As part of tech giant’s CES Special Address, company announced Blender enhancements that include Omniverse Launcher and Audio2Face, Audio2Gesture, and Audio2Emotion — generative AI tools that enable instant 3D character animation.
Today, at a special address at CES, NVIDIA announced new Omniverse AI-powered tools to reimagine 3D environments, simulations, and the metaverse for animators, creators, and developers. Based on the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework, the NVIDIA Omniverse platform is expanding with Blender enhancements, including a new suite of experimental generative AI tools for 3D artists. In addition to the new Blender AI add-ons, Ada Lovelace support, and free 3D USD assets for GeForce RTX users, NVIDIA announced that Omniverse will be preinstalled on NVIDIA Studio laptops.
The announcement was outlined on the NVIDIA blog today – here’s what’s new:
Blender’s new release, now available in the Omniverse Launcher, features a new panel for users to transfer shape real-time rigged characters. In addition, with a one-button operation from Omniverse Audio2Face — an AI-enabled tool that automatically generates realistic facial expressions from an audio file - challenges such as reattaching a rigged character’s head are solved.
Another new panel for scene optimization lets users create USD scenes within their multi-app 3D workflows more efficiently and in real-time. 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 have expanded to more communities of creative and technical professionals. With the introduction of NVIDIA Canvas, artists could seamlessly generate landscapes and iterate on them with simple brushstrokes and AI. Coming soon, all RTX users can download an update to Canvas that introduces 360 surround images to create and conceptualize panoramic environments and images. The AI ToyBox, which features extensions derived from NVIDIA Research, 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 favorite 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, is now available to system builders for preinstallation, enabling optimized, out-of-the-box experiences for 3D creators on NVIDIA Studio-validated laptops. The first laptops launching in 2023 with Omniverse Launcher preinstalled are the GIGABYTE and AORUS, expanding access to 3D content creators.
Watch “The Artists' Metaverse: Multi-Artist, Multi-Tool 3D Collaboration with NVIDIA Omniverse,” with NVIDIA Studio 3D creators Jeremy Lightcap; Edward McEvenue; Rafi Nizam; Jae Solina; Pekka Varis; Shangyu Wang; and Ashley Goldstein collaborate across multiple 3D design tools, time zones and RTX systems with Omniverse:
Early Release Coming Soon:
NVIDIA RTX Remix is a free modding platform built on Omniverse that enables modders to create and share #RTXON mods for classic games, each with full ray tracing, enhanced materials, NVIDIA DLSS 3, and NVIDIA Reflex.
Omniverse users can access thousands of new, free USD assets, including a USD-based NVIDIA RTX Winter World Minecraft experience. In addition, users can learn to create their own NVIDIA SimReady assets for complex simulation building. Using Omniverse, creators can supercharge their existing workflows using familiar tools such as Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, Blender, and Adobe Substance 3D Painter with AI, simulation tools, and real-time RTX-accelerated rendering.
The latest updates within Omniverse include:
- Early access to the Unity Omniverse Connector is now available.
- Blender alpha release, now available in the Omniverse Launcher, enables users to repair geometry, generate automatic UVs and decimate high-resolution CAD data to more usable 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. In addition, users can import the environments into 3D apps to test different settings and lighting.
- AI ToyBox of experimental tools, built by NVIDIA Research, includes GET3D, an Omniverse extension that generates trainable 3D models from 2D images. As a result, developers can use their datasets to create models for 3D virtual worlds. It is now available in the Omniverse Extension Manager.
- Thousands of new, free 3D assets are now available worldwide for users to build and create within Omniverse.
Watch the NVIDIA special address at CES.
Get more information on NVIDIA Omniverse for creators here.
Source: NVIDIA
Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.
