A dedicated research and teaching facility at Loughborough University is committed to pushing the creative boundaries of animation, design and video production; and Apple’s high-end solutions are at the heart of the entire production and post-production process.

The Animation Academy, which is a research group that forms part of Loughborough University’s School of Art and Design, based at the University’s Leicestershire campus, is a sophisticated production facility dedicated to the moving image. The Academy undertakes teaching, research and project work, and uses Apple technology to achieve its various high-level ends.

Professor Paul Wells, Director of the Animation Academy, describes the ethos behind the institution: “It’s not about just getting ‘bums on seats’ — a sort of undergraduate factory. The idea is to create a hugely distinctive environment geared to R&D, to exploring the technologies of animation and how they could be used, to creating postgraduate opportunities, and also to exploring project development in relation to arts institutions and businesses”.

The Academy was funded via the Science Research Investment Fund (SRIF), whereby the Government is looking to invest in the infrastructure of scientific research in higher education.

Ben Dolman, IT technical tutor at Loughborough University says: “The School of Art and Design did have a previous relationship with Apple, but we’d only ever bought boxes from them before. When you’re dealing with £250,000 projects, you can’t say to the research boards ‘we’re going to buy x number of boxes’ — they’re not interested. They want you to investigate buying a complete solution”.

That’s exactly what Apple was able to provide with a cluster of 15 Power Mac G5 Quad workstations and an Xserve functioning as a render farm for 2D and 3D animation; a production studio based on four Power Mac G5 Quad machines with 30-inch Cinema HD Displays; a storage solution with multiple-user file sharing; a range of Apple pro software applications; and — the final piece of the jigsaw — the installation and configuration expertise of Apple Professional Services.

Dolman confirms the capacity for collaborative working was key to the deal. He says: “Other suppliers weren’t able to offer us a RAID solution within the research budget whereby, when we were doing post-production and video, we could take all the animation, put it through the Xsan and create an environment where researchers could work as a group. For example, we could have the editor, the person who did the modelling, the person who did the animation and the person who did the storyboard all connected and working together”.

The installation was achieved in two stages; the first part, in November 2005, saw the set up of the four post-production G5 studio workstations with Apple Fibre Channel PCI Express cards and NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512 video cards. Then came the process of connecting the Xsan server controllers and RAID to the four workstations in the post-production studio, which was completed by Apple Professional Services in the summer of 2006.

The 15 G5s and Xserve that comprise the render farm were set up by Dolman, who says: “I come from a fine arts background and used a computer for the first time only eight years ago. And yet, eight years on, I managed to put together a high-end render farm. I think that says a lot about Apple and its accessibility”.

This ease of operation is key to the entire endeavour at the Animation Academy. Dolman says: “We don’t do any inductions for students such as, ‘this is how you use a computer’ — we do ‘this is how you make a film, this is how you make a piece of music’. They’re not even looking at the computer, the emphasis is on the creative aspect and that’s only possible because we use the Mac”.