NVIDIA Omniverse – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

January 6, 2022

NVIDIA Omniverse is now Freely Available to Creators

In its bid to help creators and businesses connect NVIDIA launched the beta version of its Omniverse platform last year, offering early access to those interested in signing up. As part of CES 2022 this week, the company has announced that the platform is now freely accessible to creators with no sign ups required. Additionally, several new features are also available.

These new additions include Omniverse Nucleus Cloud, a feature that enables sharing of large Omniverse 3D scenes without transferring massive datasets so that clients can see changes made by creators in real-time. Then there’s Omniverse Machinima where users can remix and recreate their own videogame cinematics using free characters, objects and environments from titles such as Mechwarrior 5 and Shadow Warrior 3.

For those who require facial animations, there’s Omniverse Audio2Face. This is an: “AI-enabled app that instantly animates a 3D face with just an audio track,” states NVIDIA. Creators can then directly export to Epic Game’s MetaHuman Creator app.

“We are at the dawn of the next digital frontier. Interconnected 3D virtual worlds … with shops, homes, people, robots, factories, museums … will be built by an expanding number of creators, collaborating across the globe,” said Jeff Fisher, senior vice president of NVIDIA’s GeForce business at CES 2022. “This is the future of 3D content creation and how virtual worlds will be built.”

To help creators even further, 3D asset libraries like TurboSquid by Shutterstock, CGTrader, Sketchfab and Twinbru have all added support for the Omniverse ecosystem, all based on Universal Scene Description (USD) format.

“With this technology, content creators get more than just a fast renderer,” said Zhelong Xu, a digital artist and Omniverse Creator based in Shanghai. “NVIDIA Omniverse and RTX give artists a powerful platform with infinite possibilities.”

NVIDIA Omniverse is free to download for individual users and works with GeForce RTX graphics cards to enhance existing 3D workflows. For businesses, there’s Omniverse Enterprise, a subscription service with a 30-day free trial. For continued updates from NVIDIA, keep reading VRFocus.

August 11, 2021

NVIDIA Opens Omniverse Platform to Millions More Users With Blender Integration

NVIDIA’s virtual reality (VR) compatible, enterprise-ready collaboration tool NVIDIA Omniverse saw an early access launch last year after debuting back in 2017 at the company’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC). This week as part of SIGGRAPH 2021, NVIDIA has announced that the platform is expanding by adding new integrations with Blender and Adobe.

NVIDIA has revealed that since the arrival of its open beta in December, Omniverse has been downloaded by over 50,000 creators. These new integrations could open the platform up to millions of designers and artists who use Blender and Adobe software and wish to collaborate.

Blender is an open-source 3D animation tool used around the world and now gets Universal Scene Description (USD) support, enabling access to Omniverse’s production pipelines. On the Adobe side, the two companies are collaborating on a Substance 3D plugin, eventually opening Substance Material support to Omniverse. This will unlock new material editing abilities for users.

“NVIDIA Omniverse connects worlds by enabling the vision of the metaverse to become a reality,” said Richard Kerris, vice president of the Omniverse development platform at NVIDIA in a blog post. “With input from developers, partners and customers, we’re advancing this revolutionary platform so that everyone from individuals to large enterprises can work with others to build amazing virtual worlds that look, feel and behave just as the physical world does.”

“Lots of companies are, and have been, talking about the metaverse, but NVIDIA is one of the few that is actually delivering on its promise,” said Jon Peddie, noted author, consultant and founder of Jon Peddie Research. “NVIDIA brings a broader understanding of the needs of designers of all types and has many of the tools they can use — for free. The NVIDIA Omniverse platform has the potential to transform nearly every industry by making truly collaborative, creative innovation possible in a common virtual space for the first time.”

Designed for global and smaller enterprise customers, NVIDIA Omniverse is currently being evaluated by the likes of SHoP Architects, South Park and Lockheed Martin. Artists can use the platform to design buildings and create new products, viewing them in on a flatscreen or in VR.

Whilst NVIDIA Omniverse is currently in early access NVIDIA plans on officially launching it later this year on a subscription basis. For continued updates on Omniverse keep reading VRFocus.

April 12, 2021

NVIDIA Launches Omniverse Summer 2021, CloudXR Expands to Support iOS

NVIDIA’s GPU’s tend to be the most popular when it comes to PC virtual reality (VR) gaming but the company also supports the industry through a range of other initiatives. Today, as part of the company’s GTC 2021 conference CEO Jensen Huang announced the upcoming general availability of NVIDIA Omniverse as well as expanding CloudXR‘s support to Apple devices.

CloudXR was launched by NVIDIA last year to facilitate the streaming of immersive XR experiences over 5G and WiFi. With its latest version, CloudXR 2.1 adds support for iOS devices, streaming on Microsoft Azure as well as now being available through the AWS Marketplace.

“With the addition of iOS support within CloudXR, we can now deploy content in a platform-agnostic way, enabling us to expand capabilities for delivery and increase our ability to target content for end clients,” said Jason Powers, chief creative technologist at Brightline Interactive in a blog post. “From a developer perspective, porting apps from Android to iOS, especially for real-time rendered content, can be painstaking work. By utilizing CloudXR, we can quickly and easily add iOS as a target platform for our real-time networked augmented reality experience.”

With the continued improvements in streaming capabilities whether that’s thanks to WiFI 6 or 5G networks, both VR and augmented reality (AR) devices will greatly benefit from cloud computing, especially with more computing platforms support initiatives like CloudXR. Alongside iOS, CloudXR already supports PC headsets like HTC Vive, Android-based devices like Oculus Quest/Quest and Windows MR devices (HoloLens 2).

Back in 2017, NVIDIA revealed Project Holodeck, a physics-based collaboration tool for enterprise. NVIDIA Omniverse is the evolution of that project, enabling production teams to work together no matter where they are, even if they’re using different programs. The platform works thanks to the NVIDIA Omniverse Nucleus server, which manages the database, and NVIDIA Omniverse Connectors, compatible apps like Blender, Autodesk 3DS Max, Adobe Photoshop, Unreal Engine 4 and more.

“Every few decades, technologies converge to enable a whole new thing – Omniverse is such an invention,” said Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Building on NVIDIA’s entire body of work, Omniverse lets us create and simulate shared virtual 3D worlds that obey the laws of physics. The immediate applications of Omniverse are incredible, from connecting design teams for remote collaboration to simulating digital twins of factories and robots. The science-fiction metaverse is near.”

The NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise software will be available on a subscription basis this summer for small and large workgroups.

For continued updates from NVIDIA, keep reading VRFocus.