Games Animation, Modelling and Effects

Why study this course?

The BSc Games Animation, Modelling and Effects (GAME) degree course is an innovative undergraduate degree that will provide creative game artists with a number of core modules as well specific artistic skills to enable you to develop the specialist knowledge and skills needed by the games industry.

As an artist you will develop your computer graphics skills, both artistically and technically. You'll learn about subjects including modelling, rigging, animation, texturing, lights/cameras, visual effects (VFX) and rendering.

A number of core modules are provided as part of the degree to enable game artists and game programmers to work together and achieve common goals: such an approach is fundamental to the workflow within the games industry. In addition both groups will also work with each other using their specialist art/programming skills to design and produce joint collaborative games.

Successful completion of the course will prepare artists for a range of positions from concept, technical, texture and VFX artist to character/model builder, animator and graphic designer.

More about this course

Designed after research and consultation with computer games professionals and games industry body TIGA - www.tiga.org - this innovative degree will enable artists to develop their computer graphics skills, both artistically and technically - including modelling, rigging, animation, rendering, texturing, lights/cameras and visual effects (VFX).

Key skills covered on the course include

• Visual Effects (VFX) workflow

You’ll learn how to design and implement visual effects (VFX) in Houdini and Maya, how to composite VFX and 3D content in real life footage in NUKE and how to create procedural content in Houdini to be integrated in Unreal Engine.

• Character artist workflow

After studying human anatomy in great detail you’ll go on to design and model characters in Maya and sculpt characters in ZBrush. You’ll also create realistic clothing in Marvellous Designer and texture your character in Substance Painter and Substance Designer. Finally, you’ll learn how to rig your character in Maya to get it ready for animation.

• Environment/ hard-surface modeler workflow

This will see you design and create environmental assets in Maya, Zbrush and Houdini (such as buildings, furniture, weapons, tools etc.) You’ll then learn how to texture your assets in Substance Painter and Substance Designer.

• Animator workflow

You’ll learn the principles of animation on which all classic animation works are based. You will first learn how to design and create animations in 2D with Adobe Creative Cloud software, before progressing on to animating mechanical objects and characters in 3D with Maya. Additionally, you’ll learn how to export your animation and integrate them in Unity and Unreal Engine, and how to utilise them in order to create in-game cut-scenes. Finally, you’ll integrate your 3D animations with real life footage using NUKE.

• Game Designer / Level Designer workflow

You will study the principles of game and level design, and you’ll be working in teams with our Games Programming BSc students in order to design, project plan and implement your own games. You’ll learn how to optimise your game assets and design levels for games built with DirectX, Unity and Unreal Engine.

• Technical Artist workflow

You’ll be given the option to learn scripting in C# for Unity, MEL and Python for Maya. You will also have the opportunity to learn visual programming in Unreal Engine, the Bifrost graph editor in Maya and procedural asset generation in Houdini.

Course Modules

First year modules include:

Game Design
Digital Design and Image Making
Introduction to Drawing and Animation

Second year modules include:

Core - Modelling and Texturing
Digital Toy Design
Advanced 3D Modelling & Animation
Moving Image and VFX

Third year modules include:

Project
Advanced Scripting for Graphics and Games
Work Related Learning II
Games Asset Development
Visual Effects for Computer Graphics and Games