I recently attended the NVIDIA Omniverse training sessions, and this was the first time I took part in a series like this on a platform for 3D design collaboration and simulation. Thankfully, it was mainly targeted at beginners and non-technical folks. I, as a functional consultant, gleefully enjoyed each of them.
Beyond the cursory introduction session, there were sessions to show the in-depth capabilities of each of their applications, plus live demonstrations on their platform. They finally closed it with a fireside chat session amongst their experts across the world and discussed prominent aspects of Metaverse.
In one of the sessions, the tutor explained how to create a scene from scratch. It was about a car speeding up on the road with trees lined up on both sides. This scene gave me a good idea of how such sequences get created in movies and games. It looked like a canvas for me where an artist would bring out the creative side to liven it up with the help of technology! The tutor showed various ways of selecting the shades/lighting/car colour, and the other aspects were so mesmerizing for me. Once he felt that the car was ready to be moved to a highway, he added road texture, and when it was time to add trees on both sides of the road, he clicked on a button and added a couple of trees. He then said, “I understand that the length of the scene is big so let’s try to flood it with trees”. He hit the ‘Flood’ button, and I was left screaming when I saw the magic of trees lining up on both sides automatically!
In another scene, he was trying to put a car on fire. He showed different aspects of their PhysX (real-time Physics-based simulation) of lighting up an object. It made me wonder how one could think through various aspects of simulation, rendering, collaboration, and build such a simple platform for even a non-techie to try their hands on.
The tutor demonstrated how easy it was for people working on various tools to collaborate on a real-time basis, preview the scenes, modify, and finalize the scene quickly, which was equally exciting. These are indeed the essence of a platform – to be easy to use, help people collaborate, derive value from the offering, and provide an enhanced output.
Surely there could be other platforms that can be either on-par or more than what Omniverse has to offer, but for those uninitiated like me, it was a surreal experience. It made me move to a dreamy world momentarily, and I now long to get my hands on it to create my own canvas.
When I learned that one needs to have a high-end GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) laptop to try it out, I was left wondering how I could get one when my primary task is client interactions. Maybe one day, I will also be able to see it directly with my own eyes and paint my scenes! Till then, I will keep revisiting those sessions in my mind and marvel at the platform’s capabilities.
