual Contractor — Contractor — Collaborations

Oct 2021 – Jan 2023 · Remote

Contractor lead Unity engineer/developer for OxfordVR and other collaborations.

UnityContracting

INDG | Grip — Technical Director

Aug 2021 – Sep 2021 · Remote

Technical direction for large-scale CGI and automated content generation pipelines.

Technical DirectorCGI

Pluto VR — Lead AR/VR Technical Artist

Feb 2018 – Apr 2021 · Seattle, US (remote)

Houdini procedural facial/body reconstruction, Python tools, Unity/Unreal branches, deep learning for face recognition, and AR/VR/XR applications.

AR/VRHoudiniDeep LearningUnity

Pluto VR — AR/VR Technical Artist

Sep 2015 – Apr 2021 · Seattle, US (remote)

Full programming and 3D workflow — procedural modelling, Houdini/Maya Python tools, Unity AR/VR/XR C# development.

AR/VRProceduralUnityPython

Instant Light PBR Renderer — OpenGL Programmer — Real-time

May 2015 – Jan 2021 · Remote

Lead 3D artist and render expert; OpenGL C++, PyOpenGL, Unity/Unreal branches; built the Instant Light real-time PBR renderer.

OpenGLReal-timePBRRendering

PixoLabs — Senior 3D Artist & Designer

Nov 2015 – Oct 2016 · Remote

Houdini procedural modelling, real-time tools, Unity/Python tooling; senior 3D work on Ubisim.

HoudiniUnity3D Art

Elance (Upwork) — Top Rated Level 11 Freelancer

Jan 2011 – Dec 2015 · Remote

Freelance 3D workflow — modelling, sculpting, rigging, animation, PBR materials, FSM coding, and QA.

Freelance3DPBR

GDRS Animation Studios — Software Developer

Jan 2008 – Nov 2012 · Greece

Software development — the foundation of GDRS Studios.

Software Development

Selected case studies

AI-assisted Unreal Editor tooling

GDRS Studios · AutoUpdatedCore UNREAL · Founder & lead engineer

  • Problem: Vendor artists lose hours doing repetitive Unreal tasks.
  • Solution: Created AI-assisted Unreal Python generation — plain-English prompts to production Editor scripts, saved to a team library, run locally via Ollama.
  • Result: Reduced tool creation from hours to minutes.

AAA co-development at scale

Devoted Studios · 80+ engagements · Technical Director · ML/AI Engineer

  • Problem: Concurrent AAA partnerships needed technical direction, pipeline fixes, and AI systems without slowing delivery.
  • Solution: Technical direction and hands-on ML/AI engineering across co-dev — tooling, shaders, pipelines, and production support.
  • Result: Unblocked teams, improved tooling, and consistent quality across 80+ studio and publisher clients.

Medical VR architecture

OxfordVR · GameChange · Lead Unity Engineer

  • Problem: Legacy Unity architecture blocked scale and onboarding of new engineers.
  • Solution: Full system redesign, developer tooling, and structured onboarding for junior and senior engineers.
  • Result: Production-ready GameChange SA — easier to extend, maintain, and ship.

Procedural game pipelines

80.lv · industry publication · Technical artist & engineer

  • Problem: Studios lacked practical paths to integrate Houdini into Unity production workflows.
  • Solution: Documented and demonstrated end-to-end Houdini-to-Unity pipeline integration.
  • Result: Published reference guide adopted by technical art teams worldwide.

Selected projects

OxfordVR GameChange

OxfordVR · 2022

Full system architecture redesign for the GameChange medical VR application; team onboarding, training, and developer tooling.

UnityVRArchitectureMedical

Instant Light PBR Renderer

Instant Light · 2016

Real-time PBR render engine built with OpenGL C++, PyOpenGL, and cross-engine Unity/Unreal integration.

OpenGLPBRReal-time

Pluto VR — AR/VR Platform

Pluto VR · 2015 – 2021

Procedural facial reconstruction, deep-learning face matching, and XR application tooling across Unity and Unreal.

AR/VRDeep LearningHoudini

Certifications

  • Practical Bug Bounty — TCM Security (Mar 2025)
  • Google Foundations in Cybersecurity — Google (Oct 2023)
  • Unity Certified Associate: Programmer — Unity (Nov 2021) · Expired Nov 2024
  • Official IQ Society Test Results — International High IQ Society (Mar 2021) · Cattell 135.2 · Stanford-Binet 123.47 · Wechsler 122
  • Using Databases with Python — University of Michigan (Apr 2019)
  • Using Python to Access Web Data — University of Michigan (Mar 2019)
  • Python Data Structures — University of Michigan (Feb 2019)
  • Deep Learning Fundamentals with Keras — IBM (May 2019)

Education

Full Stack Development — Computer Engineering

Athens University of Economics and Business · Apr 2022 – Present · In progress

Coding Factory full-time program — Java, C# .NET Core, Python, full-stack web development, UX/UI, CMS, SQL/MS SQL/MySQL, and Big Data.

PGP AI/ML — Artificial Intelligence

The University of Texas at Austin · 2021

AIML fundamentals, supervised & unsupervised learning, ensemble techniques, feature engineering, model tuning, neural networks, computer vision, NLP, statistical learning, recommendation systems, and model deployment.

MicroBachelors — Programming & Data Structures — Computer Science

New York University · 2020 – 2021

Introduction & Advanced C++ (100%), Introduction & Advanced Data Structures (99%, 95%).

Professional Certification — Game Development — Unreal Engine

Rochester Institute of Technology · 2020

Unreal Engine Professional Certification via edX — Unreal Foundations program.

iOS App Development Diploma — Computer Programming

Noble Desktop · 2020

3-month iOS app development bootcamp — Level 1 & Level 2.

Swift Stage 1 Qualification — Computer Science

Cambridge Certification Authority · 2020

Swift Level 1 — Swift syntax 5.0.

Publication

Using Houdini in Game Development Workflow

80.lv · 2016

How to implement Houdini procedural technology in a Unity-centric game pipeline — modelling, tools, and workflow integration.

https://80.lv/articles/using-houdini-in-game-development-workflow/

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