New Academic Collaboration Puts Open 3D Engine in the Hands of Next-Generation Game Developers

Open 3D Foundation and Rochester Institute of Technology enable students to build their portfolios while learning from industry experts; Open 3D Engine gains traction as engine of choice for next generation

SAN FRANCISCO, June 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Open 3D Foundation (O3DF), home of a vibrant, diverse community focused on building a first-class, open source engine for real-time 3D development, today announced Project Eureka, an academic collaboration with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) that is underwriting a team of students and faculty to build a commercial game using the Open 3D Engine (O3DE).

Project Eureka is the first of its kind and will grow the library of O3DE assets for use by other aspiring creators; identify O3DE feature gaps from these student developers in real time; build a pipeline of talent for internships, mentorships and employment; and foster O3DE adoption among the next generation of developers, artists and content creators. Student teams competed for the opportunity to build a game they are passionate about using O3DE, significantly enhance their portfolios, learn from industry experts and hone their game development skills in an applied setting.

"O3DE is the only fully-featured, AAA, open source gaming engine, giving developers so many more options and much more freedom to build games creatively and exactly the way they want," said Aaron Nieboer, Adjunct Professor at Rochester Institute of Technology and Production Associate at Magic Spell Studios. "We're so happy to be able to offer this opportunity to our students and expect it to become a popular program that future students clamor to be a part of."

The 2023 Project Eureka team includes:

• Jack Kalina: Project Management/ProgrammingStudent
• Kenny Rossi: Level Design/Creative Lead
• Tyler Lynch: Programming
• AJ Biswas: Programming/Music
• Liam Alexiou: 3D Modeling
• Aidan Roberts: Programming/Audio

Student teams prepared a proposal and presentation for consideration by the grant review committee, and the committee then selected the winning team. Students will be supported by Open 3D Foundation Executive Director and longtime game developer Royal O'Brien, RIT faculty and industry experts from the O3DE community.

"RIT is a valued member of the Open 3D Foundation and the natural partner for this pilot academic program," said Royal O'Brien, General Manager of Digital Media and Games at the Linux Foundation & Executive Director of the Open 3D Foundation. "We know that when you put powerful tools in the hands of students they are empowered to innovate with new and fresh thinking. We also know that it creates a much-needed pipeline of amazing talent for game studios around the world. We couldn't be more excited to launch Project Eureka."

Work is underway now with a full summer of O3DE game development in store for the Project Eureka team. The proof of concept vertical slice with limited assets is due July 1, 2023, followed by alpha playable binaries throughout the summer and fall and final binary deliverable with all assets due December 31, 2023.

Anyone can follow along to see Project Eureka's progress by subscribing to the O3DE newsletter and following the project on Twitter and LinkedIn, including an interview with the team on [insert date].

About the Open 3D Engine Project

Open 3D Engine (O3DE) is the flagship project managed by the Open 3D Foundation (O3DF). The open source project is a modular, cross-platform 3D engine built to power anything from AAA games to cinema-quality 3D worlds to high-fidelity simulations. The code is hosted on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license. To learn more, please visit o3de.org. To get involved and connect with the O3DE community, please join us on Discord and GitHub.

About the Open 3D Foundation

Established in July 2021, the mission of the Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) is to make an open-source, fully-featured, high-fidelity, real-time 3D engine for building games and simulations, available to every industry. The Open 3D Foundation is home to the O3D Engine project. To learn more, please visit o3d.foundation.