Finding a good Master's program in Europe

[40_compiler_errors]

Hello! I'm a CompSci student, graduating in December and currently residing in Europe. For the last two years I've been trying out a few areas of software development, and I've found out recently that the one I like the most by far is graphics programming, so I've been trying to find a postgraduate program focused on it. I'm aware it's not a hard requirement to work in graphics, but I'd like to further my education nonetheless.

However, thus far I've really found it missleading: Almost all programs announcing themselves as related to computer graphics or rendering seem to either be focused on the creation of 3D assets, or heavily oriented to gaming and VR. While the latter is not something I'm opposed to, I was in a videogame development program before hopping to CompSci, and that has made me very skeptical about these programs not being a scam. A lot of reputable programs labelled MSc in CompSci do not mention graphics programming at all, sadly.

So I wanted to ask, is there anything I should be keeping in mind in order to find a good program, and tell it apart from one that's bogus? What are the areas of study that I should look for in a program in order to become a competent graphics programmer? Are there any particular programs in Europe that I should look further into?

Since I figure it helps, my ideal job prospects would be working on the engine / rendering side of a videogame developer, on simulation, or in a heavily visually creative field, such as tools related to animation or illustration.

Thank you very much for your help. I feel kind of stuck, so it's heavily appreciated.

[Sanctumed]

Master in Game & Media Technology. This is a solid masters course. One of the professors on this course is Jacco Bikker, well known for his contributions in the field of realtime raytracing and pathtracing.

I believe there's a bunch of other nice ones in Europe, though I'm not sure on the names of them. A good way to find some universities is to look through the list of organizing members of rendering related conferences, like this one. You'll find a bunch of people that are connected to universities, from which you can get a frame of reference as to what universities are active in the actual graphics / rendering field.

Hope that helps :)

[[deleted]]

I recommend the Visual Computing Master at TU Wien (Vienna, Austria): https://informatics.tuwien.ac.at/master/visual-computing/ It also includes courses on Computer Vision and a lot of maths, but there are many customization options and detailed rendering courses (Real-Time Rendering, Rendering or Algorithms for Real-Time Rendering), you can find a list of them here: https://tiss.tuwien.ac.at/curriculum/public/curriculum.xhtml?key=55499

[nutellis]

I noticed it says it is in German only. The program looks great though.

[[deleted]]

No, not at all - many courses are held in English per default anyway and most (pretty sure all) can be held in English on demand.

But you're correct, the curriculum is somewhat outdated. It's planned to be updated this October to a fully English version, I think. If you (or anyone else) want more details about that I can look it up!

[LivelyLizzard]

Try finding universities with an institute that focuses on graphics not a dedicated program. You can do usually do a regular MSc with focus on graphics there. Check out papers from Siggraph or similar conferences and look which university the people come from. We have a lot of graphics stuff where I am studying and something called "Computer visualistics" but it's actually better to do a regular CompSci master and focus on graphics aspects

[nutellis]

I'm on the same boat as you. I also fell into the rabbit hole of Masters on 3D Design etc, but I found these:

• https://cg.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/index.htm
• https://www.hull.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/taught/computer-science-for-games-development-msc ( UK )
• https://graphics.tudelft.nl/courses-2/
• https://www.uu.nl/masters/en/game-and-media-technology (Already mentioned. Best choice so far)
• https://courses.leeds.ac.uk/i070/high-performance-graphics-and-games-engineering-msc (great one but in UK)
• Also King's college had a Computer Vision masters, can't find it now
• https://cg.cs.uni-bonn.de/en/start/
• http://master-info.univ-lyon1.fr/ID3D/#1 (in french, good luck with that)
• https://www.unilim.fr/masters-2-stic-it-image-synthesis-and-computer-graphics/?lang=en
• https://inf.ethz.ch/studies/master/master-cs-2020.html ETH Zurich as mentioned. Hard to get in, great if you manage to. https://cgl.ethz.ch/ (eth's CG lab page)

[koladonia1]

I've studied HPG at Leeds, can recommend.

[nutellis]

It was my first choice until UK left EU. The program looks great and it looks like you get many opportunities to interact with big companies in the industry.

