PipelineFX, makers of Qube!™, the leading render farm management software for digital media creation, announced today that the Los Angeles Film School (LAFS) has selected Qube!™ to manage rendering for their fast-growing graphics and animation program.
“We have the equipment, facilities and teaching staff expertise to support complex student projects, ” says Bobby Milly, Computer Animation Program Director. “When I looked at adding render management to the school I was attracted to PipelineFX’s ‘Smart Farming’ concept and the ability to really maximize our computing resources including using every CPU core in our high-end workstations.” Applications currently used in the curriculum include Autodesk Maya, The Foundry’s Nuke and Adobe’s AfterEffects.
Since deploying PipelineFX’s Qube! render manager, LAFS students are now able to produce higher quality of work in a fraction of the time. “We needed a single, centralized render management system and Qube! was the answer,” added Johnathan Blair, Education Systems Administrator at L.A. Film School. “Rendering speed was the driving force behind adopting Qube!. By rendering on the aggregate computing power of many multi-core desktops students could render their work in minutes and see results much quicker.”
Part of Smart Farming is Qube!’s Dynamic Allocation technology. Dynamic Allocation loads the application, scene file and textures only once per job on a render node (or Qube! Worker), then the Qube! Supervisor dispatches a single frame. Once the frame is rendered the Worker asks for another frame, and rendering begin without the overhead of application startup and scene and texture transfer. Dynamic allocation automatically load balances a render farm, greatly reduces network traffic, enables jobs to be scaled up or down on the fly and provides the fastest overall throughput for 2D/3D rendering. Qube! includes dynamic allocation for renders submitted from Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk Maya®, and Autodesk XSI® and with version 6.2 slated to be released in April The Foundry’s NUKE™.
Currently the school is rendering on high-end Dell desktop workstations, utilizing Qube!’s floating Worker and Client licenses across all of their workstations. “Smart Farming™” reduces student project render times, allowing for an increase in the number of creative project iterations and increased project complexity and quality. Plans are in works for additionally providing a dedicated render farm.
"Since deploying PipelineFX’s Qube! render manager our students are able to produce a higher quality of work in a fraction of the time since it has been integrated into our render process,” said Damian Szeibert, Course Director of Demo Reel Creation. “Qube! is an absolute necessity for us!"
“The support has been amazing and that’s really key,” said Johnathan Blair. “We have classes around the clock and we can’t really put things on hold when there are issues. Quick turn-around expert support is really crucial and that’s what we’ve experienced working with PipelineFX.”
“We are so excited to be working with a amazing institution like the Los Angeles Film School here in Hollywood,” said Richard Lewis, CEO of PipelineFX. “They have cutting-edge courses, incredible facilities and a staff that understands the value of accelerating the creative iterative loop of design, render and review in their computer graphics education programs. L.A. Film School students now enjoy increased review and creative thinking time and can generate more iterations per project. This creates a better overall educational experience in graphics for film animation and visual effects.”
About The Los Angeles Film School
The Los Angeles Film School (LAFS) is an accredited college with a campus located in the heart of Hollywood that includes the historic RCA Building at 6363 Sunset Boulevard. The private, post-secondary degree-granting college, has quickly become a leading academic center for aspiring filmmakers, animators, game producers and recording engineers, and boasts Academy Awardâ and Grammyâ award winners and nominees alike.
Its campus is comprised of four buildings with over 250,000 square feet dedicated to labs, studios and theaters equipped with the latest technology including Avid, ProTools and Digidesign. Its production facilities have previously been used by legendary artists such as Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Henry Mancini and John Williams, who recorded the orchestral score to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi there in 1983. A highlight of its recent expansion is a new Hollywood set, which is a two-story, 3,000 square foot Victorian house in the main stage that utilizes age-old industry techniques such as green screen, painted backgrounds and a back-lit illuminated trans-light. The campus also includes the 8,000 square foot Ivar Theater, which has held many significant performances, including Lord Buckley, The Grateful Dead and The Doors.
In addition, The Hollywood Reporter named LAFS "One of the best-equipped private learning centers in the country."
For more information about LAFS, please visit www.lafilm.edu or call (323) 860-0789.
About Qube!™ and Smart Farming™
Qube! is an intelligent, mature and highly scalable render management solution that can be quickly integrated into any production workflow, and is backed by world-class technical support. Smart Farming delivers business intelligence to production pipelines by providing business-critical insight into the render pipeline, maximizing investment in rendering infrastructure and automating manual processes. Qube! works out of the box with all leading content creation applications including Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Autodesk Maya®, Autodesk XSI®, NUKE™, Shake®, Adobe® After Effects®, Pixar’s RenderMan®, DNA Research’s 3Delight, Eyeon® Digital Fusion™, Shotgun and many more. Qube! is truly cross-platform with all software components available on Windows®, Linux®, and Mac OS®X operating systems.
About PipelineFX
As the leading provider of intelligent render farm management solutions for digital content creation, PipelineFX provides software, support, consulting and training services worldwide. Over 500 customers across film and visual effects, post production, broadcast, design, games and education include BaseFX, BBC, Digital Domain, Electronic Arts, General Motors, Herman Miller, L.M.U., Laika Studios, Lockheed Martin, Method Studios, NBC, NHK, Pratt University, Procter & Gamble, Rainmaker Entertainment Inc., Reel FX, Smoke & Mirrors, South Park Studios, Starz Entertainment, Technicolor and Telemundo. PipelineFX is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, and has offices in Honolulu, San Diego, Portland, Austin, Las Vegas and Vancouver. www.Pipelinefx.com
