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Network Rendering I: What’s it all about? Rendering a realistic image of a 3D scene is one of the most stressful things you can ask a computer to do. For complicated scenes, this can take hours or even days of processor time, leaving a computer effectively useless until the render is complete. This is simply unacceptable for most CG artists - many of them resort to leaving their machines on overnight to finish renders...
Performance Machines All artists are most successful and creative when they have access to faster, more powerful computers. They can deliver completed projects sooner, and regain creative freedom because artistic experiments don't take up too much time...
Akai APC40 vs. Novation Launchpad - Review Maybe it's a sign of my impending decline into senility, but I still think of Ableton Live as a newcomer to the audio sequencer application party. Despite it celebrating its ten-year anniversary, I have managed...
Games development in education New college and university courses and talk of A-levels and GCSEs based on games development are hot topics at the moment. As games development and the integration of 3D animation in everyday life is growing exponentially, there's no greater time to let student imaginations run wild by letting them create and develop their own video games...
Recording and broadcasting lessons at St George's College St George’s were looking at expanding the reach of their lectures and wanted to find a way of recording and broadcasting their lessons to students at...
Google SketchUp: Conceptualisation and Pre-Visualisation at its best In a relatively short time, Google's SketchUp has seen its user base go from strength to strength with new users from all sorts of backgrounds encouraged to get into 3D by SketchUp's short learning curve and ease of use...
Budget rendering on an iMac Now, for the first time, Apple iMacs are available with 'quad-core' processors (Core i5 or Core i7, if you want to be pedantic). In the same way that multiple processors reduce render times, multiple cores on a single processor also share the computational load...
Creating impressive digital signage at St Paul's High School St Paul’s Catholic High School wanted to impress with a new digital signage system. We supplied them with all the knowledge, support and equipment they...
Using Extensis Portfolio to meet growing business needs The customer came to Jigsaw24 needing a storage solution to meet their growing business needs. Our consultants advised them that Apple Xserve RAID and Extensis Portfolio would give their business...
Make your own TV channel Educational Youtube-style projects are quickly becoming a popular way to incorporate creative technologies into curricular and extra-curricular activities, and it's easier than you may think to set up your own channel. There are many companies offering schools the equipment, platforms and training required to create a...
Bringing Rendering In-house: The Basic Options The most obvious option is to cut out the middle man and build your own dedicated render farm. However, if your performance requirements don't trump any misgivings you may have about the cost of a dedicated farm, it's not the only option you have...
Bringing Rendering In-House: Further Expansion – a Dedicated Resource As we have already said, many people exploit "quiet time" on their workstations for rendering; they submit frames for rendering either out-of-hours or opportunistically, and this is a great, cost-effective option...