Proposed Curriculum for University RTVFX programs, and training here

General Discussion
, ,
#9

True, I don’t think an art school is going to teach advanced coding. Though, this curriculum could keep in mind three different program types. 1) Art school like CalArts, where they may not be technical staff. 2) University Game development programs like UCLA where there will be programming courses, but perhaps not gaming focused. and 3) Dedicated gaming colleges like Digipen where students could easily jump tracks and get some C sharp or python experience.

My aim for including programming is to prep the student to function in some ways as a tech artist. If they could pull off a data exporter from Max/Maya/Houdini, Parse and manipulate a text file, write a MelScrip/MaxScript to automate something, that is the objective. Whether it’s via a paired basic/advanced class, or just one course, etc… is open.

We don’t require vfx artists to dig into our game scripts, as some of our guys are not as technically savvy, and are more on the art side. But those who wield both artistry and tech tend to be quite deadly.

3 Likes
#10

Professor Leroy, teach me your ways! This is simply amazing. What format were you planning on publishing this in? It’s just the sort of thing that could live on a “Getting Started” page.

I’m in the same camp as @alimchaarani on developing the resources for VFX education primarily in our hands, similar to what Animation Mentor has done with the character animation discipline. It’s great for schools to be teaching this, perhaps even as a full-blown curriculum emphasis some day; and I have no doubt many of us will make careers teaching VFX at schools. Even so, it’s prudent to start empowering students directly. Online options can be implemented much more rapidly, and force-multiply our efforts to countless students in the long-run.

2 Likes
#11

Thanks! I was planning to release it as a simple pdf file. Didn’t really think of anything else. I’d like it to be as simple as possible. Just a repository of techniques and thoughts people could access at will. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#12

Along the lines of keeping a lot of this in our own and student’s hands :

I think @Freddy_Hoops mentioned something like this during the roundtable, but I overheard someone else as well discussing the online classes that they had made (for audio, not VFX), where they had some fairly complete downloadable courses, and these came with access to a Slack (or whatever) channel where he and other people taking the course hung out. It seemed like a pretty smart way to take the accessibility of online tutorials/classes and add a layer of guidance to it without the potential massive time sink of a traditional mentorship or online class.

Might be an interesting expansion on typical video courses/tutorials until something more formal could be cooked up.

#13

I’ve actually been working with Escape Studios (Game Art courses and degrees at Escape Studios) for the last couple of years, helping to develop the VFX component to their Game Art Masters degree and I’m currently in the process of rewriting the curriculum so this is all super helpful!

Here’s a break down what’s been taught the last two times:
Animated Materials - Everything from Panners to World Position Offset to Dot Product to Depth buffers - anything interesting and exciting you can do with a material. (1 Week)
Particles - Intro to Cascade, CPU/GPU/Mesh/Flipbook particles, Vector Fields etc. etc. (1 Week)
Blueprints - Proceedural Animation, Triggering, Logic, Variable Types etc. (1 Week)
RBD and Cloth Simulations (1 Week)
Sequencer, Looping Flipbooks with After Effects, Worked Examples (1 Week)
Project Week and Q&A (1 Week)

It’s a lot of content to get through in 6 weeks, and the students have just done 12 weeks of learning Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, Substance, Unreal etc. so they’re already pretty blitzed with new software and skills but so far it’s worked alright and produced some good student work.

Currently I’m in the process of converting the content into more worked examples and slowly increasing complexity which is harder said than done…

A lot of the ideas here (Houdini, Life Drawing, Programming etc.) would be great to include but there just isn’t time in the course sadly.

3 Likes
#14

I was working with a small group of underrepresented folks in South Africa to teach them tech art (in the form of vfx and shaders). My impression was that I was far too ambitious, having not taken into account just how much prerequisite knowledge is actually required (art fundamentals, some familiarity with a 3D package, a 2D package and general painting in PS, familiarity with a game engine, and some scripting given that we were typing out our shaders in Unity with the intent that the scripting experience would make them more tech-art-like).

