MSc Computer Animation and Visual Effects FAQ

These pages are intended for students intending to study the MSc Computer Animation and Visual Effects course. They provide information about what software we use, some reading and a general FAQ.

What will I Study?
What Software do you use?
Programming
Suggested Reading

What will I study?

Animation Software Development :- C++, OpenGL and Python programming with a focus on animation systems (MSc Only)

CGI Tools :- The main introduction to the tools we will use including Maya, Houdini, Renderman, Nuke (MSc Only)

Moving Image Theory :- Includes digital cinematography, Art Science and Technology, Animation principles, story-boarding life drawing (All Masters)

CGI Techniques :- A more in-depth look at the algorithms and techniques behind computer animation (MSc Only)

Personal Enquiry :- A research based unit allowing in depth research of an area of CG. (All Masters)

Group Project :- Student lead project (All Masters)

MSc Project :- The final Masters project including a Thesis

What Software do you Use?

We use a large number of products, some are free open source projects some are full commercial version of high end 3d applications. The following list shows the main software we have access to and gives links to certain free and Personal Learning Editions (PLE) versions.

Centos Linux : our main OS is a modified version of Ubuntu Linux, if you are unfamiliar with Linux it may be worth while installing and playing with Ubuntu. Most CG companies use Linux as their main OS as it has many advantages over Windows.

Maya : Maya is our main animation package, we are currently using version 8.5 and will be for the next academic year. You can download a PLE version which will allow you to get used to the software.

Houdini : Houdini is a very powerful procedural animation tool ideally suited to effects work. If you are used to maya or other animation packages it may seem a bit strange at first but it is incredibly powerful Houdini Apprentice is the free PLE version.

XSI : Softimage XSI is the main software package used by the MA3D course and most of the MSc time is spent trying to transfer data to an from other packages. It is also good for game development using the XSI Mod tool and windows XNA. There are a number PLE options on their website.

Renderman : We are lucky to have prman as one of our main renderers. However there are a number of free renderman renderers available, see the link for the options.

Massive : We are one of six Universities in the Europe to be Massive Educational Institutions. All students have access to the latest massive software and learning resources. See here to see what we have done so far.

We have much more software installed but the above represents our core software.

Programming.

Our main development language for the MSc is C++ using the GNU C++ compiler that come with Linux, we use Scons as our main build tool and OpenGL for real time visualisation.

We use the C++ Standard Template Library quite extensively and if you are unfamiliar with this you should look here for examples. An excellent free online book Thinking in C++ can be found here and is one of the main C++ books I recommend

Other Libraries we use are Boost. For Physics I have been investigating bullet. For general OpenGL applications we use SDL . For image loading and manipulation we use ImageMagick and ILM's OpenEXR.

For GUI development there are a number of frameworks available, wxWindows, FOX Toolkit and QT are all installed on the machines.

Nearly all applications we use now also support Python and this is our main scripting language.

Jon Macey Computer Animation Pages

MSc Computer Animation and Visual Effects FAQ

What will I study?

What Software do you Use?

Programming.

Suggested Reading