NVIDIA announces Omniverse updates

The NVIDIA Omniverse platform, which enables the development of metaverse applications, is expanding with Blender enhancements and a suite of experimental generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools for 3D artists.

Source: NVIDIA blog post. An animated character made of fabric-covered cubes and a woolly animated character face each other.
Source: NVIDIA blog post. Animated 3D graphics created using Omniverse.

At CES, NVIDIA announced the new features, as well as Omniverse preinstallation on NVIDIA Studio laptops and thousands of new, free Universal Scene Description (USD) assets to help accelerate adoption of 3D workflows.

A new release for Blender, now available in the Omniverse Launcher, is bringing 3D generative AI capabilities to Blender users. A new panel lets Blender users transfer shape keys and rigged characters easily. The challenge of reattaching a rigged character’s head can now be solved with a one-button operation from Omniverse Audio2Face — an AI-enabled tool that automatically generates realistic facial expressions from an audio file.

In addition, Audio2Face, Audio2Gesture and Audio2Emotion — generative AI tools that enable instant 3D character animation — are getting performance updates that make it easier for developers and creators to integrate into their current 3D pipelines. Creators can generate facial expressions from an audio file using Audio2Face; realistic emotions ranging from happy and excited to sad and regretful with Audio2Emotion; and realistic upper-body movement using Audio2Gesture.

AI-assisted creator tools are expanding to even more communities of creative and technical professionals. When NVIDIA Canvas was introduced, it empowered artists to seamlessly generate landscapes and iterate on them with simple brushstrokes and AI. RTX users will soon be able to download an update to Canvas that introduces 360-surround images to create and conceptualise panoramic environments. The AI ToyBox, which features extensions derived from NVIDIA Research, further enables creators to generate 3D meshes from 2D inputs.

“The demand for 3D skills is skyrocketing, but learning 3D can be pretty scary to some, and definitely time consuming,” said Jae Solina, aka JSFilmz. “But these new platform developments not only let creatives and technical professionals continue to work in their favourite 3D tools, but also supercharge their craft and even use AI to assist them in their workflows.”

Omniverse Launcher, the portal to download Omniverse content and reference applications, has also been made available to system builders so they can preinstall it, enabling optimised, out-of-the-box experiences for 3D creators on NVIDIA Studio-validated laptops. GIGABYTE and AORUS will offer the first laptops launching in 2023 with Omniverse Launcher preinstalled.

NVIDIA RTX Remix is a free modding platform, built on Omniverse, that enables modders to quickly create and share #RTXON mods for classic games, each with full ray tracing, enhanced materials, NVIDIA DLSS 3 and NVIDIA Reflex. Its release in early access is coming soon.

Omniverse users can also access thousands of new, free USD assets, including a USD-based NVIDIA RTX Winter World Minecraft experience, and learn to create their own NVIDIA SimReady assets for complex simulation building. Using Omniverse, creators can supercharge their existing workflows with AI, simulation tools and real-time RTX-accelerated rendering using familiar tools such as Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, Blender, Adobe Substance 3D Painter, and more.

The latest updates within Omniverse include:

- Early access for the Unity Omniverse Connector.

- The Blender alpha release, now available in the Omniverse Launcher, enables users to repair geometry, generate automatic UVs* and high-resolution CAD data to more useable polycounts.

- Audio2Face, Audio2Emotion and Audio2Gesture updates better enable instant, realistic animation of characters, now available in Omniverse Audio2Face and Omniverse Machinima.

- NVIDIA Canvas is coming soon to the Omniverse Launcher with new capabilities that enable the creation of 360-degree landscapes with simple brushstrokes. Users can import the environments into 3D apps to test different settings and lighting.

- AI ToyBox, experimental tools built by NVIDIA Research, is now available in the Omniverse Extension Manager. The tools include GET3D, an Omniverse extension that generates trainable 3D models from 2D images.

Explore

New, free 3D assets are now available worldwide for users to build and create within Omniverse. Creators can download NVIDIA Omniverse for free, submit their work to the NVIDIA Omniverse gallery, and find resources through forums, Medium, Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram and Discord. Tutorials are available on the Studio YouTube channel.

*UV refers to the two axes of a 2D model as X, Y, and Z are already in use to refer to the axes of a 3D model.

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