I recorded the material in the form of video tutorials, so I thought I could just cram as much info in there as I could because they could just go back and re-watch the material. But I think I may have put too much in there, so that after only a couple of weeks they were getting pretty overwhelmed; and I only had a chunk of my time assigned to them (so I couldn’t just slow down and take longer to do things). Even preparing the video took way longer than I expected, and I left the experience pretty burnt out. Of the ~9 people who enrolled, only one person managed to finish the material, and only 2 others got half way through (so I’m pretty sure it was my fault rather than theirs). Two of those three were already had years of game industry experience under their belts too. I’ve since thought a lot about how much is “too much” to teach in a fixed period of time, and how I can cut down on things that I feel can be learnt on-the-job.

In particular, in my experience (at a mere 3-4 game studios, granted), I’ve felt that we’ve been willing to hire artists who have great art eyes and a good attitude, but with only basic familiarity with the tools and software, because we’re confident that those can be taught in a relatively short amount of time. In contrast, we’ve been hesitant to hire people who have intimate knowledge of the software, but who are poor artists, because the time it’d take to train that part up is unknown (but lengthy). It’s been my partial experience too, having had some 6 years of Unity mobile/indie experience, and still having been hired at Epic [edit: despite no Unreal experience]. (And while I do have a tech art background and wrote text-based Unity shaders for years, I’d never had to touch a vector field, work with flipbooks in AE, or even do a fluid sim!)

I really like the outline that @hadidjah and @Keyserito have so far, and I’ve been really impressed with what they’ve been able to do in their games with relatively simple tech, given strong art fundamentals. I’d think that a course that had a very significant focus on art fundamentals, teaching only just enough of the tech that their art can be implemented in a game engine, would be the bare minimum. Teaching scripting and making them more tech-art-like is a bonus, and is something they can develop further as an elective or on-the-job if they show interest.

5 Likes
#15

I think animation should be two classes worth, or at the very least have an entire class on the principles of animation. Timing is something I still struggle with, and is incredibly important in what we do, so I think it deserves just as much attention as hand drawing and even more than life drawing. Color theory and implementation in VFX should be in there somewhere as well.

This already has more content than my entire degree did though, so I think the list is awesome so far. Shoot, I’d go back to school just to learn half the stuff on this list

#16

Oh hey! This is near and dear to my heart since it wasn’t too long ago since I graduated (June 2015).

@hadidjah: That’s some great stuff! And yeah. An elective or a single class is probably the best most colleges will be able to do. Redoing a curriculum is tough business and can take a long time to develop and get approval. SCAD was working on redefining the Game Development curriculum while I was there and I remember it took a long time to finalize and get put on the books.

Looking back, there are a few things I would suggest:

1: Animation courses.

I didn’t think anything of it, especially since whenever I hear animation I thought characters and was very naive about it. By the time I figured I could do effects for games and learned that animation was much more, it was too late for me to add a course without adding to my ridiculous student debt.

2: VFX track.

We had a Visual Effects minor, but that didn’t cover everything I needed. If a college has a wide variety of courses that would be enough, they should consider an effects for games track.

3: Introductory VFX for games course.

Along with the track, there should definitely be a some sort of wide-reaching introductory course that exposes the student to all the possibilities of effects for games. Particle systems, shaders, animated sequences, etc. Nothing too technical. That way the following courses have some context for what the student would like to do.

I could probably ramble on for a while on my experiences, but I should get back to work :stuck_out_tongue:

#17

Holy potatoes, I love love love that so many of us are already working towards making RTVFX a more accessible career path. One thing that would be great for us to talk about is what skills should the candidate be equipped with at the end of the course. If we can (even loosely) align on that then we can better flesh out the curriculum, and understand how it could best be structured.

My suspicion is that we won’t need a four year course to get candidates to a hireable level. There is an ever growing need for more FX artists. It might be more efficient to see how effectively we can equip interested parties in a short time.

6 Likes
#18

I second what Elyaradine says. Hiring people that know the buttons but not the fundamentals of art and animation is not ideal. I would also rather get someone who has a great eye, and can draw and animate… and teach them the buttons. Any curriculum we put forward should definitely have art fundamentals up front. The program that I went to didn’t have us even touch a computer for the first semester. It was life drawing, traditional animation, history, etc… and I’ve always appreciated that approach.

