Innovating Creativity: Inside MetStudios’ Cutting-Edge Labs and Creative Space
By Nick Rodriguez, Dean of Games and Creative Technology at MetStudios
11 October 2024
As the Dean of Creative Technology at MetStudios, I’ve had the privilege of shaping our curriculum to ensure that our students are not only technically skilled but also able to think creatively and critically about the tools they use. I want to share some insights into the technologies and practices that form the backbone of our teaching approach, as well as how we replicate industry conditions to prepare our students for real-world challenges.
Technology in the Curriculum
We have chosen Unity and Unreal as the foundational engines for our curriculum because they are the most widely used, understood, and well-documented tools in the industry. Their philosophical differences are significant: Unreal is node-based, while Unity is object component-based, offering students a stark contrast in approach. These engines enable our students to develop skills across a broad spectrum of development styles, ensuring they are versatile and industry-ready.
In addition to the engines, we focus on the games art tool chain – the process of creating 3D characters, textures, and materials. While Blender is often favoured for its open-source nature, we primarily teach Maya, the industry-standard tool for games art. Our lab is equipped with cutting-edge software, including Houdini for procedural generation and Z-Brush for character development, ensuring that our students work with the same tools as industry professionals. We are using the top end of the market in terms of tool chains, and we remain committed to that. We really didn’t want anything that’s on the cusp of being consumer or a proxy for such. We want to use the industry standard, those professional tools.
We constantly review our technology offerings, updating them annually to reflect shifts in industry standards and preferences.
Facilities and Physical Craft
Games development is as much a physical practice as it is a digital one, and our campuses are designed to support both. While we have state-of-the-art digital labs with high-end graphics workstations and development tools, we also provide spaces for physical ideation and prototyping. Using materials like paper, card, Lego, and even Meccano, students are encouraged to develop their ideas away from the screen before they move into digital production.
The workshop spaces have been developed for physical design and artwork, for throwing paint around, drawing using clay, developing sculpting skills. It’s important that students develop fundamental traditional art skills alongside their digital skills.
This hands-on, tactile approach complements the digital tools. For instance, I don’t want students to spend their entire day in front of a computer. Games Art students need to experiment with various mediums to understand core concepts like colour and form. Mixing real pigments teaches you more about how colour behaves than any digital tool can. This balance between physical and digital creation helps students understand why art direction and traditional techniques are vital to their work as digital creators. It’s not just about the swanky machines – it’s about how those machines are used in a teaching environment.
Console Gaming and the Importance of History
Our facilities also include access to both current-gen consoles, like the PS5 and Xbox Series X, as well as legacy systems. Engaging with older gaming technologies is crucial because students need to understand where game mechanics originate from and how they have evolved over time. While many older games may seem unplayable by today’s standards, the DNA of modern gaming lies in those that remain. This historical perspective is essential for any designer.
It’s also important for our students to engage with non-digital games like Dungeons and Dragons, chess, and other folk games. These games are part of the ‘ludic diet’ every game designer should maintain to broaden their understanding of gameplay and mechanics across different mediums.
Play a lot of games. I tell students – and their parents – you’re not playing enough games. You’re probably playing one game too much, but you’d never turn up to an English Literature degree only having read Harry Potter.
At the end of the day, you need to understand who your audience is; you need to understand who you’re developing this game for. Most of what you do will be PC-based in the first couple of years of study, probably using the games engine on a PC, and deploying that into the PC infrastructure. We will then challenge you to make a mobile product, or a VR product. We will challenge you later on to make console products.
Prototyping and Ideation in Non-Machine-Based Learning
Much of the creative process begins away from the computer. Our design workshops encourage students to sketch out levels or gameplay ideas on paper before transitioning into digital environments. This speeds up the ideation process, allowing students to experiment and iterate quickly. The focus is not on polished concept art but on fast, effective communication of ideas. It’s this quick ideation process that helps students refine their concepts before moving into full digital production.
A ‘big idea’ has a much better chance of developing within collaborative space, open air spaces, physical spaces where those ideas can flow. Some students come in with very polished, precious ideas, and what they don’t realise is that you need to have thousands of those. All games, all projects start as terrible ideas that get polished into really cool things through constant questioning, process iteration and execution.
The Role of the Machine Lab
While the workshop space is for ideation, the machine lab is where execution happens. Here, students develop technical mastery, learning the skills they need to bring their ideas to life in a digital format. We replicate industry environments by having students create full games, facing the same challenges that professional developers do. Time management, collaboration, and problem-solving are essential skills that students develop as they progress through their projects.
Collaboration Across Disciplines
In 2025, MetStudios will launch its BA (Hons) Animation course, which will naturally overlap with our games curriculum. Both disciplines share tools like Maya, and students from both fields will benefit from the crossover in skill sets. Whether you’re animating characters for a game or for a film, the underlying principles – from anatomy to rigging – remain the same.
If you look at Netflix’s Love, Death and Robots, the vast majority of animation in that is made using the same tool chain as games do. There’s a massive amount of crossover in the kind of things you need to understand.
A 3D artist needs to understand anatomy, facial anatomy, and so on. A 3D animator needs to understand facial muscles, facial movement, anatomy, and creature movement, bipedal movement and quadruped movement. To create strange dragons with six legs and wings, you need to understand how they would move. These are skills that both disciplines need to develop.
Beyond Games: Opportunities in VFX and Virtual Production
The skills we teach extend far beyond the games industry. Tools like Unreal and Unity are now integral to film and VFX production, particularly in virtual production techniques. We built our games studio with a multidisciplinary approach in mind, and students often find opportunities in VFX, animation, and film production as a result of the broad tool chain we offer. The outcomes may be different, but the processes are very similar. At the heart of everything we do at MetStudios, those three disciplines of games, animation and VFX, are always the cornerstone of our thinking in terms of the facilities we offer.
Master your craft
At MetStudios, our goal is to prepare students for the real world by immersing them in both the technical and creative aspects of games development. From the tools they use to the way they engage with both digital and physical mediums, our students leave equipped with a deep understanding of their craft. The interdisciplinary nature of our curriculum ensures that they are not only prepared for the games industry but also for opportunities in film, animation, and beyond.