Adam Oresten

Lead Technical Animator

Career Summary

I got into game development early in life, starting my journey by hacking games. I'd inspect their hex codes to export characters, props, and other assets, which I then converted, re-rigged, and imported into Garry's Mod. This early experimentation ignited my passion for game development, pushing me to pursue formal education in the field.

I went to New Zealand to study at Media Design School and earned my Bachelor of Creative Technologies. Over three years, I learned the fundamentals and workflows of game development from industry veterans. In my final year, I specialized in rigging, pipeline work, and tool scripting. After graduation, I joined Bohemia Interactive, where I helped establish animation tools, pipelines, rigs, engine solutions, and more. After nearly five years at the company, we launched DayZ with its 1.0 release.

Following the release of DayZ, I joined Rocksteady, where I was responsible for maintaining tools, rigs, and workflows in Motionbuilder. I also created asset and rigging tools used daily by several departments and set up character and gameplay asset rigs in 3ds Max, Motionbuilder, and Unreal Engine.

At Rocksteady, I was later promoted to Lead Technical Animator, not just because of my technical skills but also my strong interpersonal abilities; I helped foster a collaborative environment between the technical animation team and the content teams, ensuring smooth communication and coordination.

Work Experience

Lead Technical Animator

Rocksteady Studios

Feb 2024 - Present

Demonstrating leadership and initiative, I was later promoted to Lead Technical Animator. In this role, I led a team of 4 technical animators, fostering a collaborative environment and mentoring junior members to enhance their skills.

Senior Technical Animator

Rocksteady Studios

Jan 2023 - Feb 2024

I joined Rocksteady Studios as a Technical Animator, and was later promoted to a Senior Technical Animator. When I joined, I took over responsibility maintaining our Motionbuilder tools, where I delivered a number of tools and solutions to make our animators' life easier. Over the course of the project, I've rigged half a dozen hero-level characters, and several gameplay and cinematic assets.

Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League


Technologies used:

  • Python
  • Maya
  • Motionbuilder
  • 3ds Max
  • Houdini
  • Perforce
  • Unreal Engine 4

Technical Animator

Rocksteady Studios

Jun 2019 - Dec 2022

Technical Animator

Bohemia Interactive

Jan 2017 - Jun 2019

I joined Bohemia as a Junior Technical Animator, and I was promoted to Technical Animator halfway through my second year. During my time at Bohemia, I established animation pipelines, wrote scripts for multiple departments, created character and weapon rigs, cleaned up and organized vast amounts of motion capture data, collaborated closely with animation and engine programmers, audio departments, designers, and other animators.

DayZ

  • Created tools and defined pipelines for animation workflows
  • Created and maintained the player animation state machine and constantly refined its behavior
  • Worked closely with the DayZ team to define, create, and maintain the animation pipeline
  • Analyzed and developed solutions to aid animators and sound designers' workflows
  • Directed motion capture actors for a large array of animations
  • Collaborated with technical designers to develop animation tools
  • Documented in-house animation tools and systems
  • Created weapon rigs for a multitude of firearms
  • Researched cinematic workflows and animated characters for use in cinematic trailers
  • Created a large quantity of gameplay animations through motion capture data and keyframe animation

Vigor

  • Oversaw research and development for character implementations in engine
  • Rigged and implemented characters and weapons
  • Researched and created workflows for cinematic trailers

Project Lucie

  • Rigged and animated cutscenes

Technologies used:

  • Python
  • Motionbuilder
  • Maya
  • 3ds Max
  • Subversion
  • Unreal Engine 4

Junior Technical Animator

Bohemia Interactive

Sep 2015 - Jan 2017

Side Projects

Co-creator

Fantasy-Calendar

2017 - Present

During my free time, I like to play Dungeons & Dragons and take the role of the Dungeon Master, the creator and narrator. In order to make my worlds more immersive, I decided to start tracking time in the fantasy world, and that goal needed a system to support it. Over time, the project grew and gained more and more features, until it became a standalone service used by over ten thousand people worldwide.

I created it from scratch, and later on I brought on another person to help me with the back-end, while I kept to the front-end and the calendar code itself.

https://fantasy-calendar.com/

Technologies used:

  • JavaScript
  • HTML
  • SCSS
  • PHP
  • Laravel
  • MySQL
  • Git

Skills & Tools

Languages

  • Python (Proficient)
  • C# (Competent)
  • C++ (Beginner)

Software

  • Motionbuilder (Proficient)
  • 3ds Max (Proficient)
  • Maya (Competent)
  • Houdini (Competent)
  • Blender (Beginner)

Engines

  • Unreal Engine 4 (Proficient)
  • Unreal Engine 5 (Competent)
  • Unity (Competent)

Others

  • Git
  • Perforce
  • Subversion
  • Code Review
  • Agile
  • Photoshop
  • After Effects
  • JavaScript
  • HTML/CSS/SCSS

Education

  • Bachelor of Creative Technologies
    Media Design School
    2012 - 2015

Awards

  • Game of the Year Finalist
    In my final year, our team entered with our project Dungeon Town. We were one of four highly recommended games selected by the CGStudent Awards jury.
  • Top Student Award
    Media Design School
    I was presented with the prize for having the highest GPA of my year.

Language

  • Swedish (Native)
  • English (Fluent)

Interests

  • Dungeons & Dragons
  • Baking
  • Weightlifting
  • Warhammer 40k