1 Like
#19

That’s a good point @ShannonBerke. I had a similar thought. Instead of expecting a student to know everything, get them to a level that they are competent and then get stuck into production work where they will learn a ton anyway. At the same time the job will identify weaknesses which the new hire can improve on through self study (referring back to this amazing thread). Maybe that’s expecting too much.

What we’re getting into now is what do we expect from a reel. If it’s a junior role we’re looking for a strong foundation. I want to see 3 or 4 different vfx. Maybe a weapon effect, character effect, impacts and an explosion. I’m looking for a good sense of timing and weight. Strong design/readability. Preferably in context of a game. If the student reads through the curriculums listed here then she can also identify areas that need improving and can communicate that during an interview. I want to know that a candidate is aware of their own weaknesses.

1 Like
#20

I don’t know if this is helpful / a good way of organizing things, but since I love lists, I made more lists! Possibly a more consolidated version of the many many good ideas tumbling about this thread:

Skills Needed for an Entry-Level VFX Artist
What do you want to see in a reel?
Ways to Teach/Spread VFX
VFX Course Ideas

As the titles say, these are specifically for spitballing ideas - we can flesh out specific ones as they gain momentum, or people can start running with something and prototyping or whatever. Add stuff, comment, vote in favor of something or argue against it, whatever! (Just please don’t delete anything that isn’t your own.)
I’ll also try to keep them updated with stuff that comes up in this thread so that people don’t need to worry about double-posting if they don’t want to. Just… not right now, on my lunch break.

6 Likes
#21

Hey there :slight_smile:

I have been talking to SuAnne (The Chair of Game Developement) about it here at SCAD to try and add it to the curriculum here at SCAD!

I recommended what you said as well :slight_smile:

but there is also slight introductory VFX class (not required) but is part of the SCAD ITGM department which is the
Tech Art Class, which teaches you the basics and understanding of Particles and Shaders.

In addition to that the Visual Effects major is starting to implement the Unreal Engine into their curriculum :slight_smile:

Thank you again @Shadowist for guiding me down this path ^u^ :smiley:

#23

Wow I’m coming to this a little late. I can’t say how much i love this discussion. Here’s a working list of stuff that I was considering for a curriculum here:

This isn’t a complete list and I was going to have discussions with some educators to organize it. I’ve added some lists of coursework I was looking at as a template. I was planning on adding electives and focuses so take a look see. This is a new doc, and I’ve gutted it since having some discussions. I’d be curious to see what people think. The idea is to teach something approaching traditonal art and design then moving it to a RTVFX set. I was at the point where i was adding workshops and projects and got sidetracked.

I think that there are a lot of different ways to approach this but agree with the idea that having a great eye and working on creating an environment for critical thinking before working on the bells and whistles are essential to creating a great course. I’m still working on getting the list together but it seems there’s a lot of overlap here.

I was talking with @ShannonBerke about some of the importance of design and focal points. Basically saying if the effects aren’t good if they’re simple they won’t be great when you get to making realistic or higher frequency effects. I come from a traditional background so a lot of my opinions will lean toward design and form.

@hadidjah I love the break down in your drive folder. I need to break down my set more. I used to have a training set that I’d do with new hires, and it looked something like that. I heard Ringling might be adding an vfx coursework, but Im trying to get that confirmed.

This thread goes to show that there are a lot of ways to look at this. So excited.

8 Likes
#24

It is super cool to see that there are so many artists thinking about and even planning courses/programs for VFX. I see big potential for some collaboration in here (Ah, it’s already happening). :heart_eyes:

To add something to it; having an eye for what looks good and be able to analyse and see how to improve something is probably one thing that takes the longest time to learn, compared to learning softwares and techniques of creating VFX under guidance(?). That is something that perhaps should be tested to some degree when applying. Art fundamentals.

2 Likes
#25

Neat! So I’m making this post in two parts. My 1st part here is the result of simply reading the idea being proposed in the original post, that’s it. The 2nd part (in a second post) is to be my thoughts of this overall thread after I read the post in full up to, obviously, the post you see here.

