Game Arts Option - 3D Digital Design BFA
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- Game Arts Option - 3D Digital Design BFA
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School of Design
Overview
The game arts option focuses on the creation of visual elements and assets for a wide range of game platforms. The option allows you to pursue creative interests in game arts, from designing virtual elements and lighting to animated characters and backgrounds. An innovative and adaptive curriculum prepares you for a career in the emergent fields associated with games culture while encouraging critical analysis of these fields through the dynamic general elective courses offered throughout RIT. This option is part of the 3D digital design BFA degree.
You will be exposed to the advanced technologies, interactive interfaces, and explorative processing necessary in game arts. You will explore 3D modeling, sculpting, lighting, materials, effects, real-time game engines, AR, VR, and XR, pre-visualization, and virtual production–a technique that blends visual effects, film, and game technologies, all with a tighter focus on game pipelines. While technologies constantly change, this option focuses on teaching lifelong skills of critical and design thinking and collaboration through a game arts focus.
In this option, you will have opportunities to regularly collaborate with game developers. This option complements RIT’s nationally recognized game design and development BS, ranked 4th nationally among Princeton Review’s “Top 50 Game Design Programs: Undergraduate Category” (2022), offered by the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences. MAGIC Spell Studios, the university’s state-of-the-art media production facility, is a creative hub where artists and programmers frequently work together on imaginative game projects, some of which have been published. MAGIC also invites students to engage in research to discover new possibilities in games and digital media.
You will graduate well positioned to pursue careers in the game arts industry. Alumni and faculty are the creative minds behind the environments, characters, and objects in games you know and love. Graduates have been hired by leading studios to work on games for all platforms. Hiring partners include Bethesda, Insomniac Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Workinman Interactive.
Invaluable Resources
Whether it's MAGIC Spell Studios or one of the many computer labs in the College of Art and Design, you will have access to professional-level 3D and animation software to build skills and execute projects. Further, the array of opportunities at RIT aligns with the game industry’s convergence of many different fields. Programs at the university are adaptive and prepare you for lifelong learning, creativity, critical thinking, and skills in future technologies such as VR/AR/MR and virtual production, the revolutionary filmmaking technique combining computer-generated graphics, 3D art, motion capture, and real-time rendering via game engines. RIT, with support from an Epic Games grant, built a virtual production curriculum that is driven by the use of large LED walls installed in MAGIC Spell Studios.
RIT is also positioned in a city with first-hand grounding in the history of games. The Strong National Museum of Play, the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of historical materials related to play, is located 15 minutes from campus in downtown Rochester. It holds didactic materials that can help you study and understand the origin of games, and their many forms, while you help create the future of the industry.
Industry Grade Facilities
RIT’s relationships with industry facilitate unique explorations for students. Game arts professionals are also invited to RIT to lead lectures, discussions, and demos that give you added perspective of the industry.
Join us for Fall 2023
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling, space-available basis.
Careers and Experiential Learning
Salary and Career Information for 3D Digital Design BFA
Cooperative Education and Internships
What’s different about an RIT education? It’s the career experience you gain by completing cooperative education and internships with top companies in every single industry. You’ll earn more than a degree. You’ll gain real-world career experience that sets you apart.
Co-ops and internships take your knowledge and turn it into know-how. Your art and design co-ops will provide hands-on experience that enables you to apply your artistic capabilities in dynamic professional settings while you make valuable connections between classwork and real-world applications.
Students in the game arts option are strongly encouraged to complete a cooperative education or internship experience.
Featured Work
3D Digital Design Reel
A compilation of student work from the last few years.
100 Hour Project - Bump my Ride
Philip Szrama, Gary Jacobs, Jennifer Indovina
The RIT 3D digital design program created a funky virtual car show for its 100 Hour Project, an annual community-building event that challenges teams of students to make an animation based on a prompt...
3D Character Design
Justine DeRuyck '22
Justine DeRuyck
Featured Profiles
Building a Virtual Production Curriculum
Supported by MegaGrant from Epic Games, MAGIC Spell Studios has brought groundbreaking research and filmmaking techniques to RIT.
Alumni Spotlight: Marty Pietras '17
As a 3D material artist for Sony, Pietras textures environments for PlayStation titles — including "The Last Of Us Part II."
Pre-College Portfolio Prep Workshop 2022
RIT's annual Pre-College Portfolio Preparation Workshop offers students an engaging and rewarding experience. The course, taught by our School of Art's drawing and painting faculty, is a visual arts...
Admissions and Financial Aid
This option is part of the 3D digital design BFA. Please visit the degree program page for admission requirements.
Financial Aid and Scholarships
100% of all incoming first-year and transfer students receive aid.
RIT’s personalized and comprehensive financial aid program includes scholarships, grants, loans, and campus employment programs. When all these are put to work, your actual cost may be much lower than the published estimated cost of attendance.
Learn more about financial aid and scholarships
Latest News
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January 19, 2023
Graduate works on 'Colossal Cave' project led by legendary game designers
Morgan Hamilton '22 (3D digital design) worked as a 3D environment artist for "Colossal Cave," a reimagining of a classic 1976 game. Industry legends Roberta and Ken Williams came out of retirement to lead the project.
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October 4, 2022
RIT welcomes prospective students for National Portfolio Day
RIT's College of Art and Design faculty, along with those at 25 other top art and design schools, reviewed students' portfolios as they prepared their artwork for the college admissions process.
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June 13, 2022
Marla Schweppe, former 3D digital design program chair, retires after nearly three decades at RIT
Since graduating its first four students in 2011, the 3D digital design program—one of the first of its kind in the country—flourished under the tutelage of Marla Schweppe, who retired in December after nearly 29 years at RIT’s College of Art and Design.