Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/150396
t h e f i r s t personal display system to combine OLED display technology with head-tracking and stereo vision. Digital Media building in Atlanta to serve its roughly 2300 film, digital media, and performing arts students. "The use of these tools for the performance of absolute (abstract) animation is one of the unique ways we are beginning to experiment with the potential of real-time gesture capture in immersive 3D CG space," Scroggins notes. "We need facilities and specialized equipment to support them," says Peter Weishar, dean of Film, Digital Media, and Performing Arts at SCAD. When the new facility opens in September, SCAD will have four greenscreen stages, two mocap studios, three sound stages, two small screening rooms (in addition to its three large Grasping Input and Output screening venues with 650, 1250, and 1300 seats), two Foley stages, a recording studio, When it comes to learning 3D, the best place to two renderfarms, 37 high-end Avid video start is in the real world. In many schools, students editing systems, and two stop-motion stages. are encouraged, and even required, to "The variety Pratt Institute students benefit from hands-on study and replicate of specialized experience in the computer lab. tangible 3D objects equipment and before embarking facilities expose on an education and our students to career in modeling the complex and or animation. sophisticated techniques used At Pratt Institute, for at the highest example, students end of industry," gain the use of 3D Weishar explains. scanning and printing "Something like a devices to better motion-capture understand all the studio is not nuances of the a substitute three-dimensional for the basics. world. Pratt Institute offers degree Animation students must learn timing, drawing, concentrations in 3D Animation and Motion storyboarding, and movement, and Visual Arts, Emerging Arts, and Digital Imaging at Effects students must study light, texture, both the graduate and undergraduate levels. CG modeling, color, and film language." "Our 3D scanning and 3D printing technologies allow Emerging Arts students to fabricate enclosures for interactive devices, Animation students to develop tactile models, and our Imaging students to create objects ranging from plastic to bronze," explains Peter Patchen, chair of Pratt Institute's Department of Digital Arts. Full Facility In addition to 3D printing and scanning tools, Pratt Institute provides students access to greenscreen facilities, vinyl cutters, laser cutters, motion-capture collaboration with industry, and a scalable renderfarm. Similarly, the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is opening a new 65,000-square-foot Online Instruction Educators are increasingly teaching the basics through non-traditional methods. "In the area of technical instruction, we are beginning to enhance the classroom experience with online video tutorials captured with Camtasia," says CalArts' Scroggins, referring to Camtasia Studio, a video-capture program for Microsoft Windows that is published by TechSmith. "Students are able to review a lesson and take advantage of the ability to follow along with the active screen demonstration, scrubbing back and forth as may be desired when following a complex tutorial," Scroggins continues.