University of Hertfordshire

With its world-renowned and multi-award-winning programs in VFX, Games Design, and 3D and 2D Animation, the University of Hertfordshire has been supplying creative film and television studios with industry-ready talent for many years. In 2017, it took a quantum leap forward in on-site storage and rendering performance, and as a result, the work produced by its students raised the bar even higher, as its trophy cabinet can attest.

But the story begins about 10 years ago with the University of Hertfordshire's first render farm: decommissioned hardware from one of London's leading VFX facilities. "It was an old 32-bit farm that couldn't handle the newer software," explains David Tree, senior lecturer in the Digital Animation program and technical director of the Games and Visual Effects Research Lab. "We ran it for a while until we decommissioned it in 2011."

To present the case for a modern and robust storage and render farm solution and obtain the necessary funding from the university, the team had to demonstrate the impact a more powerful, locally available, and accessible farm would have on students' work and their overall experience. Their response was to take on the challenge of building their own farm.

The argument

"It was a 60-node farm built based on Pixar's Tractor. We ran Maya and rendered with Arnold, which was new and exciting at the time. The storage array was an old Mac Pro, crammed with as many hard drives as we could fit, and an old Switch."

After this solution had been in operation for several years and demonstrated its positive impact on the quality of student work, the University of Hertfordshire was ready to invest. At this point, David and the team approached Escape Technology for advice. "Most of our faculty members come from industry, and many of them were already familiar with Escape Technology and its reputation."

"One of the key points was the initial contact David had with you," continues Laith Shewayish, Digital Media and Credit Team Leader, "and the fact that you actually helped us put together our proposal. This isn't my area of expertise at all, and it really helped me understand what was going on."

More students, more power

By the end of 2017, Escape had successfully completed the University of Hertfordshire's tender process, won the contract, and was ready to begin installation. With the growing number of students and continuous performance improvements, the university needed a storage and render farm solution capable of handling 360 users who wanted to exert themselves as much as possible.

"We installed a Pixstor array," says David, "which provides 40 TB of storage for students' work. By comparison, we only had 12 TB before."

"Everyone has individual and team projects," says Alberto Marcis, Principal Technical Officer for Animation. "So we currently set up 100 GB of storage space per person, and then a group folder that normally has a limit of 200 GB. However, this limit depends on the type of project—it shifts up or down depending on what's realistically needed."

"One of the things Escape insisted on was that we needed redundancy in our storage," says David, "so now we have multiple host controllers and multiple connections between the server and the render farm."

With the introduction of larger memory, students at the University of Hertfordshire are now able to produce more complex films. The previous time limit of 20 minutes for rendering a single frame has now been increased to 45 minutes, and where students previously didn't necessarily trust the render farm and instead used their own machines, the queue is now consistently full.

Focus on industry and success

Deadline and Houdini have also become the tools of choice, chosen to align the course with industry needs. Continuous exchange with some of the industry's leading studios means the course provides students with in-depth training in the key tools they need for success in the real world.

"We're a Houdini-certified school, an Unreal Academic Partner, and, among a host of other awards, a team from our Visual Effects program won Visual Effects Film of the Year at Rookies last year. We now have seven students applying for every single spot," smiles David. "Even during the pandemic, we're seeing a consistent number of our students getting jobs when they leave."

Hidden benefits

However, the benefits of an on-site render farm go beyond the quality of the students' work. "One of the advantages of an on-site render farm is that we know exactly how much it costs," explains David, "so we can budget properly. Furthermore, it's a tangible, physical thing that we can show not only to prospective students, but also to university stakeholders who need to understand how their investment has been used."

"Another important factor is simplicity. Students only need to connect to a single server, and their stuff is there. We didn't want multiple boxes or storage tiers because we need to keep configuration to a minimum. So the students don't even notice it—the complexity is hidden, and it simply offers predictable performance. We've had no problems keeping it running, and it also runs on standardised hardware (in this case, Dell)."

As Escape provides the contracted service and support from June 2017 to June 2020 and then continues to this day, the relationship with the university has further strengthened. Laith considers this as important as the technology itself: "From my perspective, the most important thing is the connection with [Escape] directly. With other companies, there's sometimes a reluctance to reach out when there are problems, but with you, I don't sense that at all. We discuss things openly and frankly; having the trust to discuss things at this level is really important for the School of Creative Arts as a whole."

For further information about the University of Hertfordshire, please visit their website: www.herts.ac.uk

Any further questions? Contact us at sales@escape-technology.com or call 020 7734 8809.

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