So then…

1st part: So I am, in a way, the audience proposed. While I am not a school, I am a student who wishes to learn the light and dark arts of Realtime VFX (Evil Cackling goes here). I fairly recently-ish came out of a school that built its self a videogame creation based program. In fact, due to unique timing and circumstance, my input (as far as I know) helped them decide what they were going to do in their final videogame program, because I had those discussions. As such, I can tell you why they chose to move away from teaching real-time VFX in videogames at that time, which in turn may be why… [quote=“undertone, post:1, topic:1896, full:true”]
“There seems to be close to 0 programs that offer [any] programs that will put out students with the qualifications [you] are all looking for”.
[/quote]
So while I don’t know for certain the overall reason, this is what I got. I hope it helps.

So as I recall, the overall goal of the school I went to (and there for possibly others), was to teach a large swath of skills in a year - year three months time frame. While the timing may be VERY different for different schools, the jest of the overall goal is very likely to be the same. For a student to be hired by a studio, and in working at that studio, for nothing to be different compared to the school with in reason. To get it as close as to 1:1 as possible. Same workflow. Same (potential) hours. Same use of organization, check in check out programs. So on.

For my school, what they concluded (keeping in mind the overall goal,) was that to have any VFX in the curriculum would be too singular in focus. They decided to go for a more generalist approach, so that if someone wanted to go into something with more of a focus, they would have a solid foundation of base skills to draw from; yet they could still get a job in the industry. Modeling, animation, texturing, fairly basic node-based shader work. Very focused on environment art type stuff. Very focused on workflow and organization, particularly in the later classes. So if you would want to break in to those sorts of schools, you’ll have to show how learning VFX skills would be beneficial in other disciplines as well.

With that said, I have questions. Lots of questions. Here are some things that may be useful to consider.

Does the student you are proposing to teach already have a background in the basics of videogame creation? If so, what are those basics BEFORE we get to the VFX? Or is this curriculum going to be made with the notion that the person is absolutely clueless in any aspect videogame creation? Or to put it another way, with all due respect, could you teach your mother?

I get that in this thread it is proposed that those of us here at Realtime (who have actually worked in the industry,) can build a resource so that people that currently teach in art schools can have a educated, in-industry fall back to develop a curriculum. My question is how are you going to present that? Is RealTime going to have a wiki much like Polycount does? Is Realtime going to partner with a dedicated learning/teaching site? Or even with a school/foundational corporate backbone of a set of schools? If the lessons are hosted here, how is that going to be organized? How-or-what is going to be the method of teaching? Text? Video?

Or… why not both? I know. I too can internet. And how would all this be updated? If something is updated, do you remove the outdated stuff, or keep it as a monument to our sins? “This is how we used to do it in the old days! Something something uphill sideways!”

And of all this stuff to be formatted, what is the expected time frame of what you are to be teaching? Learned in a week? Two hours? Not every school teaches in the same time frame. Some schools give two hour classes twice a week, or in my experience, I did 25 class hours every week, plus an extra 8-11 hours on top of each day to work on whatever we had to work on. It should be kept in mind that how you allot your time for each subject, will very likely have an effect on whether a school can use it or not. Geez, I sound like I know what I’m talking about. Where did this come from? I guess it really depends how through you want to be with this idea.

The final thing I would like to point out… does everyone here remember what it was like to be a learner? Yes I know, the early days were nothing like it is now, that’s not what I mean. Yes I know, we are always learning, that’s not what I mean. I mean a new learner. Where even the basics can seem daunting. Can I do this? Why didn’t I go to Blah like my parents wanted to? Am I out of ramen? Heh heh.

It’s scary ya’ll. I mean… it’s exciting, I-can-hardly-wait-to-learn-when-do-we-start! Yet at the same time one can get filled with bemusement and awe where you go, “How in the world am I going to learn ALL this?” I’ll tell ya, the first time I ever opened Maya, for example, I literality had to catch my breath. SO MANY BUTTONS! → IN BUTTONS! → IN BUTTONS! Ugh! The question I remember from the earliest days is:

How am I going to learn all this?

(Of course I didn’t need to learn ALL the stuff Maya can do, but I didn’t know that then.) So as you are building your curriculum, try to recall what it was like when you learned the first time, if applicable.

