building

better

business

Jim McCampbell, head of the computer animation department, says fast workstations give students “more creative latitude.”

From algorithms

to animation

how one of the country’s top art-and-design colleges uses aMD opteron^™ processors to drive computer

animation students into the best jobs.

By Bill roBertS

STUDENTS AT RINGLING COLLEGE OF ART and Design, in Sarasota, Fla., take their art very seriously. As well they should, given that many have gone on to win Student Academy Awards for their computer animation skills.

John Ringling, who was a fine-art collector; real estate developer; and a founder, with his brother, of the Ringling circus, founded the school in 1931. However, there are no signs here of anything having to do with a circus. Consider this: The college’s computer animation program is ranked No. 1 in North America and No. 4 in the world by 3D World magazine.

The 1,200 student artists take their art seriously. The college is indisputably one of the preeminent art and design colleges,

with bachelor’s degrees in about 15 majors, and fertile ground for recruiters from Disney, Lucas Arts Entertainment, Pixar, DreamWorks, and other top studios—even the CIA.

State-of-the-art toolS The information technology infrastructure at Ringling College consists of enterprise-class technology resources including ultra-high-performance central storage, a high-bandwidth data network supporting 10-gigabit Ethernet technologies, AMD Opteron™ processor-based HP xw9400 workstations and applications for creating 3-D models. Computer animation majors, for example, use state-of-the-art workstations. Without enough processing power, even a

computer-animated short can take hours to render, and seniors are itching to complete their three-minute projects, graduate and move on to their careers.

“The students do not rely on hardware for their creative ability, but it lets them be more creative and pursue new directions,” says Jim McCampbell, head of the computer animation department, which has 360 students split between two majors: computer animation, and game art and design.

“The faster and more capable the hardware is, the more creative latitude the artist has,” says McCampbell, who understands a bit about hardware but, like his students, is an artist and not a techie. “If it’s faster, I can try a lot more creative ideas in a shorter span of time and therefore make a more creative product.”

photograph: Camille pyatte

44 june 2008 // AMD AccelerAte