Leaflet

Ringling makes it a policy to choose the same type of
Workstations used at feature animation studios and
high-end gaming companies, says Jim McCampbell,
Department Head of Computer Animation.
In the late ‘90s, McCampbell and Ringling’s Director
of Institutional Technology, Mahmoud Pegah, saw
those industries moving away from proprietary system-
based Workstations and servers and toward
industry-standard technology. Ringling joined the
movement. Pegah replaced the UNIX®-based
Workstations on-site when he arrived at Ringling
College with 86 architecture HP Workstations to
ensure the growing academic area would be able to
accommodate expanded advancements in 3D
animation technology as well as increased needs for
rendering. “Rendering is a compute intensive type of
application, and requires a cluster of high-
performance network computers and Workstations.
We looked at hardware from several different vendors
and concluded that HP was going to serve us best.”
The HP Workstations bought for the classroom eight
years ago eventually were assigned to Ringling
administrators. That’s typical at Ringling: Students get
the best gear, and they get plenty of it. Today, Ringling
Computer Animation labs are equipped with the most
advanced Workstations on campus–students in the
major can take advantage of about 150 HP xw9400s
with Dual-Core AMD Opteron 2218 processors¹ and a
rendering farm with about 350 nodes. “These
Workstations have been wonderful,” McCampbell
says. “The more that becomes possible, the more we
ask.”
The school boasts a computer-to-student ratio of 1:1 in
the classroom. Those facts hit home when prospective
students visit the school. ”They are blown away by the
quality of the technology they see in the labs. They
imagine themselves sitting in front of an HP xw9400
Workstation and creating superb work,” McCampbell
says.
Faster Workstations mean more creative opportunities
While technology helps Ringling recruit students,
McCampbell emphasizes that its real purpose is to
help faculty teach students to develop their talents, test
new ideas and be productive when they enter the job
market. “Recruiters appreciate that we have HP
Workstations because it makes for a much easier
transition for the students,” he adds. “They can move
right from one environment to the next, and they don’t
really notice a whole lot of difference.”
In fact, the HP xw9400 Workstations used by
aspiring19-year-old animators at Ringling are the same
models found at major animation studios. Whether
they’re college freshmen or seasoned veterans,
animators need reliable, fast technology to explore
their creativity and produce their best work, says
McCampbell. “The HP xw9400 Workstation provides
students with faster feedback on their work. Because
that feedback is faster, students have the opportunity to
take more creative chances and try different avenues.”
That fast feedback arrives even when students are
running multiple applications, including computer-
intensive software such as Maya, Shake, Painter,
BodyPaint 3D, RenderMan, Adobe® Photoshop®,
Premiere and Encore. “It’s not uncommon for students
to be running four or five different software packages
at the same time,” McCampbell says. “Sometimes
they’ll have two copies of Maya running
simultaneously, even though I don’t recommend it.
“Looking at our HP xw9400 Workstations
with Dual-Core AMD Opteron 2218
processors, some new faculty members
recently told me we have the best
equipped computer labs they’ve ever seen.
I’ve heard the same comments from
corporate recruiters.”
Mahmoud Pegah, Director of Institutional
Technology, Ringling College of Art and
Design, Sarasota, Fla.
2
HP recommends
Windows Vista
®
Business