Final final point, I swear this is the last one. I don’t yet have the clout, nor the know-how to say what I would put into a VFX curriculum if I was a teacher. What I can say through, is that my overall goal would be to teach how to think, not how to do. Don’t teach a recipe (How to make a fire effect in 9 easy steps!), teach a technique. It’s the students job to problem solve and use their inherent art skills of whatever they may be, it’s my, your, whoever is the teacher…es job to give the student the intellectual (is that the right word?) tools needed to problem solve.As a student, if I don’t know how to make a flip-book, for example, and that is a tool in your arsenal when you ask yourself “How am I going to make this”, then it may be something worth teaching as it is a tool that helps you in the problem solving process. Another quick example: I may be trying to use a card for an effect, when a ribbon or mesh based particle could be better. If I don’t know about it, I can’t draw from it. All this also includes, of course, teaching about efficiency and the drawbacks that can only be known by experience with a tool… so on. I can problem solve, I just don’t know what’s in the tool box. What are my options?

Whew.

Alright… I’ll be back for part two after I read the rest of this post.

1 Like
#26

2nd Part: I have to say, I like what I see. I am happy to see that some of the things I point out in my first post above, a number have thought of as well. I’m glad to be in such good company. :smiley:

So! Quick (comparatively) thoughts:

I like (as in reading it fills me with excitement the most) the curricular breakdown proposed by @Sirhaian in this post.

Why do I like this one the best? As proposed, it is not all raw data. Play is the fundamental way of teaching, and how this is layered out would allow for play. What I see with my limited knowledge is, essentially theory and follow through. For example:

In these cases you learn what you need to know,THEN you prove that you have learned it by doing, by making. That is what I see.

And yet… @Sirhaian out right mentions a step by step methodology, which I do not concur with. Different strokes.

The post also brings up a question for me; Is it even possible to have these ideas to be engine agnostic? I mean I suppose there is not much of a choice in the end, I’m just curious if that would be an issue when you get to the more advanced things? Not every school teaches the same engine… right?

I also liked @Elyaradine s,@undertone s reply & @Freddy_Hoops posts respectively. (Quick links: 1,2,3)

I bring these posts up as they are just Chock-O-Full of good details. Experience, ideas in teaching philosophy, so on. Which is not to say that all the other posts here suck, just that these are the ones that really jumped out at me. I mean well all! :kissing_heart:

All said, everything looks pretty good already. I - of course, get used to this… have a question. A number of the proposed curriculums mention drawing. Why? With this being so computer based, how does traditional paper and pencil drawing apply to Real-time VFX?

Honestly, with only a day or so in and already there is some pretty good stuff in here. I have to say, I’m feeln’ pretty giddy at the potential this thread already has.

2 Likes
#27

I think Hadidjah’s course list covers it quite well. A couple of extra things that would be handy…

-Crash course in performance/optimization

-Studying actual Fx examples in shipped games. Would be like breaking down a poem in English class…just a way to show them behind the curtains and get them thinking about how the whole effect is created.

2 Likes
#28

Really like this idea! It is a vital skill to develop early, as it opens up new ways to create effects on your own and might give you new tools, or new ways to use the tools you already know.

For the step by step, I forgot to mention that this would only be to create a rough effect. Then, the “student” should develop it further and try to improve it. It would be a starting point, not a destination. Think of it as someone starting a discussion and giving out the necessary facts and data for the student to be able to build on it through his own deduction capabilities. It also allows me to explain a few things that would be a bit more difficult without a solid practical example. :)[quote=“Mez, post:26, topic:1896”]
A number of the proposed curriculums mention drawing. Why? With this being so computer based, how does traditional paper and pencil drawing apply to Real-time VFX?
[/quote]

I think traditional drawing is very important when it comes to creating stylized effects. I don’t think it’s necessary to be a Michelangelo, but understanding the color theory, shapes language, etc, is very important, and I believe it can be applied to realistic effects too. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#29

About drawing and why its a part of a number of curriculum. I feel its the easiest way to get practice getting ideas from your head down onto paper, and also being critical about whatever you’re working on without any high commitment. There’s also the satisfaction of creating a document that can be viewed an reviewed to see progress. And its easy to carry around a small sketchbook and a pencil to just doodle. A lot of the issues that come up with any artistic thing is being able to visualize an idea, getting it to an external source, and then acting on it. At least that’s how I look at it, plus I find it relaxing.

5 Likes