Course summary

Prepare for a career in technical art in the visual effects and video games industry. Develop your skills to meet demand for roles including technical artist, procedural content creator and technical director. Our BA (Hons) Visual Effects will help you become an artist skilled in the latest procedural 3D techniques, who can work alongside programmers, developers and other artists. Using the latest procedural content creation software, you’ll learn to design and deploy solutions to problems encountered in the video games and visual effects industries. As well as exploring the key areas of working with VFX and computer graphics, our course will keep you up to date with the latest techniques and trends. We'll also help you identify the supporting skills and knowledge that you’ll need to succeed in the creative industries. ARU is the place to study Visual Effects. The East of England is a hub for games companies, including Jagex, Frontier Developments and Ninja Theory. As a Visual Effects student at ARU, you’ll be based in our studio in the heart of Cambridge. This allows us to work closely with employers, organising live briefs, guest lectures and work experience opportunities to give you exposure to professional studio practice, and the latest technologies and techniques. Working as a team is crucial to games development and so you’ll take part in collaborative projects with students from computer games courses, developing your skills in teamwork and project management. Throughout your Visual Effects degree, our expert staff are on hand to offer support and feedback. They’ll help you create an online presence to showcase your work. All our lecturers and staff are researchers and practitioners, and their work reflects current VFX practice. We also attend games jams, industry talks, conferences and festivals. They’re great places to make contacts in the gaming industry. State-of-the-art facilities All our Visual Effects students will:

• work in a computer lab with state-of-the-art workstation PCs

• use software and tools such as SideFX Houdini, Blender, Autodesk Maya, Unreal Engine 4, Pixologic ZBrush and Substance, increasing your career opportunities in the visual effects and games industries, as well as opening possibilities in other content-creation fields such as synthetic data, machine learning, XR, and architecture

• have opportunities to work with equipment including Wacom creative pen tablets to assist with digital painting and texturing; VR headsets; and a 16-camera motion capture system