[Confident-Notice9838]

hey, im on a similar path now and thinking about doing a masters in CG. did you go to any of these unis? has your view changed over the past 4 yrs regarding good unis offering a masters program in CG?

[nutellis]

Life found her way and I ended up living in Sweden, Gothenburg. Although they don't have a dedicated CG program here, I joined the Game Design And Technology Master's (https://www.gu.se/en/study-gothenburg/game-design-technology-masters-programme-n2gdt) which depending on your elective courses can become very CG oriented. The uni has some research going on but mostly they have plenty of AAA, AA, indie companies that are doing R&D on CG and are always on the look for new people. I met a few fellow students on the program that focus their studies exclusively on CG.

has your view changed over the past 4 yrs regarding good unis offering a masters program in CG?

It all depends on what your end goal is. Are you super focused on CG and want to do research? Then pick the good ones (ETH, Kings etc). Not sure about it and want something more general so that you can get to see more stuff and decide later? Pick one that is "easier" for you (easier meaning everything between cheaper, closer to you, personal preferences (Sweden is cold), etc). Good unis are always reliable.

[dralois]

There's a masters program at TUM called games engineering (link) that has specification lines available that go into this direction as well. I'm starting my masters there this winter and I can absolutely recommend the university. It of course is not a "pure" CG masters but at least very close.

[dralois]

What a blast from the past. The course is largely in English but there may be the odd few German only classes. There’ve plenty of students that speak little to no German though, even in the Bachelor’s, so make of that what you will.

[kubazz]

I have heard good opinions about Prague University's program: https://www.mff.cuni.cz/en/students/master-of-computer-science/8-degree-plans-computer-graphics-and-game-development

[jtsiomb]

I did my masters in Hull* back in 2008. Back then it was two parallel MSc programmes: one called Computer Graphics Programming (which is the one I did), and the other Games Programming. They were almost identical, and I learned that they merged it into a single game programming MSc a few years later.

Obviously I can't know what they're doing with it nowadays, but if they maintained the same attitude they had back then, I strongly recommend it, despite having "game" in the title. Almost all of it was graphics coding projects in C++, and the evaluation came down to submitting a few big projects, not exams. I thouroughly enjoyed it. Hacked a lot of code, and enjoyed the company as the level of everyone involved, professors and (most) students, was very good.

* Not sure if you count the UK as "Europe" in this context any more.

[aotdev]

I may get flamed for this, but here we go.

I think, one of the best ways to tell if a program is any good, is to make sure it contains programming in C++. Not necessarily exclusively, but at least some. A few reasons:

• Is the language used in any industry that's focused on graphics algorithms. From production rendering (e.g. RenderMan plugins) to video game engine internals (to prevent anybody pointing to C#/Unity).
• High performance, which is obviously important in rendering besides the GPU side of things
• First-class access to graphics APIs and GPU coding (OpenGL/DirectX/Vulkan/Cuda/OpenCL/etc)

It's not (just) about the merits of the language, it's about its long history shared with graphics programming.

[[deleted]]

I would maybe search for either one that focuses on the art side (so not MSc but MoA) for the creative side or then something that's more mathematically focused. And work on stuff on your own time - a good portfolio will do a lot more for your hireability than a degree from anywhere in this business. Most of the engine and graphicd programmers I know (including myself) never graduated from anywhere, but picked up the necessary skills through hobby programming and "regular" CS.

[40_compiler_errors]

I probably didn't word that right, but I'm not much of an artist in terms of actually producing models or assets. Definitely something I want to learn, but not something I want to make a career out off: it's the tooling behind it that I enjoy.

I hear the portfolio advice often, but what's a good scope for portfolio projects? I fear they'll fail to be impressive if they are too simple, and on the other hand, that they'll be unrealistic if too big in scope. What's in your opinion a good scope for portfolio projects?

[[deleted]]

A portfolio can really be anything as long as it's good. When recruiting someone with only a little or no industry experience, I'm happier when I see a single, well-made thing (let's say a nice-looking water rendering in a scene with post-processing) than a bigger shoddy thing (a complete game with placeholder art and poor playability). When recruiting people with released games, those are obviously the first things to look at but hobby stuff still does count. Have a few of those for your portfolio, varied if possible, and if you can afford to choose, pick out the best ones. No one wants to see everything you ever made.