Students in digital animation, visual effects and virtual reality at. Drexel University's ... Westphal College of Media
Creative production’s new workforce is coming Students in digital animation, visual effects and virtual reality at Drexel University’s ACE-Lab can learn more creatively and quickly using advanced hardware and powerful graphics tools
Higher Education
Business needs The core goal of Drexel University’s ACE (Animation, Capture & Effects) Lab is to prepare students for work not only in media, entertainment and gaming, but also in other fields needing visualization skills — a mission requiring the support of powerful technology.
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United States
Solutions at a glance • Dell Precision 7000 Series workstations • Dell ProSupport
Business results • Enriches the student learning experience
• Facilitates creative risk-taking
• Offers studio-quality production tools
• Enables explorations of virtual reality and 360° video alternatives
60x
Helps students work about 60x faster
2x
Gains twice the price-performance over alternatives
24x7 “The price we got on the Dell Precisions was half that of comparable options, with 24x7 reliability thanks to Dell and Intel quality inside.” Jay Rappaport Assistant Dean, Information Technology and Facilities, Drexel University
When people talk about digital animation, special effects and video, most listeners assume it all involves media, entertainment or gaming — and odds are they’d usually be right. But that’s changing fast, according to Nick Jushchyshyn, program director for Animation and Visual Effects at Drexel University’s ACE (Animation, Capture & Effects) Lab. The ACE-Lab is part of the university’s Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, which offers degrees, including doctorates, in these disciplines. “We see a wide variety of industries using animation, virtual reality and 360° video to improve their communications, training and human interface design,” Jushchyshyn says. “So it’s not just entertainment hiring our grads.”
Keeping curriculum and technology up to date One of the top challenges for the lab is staying current with what’s happening in the working world that its roughly 500 students will eventually enter. To help, Jushchyshyn and about a dozen other full-time faculty keep their own skills sharp, and they invite working industy professionals to teach at the ACE-Lab in Philadelphia.
“Many students are surprised to see mainly PCs in our labs, but other systems can’t run the NVIDIA cards like the Dell Precision workstations can, with their powerful Intel Xeon processors.” Jay Rappaport Assistant Dean, Information Technology and Facilities, Drexel University
In addition, Jushchyshyn works closely with Jay Rappaport, Westphal College’s assistant dean of Information Technology and Facilities, to ensure the ACE-Lab’s technical infrastructure meets the demands of students and faculty alike. That includes 46 lab-based, Dell Precision 7000 Series tower workstations, all with NVIDIA GP100 graphics cards. “Many students are surprised to see mainly PCs in our labs, but other systems can’t run the NVIDIA cards like the Dell Precision workstations can, with their powerful Intel Xeon processors,” Rappaport says. “In fact, the Precision 7910s can run up to four of them.”
Working about 60x faster Jushchyshyn points out that the power of the Dell Precision workstations with the dual Intel® Xeon® processors and the NVIDIA GP100 graphic cards helps students get their work done much faster than before. “They can blaze through such processing-intensive tasks as ray-trace rendering and 360° video, which needs to combine 17 separate video streams,” he says. “What took 30 minutes to do with older technology now takes 30 seconds with Intel-powered Dell Precision workstations. Students can take more creative risks without having to wait a long time while a graphic idea gets rendered. And that’s not to mention just getting their work done much, much faster.” For Rappaport and his three-member IT team, the priceperformance of the Dell Precision workstations and their reliability set them apart from what they could find elsewhere. “The price we got on the Dell Precisions was half that of comparable options, with 24x7 reliability thanks to Dell and Intel quality inside,” he says. “And while problems are rare, our Dell ProSupport team is expert and responsive. They get things fixed fast and don’t waste our time.”
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“What took 30 minutes to do ... now takes 30 seconds with Intel-powered Dell Precision workstations. Students can take more creative risks.”
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Nick Jushchyshyn Program Director, Animation & Visual Effects, ACE-Lab, Drexel University
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Copyright © 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell, EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon,and Xeon inside are trademarks and registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. This case study is for informational purposes only. The contents and positions of staff mentioned in this case study were accurate at the point of publication, February 2018. Dell and EMC make no warranties — express or implied — in this case study. Part Number: H1699
