Optix: Cinematography Masterclass (AppID: 3791650)

Optix: Cinematography Workshop is a virtual workshop and sandpit that teaches you key concepts and techniques in lighting, camera, and composition. Play through 29 interactive lessons, design shots for clients in endless procedurally-generated scenarios, or experiment freely by building your own scenes from scratch!

Understanding exposure settings, lenses, framing, and core lighting concepts can be a very complex and overwhelming task for beginner and intermediate photo/video students, hobbyists, and professionals.

This is a big problem, as this understanding is absolutely essential to making meaningful creative decisions and conveying emotion and telling stories through visuals. Not to mention feeling comfortable and in control on-set.

Optix is an educational virtual workshop and sandpit where players can learn and practice lighting and camera concepts/techniques in a flexible, purpose-built environment.

Utilising a simple and intuitive design, alongside a suite of accessibility options, Optix is designed to be played by anyone, regardless of their experience in gaming and tech.

Optix is segmented into 3 game modes - each mode is designed to build off of the last one, as the player becomes more capable and knowledgeable.

Workshop Mode comprises of a series of guided interactive tutorial sessions that introduce and explore core concepts of photography and videography such as camera exposure settings, focal length, light quality (hard/soft light, diffusion), common lighting scenarios, etc.

These sessions allow the player to alter components in the scene via a simple interface and view the results in real-time.

This combination of freedom and real-time feedback bypass common issues that occur in in-person workshops as well as better utilise Multimedia Learning Theory principles to improve player comprehension and retention.

Scenario Mode reinforces the core concepts learnt in Workshop Mode by allowing the player to apply them and experiment with them in procedurally generated scenarios that resemble real-life photo/video industry situations.

In these scenarios, the player acts as a Director of Photography and is given instructions by a Director and/or Client.

The player is given more freedom than in Workshop Mode and can make their own creative decisions in a wide range of locations and settings.

Sandpit Mode is the Lego Bucket of Optix.

This Mode removes the controlled restrictions of the previous two modes, allowing the player to freely experiment with their newfound knowledge by crafting and customising their own settings, equipment, models, and scenarios.