3D Design for Virtual Environments – (M.Sc.)

This will equip them to become skilled professionals in the 3D Design, Animation and Visual Effects industries.

This programme is oriented towards current industrial needs, technology and practice and provides students with the key skills required to develop both practical and theoretical proficiency in any specialist area of 3D animation.

The programme addresses the demand for visual designers with the creative vision and technical skills needed to support core design skills sets that exploit the animation and visualisation processes. Advanced skills in 3D are an obvious requirement to prepare students for the fields of animation, architecture, product design, industrial design and package design, as well as any design field where the 3D plays an important role in the profession. However, 3D is becoming increasingly important for students pursuing advertising design, communication design, graphic design, book design, typographic design, illustration and website design.

This course assumes no prior knowledge of 3D design, enabling students from other disciplines to take opportunity to add specialist 3D expertise in three dimensional modelling and animation, digital video production and digital media integration techniques to their existing skill set. Students will gain knowledge of the different production phases of a digital media project. Pre-production skills, such as planning, storyboarding and developing conceptualisation skills, production skills in 3D modelling, animation, lighting and rendering using advanced 3D applications such as 3DS Max and Maya, post-production skills in video editing, integration of 2D and 3D visuals and DVD production will all be covered.

Working in a predominantly digital environment, the student will also explore the relationships between the use of video and animation materials within digital video, multimedia and web publishing. This allows for the experimentation with interactive media types and techniques in order to enhance understanding, learning and product conceptualisation.

The creation of virtual worlds based on 3D models and integration with graphically-rich video sequences can be used within the user interface of visualisation presentations and the development of environments for games production. Within the Digital Portfolio Production Techniques module, students are given the opportunity to develop a DVD and web-based digital portfolio which is an essential element in successfully finding employment within the creative industries.