News by Topic: Games, Film, And Digital Media

MAGIC Spell Studios, RIT’s world-class digital media research and production facility, is bringing the latest in virtual production (VP) technology to RIT students. VP blends filmmaking, 3D graphics, computational photography, and real-time game engine rendering to produce in-camera visual effects similar to those seen in the groundbreaking work on Disney’s The Mandalorian and Marvel’s Avenger films.

While processing a box of donated items, Kirsten Feigel ’15 (museum studies), a cataloguer for Strong National Museum of Play, came across a rare piece of video game history—a demo of Super Mario Bros. 3 that was created in 1990 by id Software in an attempt to persuade Nintendo to partner with them to develop a version of the game for PC computers.

RIT’s MAGIC Spell Studios is partnering with Pure Imagination Studios, an award-winning independent entertainment studio best known for combining proprietary technology with groundbreaking storytelling, to launch a satellite office and spatial computing studio in Rochester.

RIT ranked No. 6 on the 2021 Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) College Rankings from Animation Career Review. RIT also ranked No. 3 on the east coast and No. 5 among private schools.

FuzeHub features RIT's MAGIC Center and talks to Jenn Hinton, associate director of the MAGIC Center.

W. Michelle Harris, an associate professor in RIT’s School of Interactive Games and Media, has had her piece In Their Wake, an interactive digital memorial to the forgotten Black people who developed Rochester, selected for the 67th Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition, the region’s longest-running juried exhibition. Harris is one of 28 members of the RIT community who had pieces selected for the exhibition.

RIT has again been recognized as one of the best national universities by U.S. News & World Report, which also cited the university as among the most innovative, best valued, and with highly regarded cooperative education and internship programs.

Shanti Thakur—who began her new role as director of RIT’s School of Film and Animation in the College of Art and Design earlier this month—is an award-winning fiction and documentary filmmaker who has taught for nearly two decades.

Two video games affiliated with RIT won awards at the 2021 Game Developers Conference virtual event in July.

Forbes talks to Richard DeMartino, the Albert J. Simone Endowed Chair for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and director of the Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Ben Garvey, a fourth-year applied arts and sciences major and co-owner of Great Lake Gaming.

RIT faculty-researchers will develop a game-design training system that could help astronauts maintain balance, motor skills, and other cognitive functions while in space. NASA, in partnership with the National Space Grant Foundation, has selected six university teams, including RIT, to develop innovative design ideas that will help NASA advance and execute its Moon to Mars exploration objectives.

RIT Dubai completed phase one of construction on its state-of-the-art new campus and began officially operating out of the new location in the Dubai Silicon Oasis earlier this semester. The new campus was built with an overarching theme of interactive learning and spans 129,000 square meters with collaborative teaching and research spaces designed to accommodate up to 4,000 students.