Big Hardware Upgrade for Bucks Animation Resources

The New Lenovo Animation Workstation at Bucks!

As the Animation Courses at Bucks continue to grow, the University is keen to nurture our talented students and make sure they have the best kit to work on.

Working with out new IT partner, Lenovo, we are re-equipping our Animation Studios with high end ThinkStations.  These will be specified to meet the Autodesk requirements and will include dual screens to allow our students to experience a professional environment. We will now be able to set up poses on one screen and adjust curves on the other.  We can have a model on one screen and set up materials or edit UV's on the other screen. Any aspiring 3D Artist should consider a dual screen set up as it makes many processes far more efficient and enjoyable.

We are also setting up a dedicated Render Farm on a new local network specifically for the Animation courses!

Working with BlueGFX, we are setting up a Qube Network Rendering system.  This will allow us to handle much more complex simulations and animations by harnessing the power of all our Animation workstations to as one render farm.

Qube Rendering Systems being set up during the Summer

This will mean that instead of rendering files over several machines and re-assembling them to create an animation, you can send off a job before you leave Uni and it will join the rendering queue using all our resources.

The VizRT installation is in place and being tested.  We have the motion capture trackng cameras in our Green Screen Studio and the VizRT system hardware and vision mixers in the room next door. It's a complicated system so our team is undergoing training in a couple of weeks!

A typical VizRT Control Room

Keep watching the Blog for more updates!!

---- Dave