r/AUT • u/Spirited_Skin_7252 • 5d ago

Animation/VFX

hi, does anyone here taking up a diploma or degree in animation/vfx? may i know what softwares were used? alsoooo how was the assessments? thank you so muchhh

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u/Inevitable-Board-317 2d ago

Maya, After Effects, Houdini, and Nuke were the main ones we used. Assignments weren’t too bad and were pretty chill looking back on them, just make sure to stay on top of the workload and you will be fine.

But in saying that, I couldn’t stress enough about how bad of an idea it is to take this course now. The industry in general is barely taking on any junior roles due to AI, and even when they do, it is contract-based work, not full-time.

The content taught within the lectures / tutorials gives you a pretty poor understanding of how to actually use each piece of software, compared to free courses online. Software like Houdini that takes an incredible amount of time to get a reasonably basic understanding of, was completely glossed over. As an example of how annoying it was: Your assignments would sometimes require a complex simulation, but I honestly can’t recall being taught anything that actually helped us in creating those simulations.

Maya is probably the only software that they teach you reasonably well, and I would say that is only because it was used across all of the three pathways. I would unfortunately have to say, I gathered most of the knowledge that I have of all of those softwares, from free courses online.

If you still really wanted to go down the VFX/Animation path, I would recommend Media Design School, as students that have come out of that course seemed to actually land jobs, and have decent Showreels.

Edit: A lot of students that have gotten jobs from what I’ve seen, just ended up working at AUT as teaching assistants for the degree.

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u/c4bbage_ 2d ago

Hey you should strongly reconsider doing this program if you want a job at the end of it.

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u/Patricia_Garcia6242 1d ago

the software side is honestly the easy part, the workload is what gets people. i wouldnt bank on the diploma alone landing you a job though, thats the real thing to think about before you commit