The hosts discuss an extensive overview of Houdini 21, highlighting its significant advancements across various departments. The software introduces major updates to KineFX animation tools, including a new motion mixer and animation catalog for more flexible character movement and reuse of assets. Copernicus, Houdini's environment for compositing, sees substantial enhancements with GPU-accelerated solvers for pyro effects and reaction diffusion, along with improved texture baking capabilities. Look development (Lookdev) is streamlined through Solaris and Karma, offering integrated workflows, OpenPBR support, and advanced rendering features like Gaussian Splats. Furthermore, VFX tools receive powerful updates in pyro and MPM-based destruction, alongside Machine Learning (ML) driven solutions for volume upres and surfacing, while terrain and modeling tools are redesigned for higher quality, faster performance, and simplified interfaces, especially in erosion.
This year's Visual Effects & Animation World Atlas offers a comprehensive overview of the global VFX and animation industry, expanding its scope to include animation studios and underrepresented regions for the first time. The Atlas tracks industry growth primarily through the global VFX and animation workforce, using publicly available data to provide insights into a sector marked by recent disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 Hollywood strikes, and the collapse of major companies like Technicolor. Beyond general trends, the Atlas examines regional data, hub cities, skill sets, and remote work patterns, highlighting both challenges and opportunities within various global markets like India, Europe, and the Americas, while also noting the impact of tax incentives and the rise of AI on the industry landscape. The hosts further explore company activities, including closures, openings, mergers, and acquisitions, and dedicates sections to talent trends, gender balance, and career shifts within the industry.
The hosts discuss a newly announced Chinese audiovisual interface standard called GPMI (General Purpose Media Interface), which aims to be an alternative to existing standards like HDMI and DisplayPort. On Reddit, users in the /r/hardware subreddit discuss the potential of GPMI, noting its impressive specifications for bandwidth (up to 192 Gbps) and power delivery (up to 480W), while also raising questions about its adoption, practicality, and competition with USB-C and Thunderbolt. The hosts provides further commentary on GPMI and broader discussions around display technology, DRM, and the entertainment industry. Additionally, the hosts discuss from Wikipedia and Pocket-lint offer basic definitions and highlight the potential of GPMI to outperform current interface technologies. Finally, they explore virtual production workflows and technologies, including the use of high-speed data transfer and powerful workstations, which could benefit from advanced display interfaces.
The hosts discuss Hunyuan3D 2.0, an advanced AI system developed by Tencent to generate high-resolution 3D assets from images. This system uses a two-step process involving a shape generation model (Hunyuan3D-DiT) and a texture synthesis model (Hunyuan3D-Paint). The hosts highlight the superior performance of Hunyuan3D 2.0 compared to existing methods in terms of geometry detail, texture quality and alignment with input images. They also mention Hunyuan3D-Studio, a user-friendly platform built around these models, and discuss the integration of Hunyuan3D 2.0 with ComfyUI through a dedicated node suite, allowing users to process 3D data within this environment.
The hosts discuss NVIDIA and University of Toronto's research on novel rendering techniques utilizing 3D Gaussian splatting. They introduce 3DGRT, a ray-tracing method for particle-based scenes, enabling advanced effects and handling distorted cameras more effectively than rasterization. To address 3DGRT's speed limitations, the creators of 3DGUT, which uses an unscented transform within a rasterization framework to also support distorted cameras and secondary rays. The 3dgrut GitHub repository offers the official implementations of both 3DGRT and 3DGUT, along with a hybrid approach called 3DGRUT, combining their strengths. The NVIDIA Toronto AI Lab page lists researchers and projects, highlighting their work in machine learning for computer graphics and mentioning the publications introducing 3DGRT and 3DGUT.
The hosts talk in detail about Epic Games' MetaHuman system, a toolset for creating and animating realistic digital humans within Unreal Engine 5. They explain how to use MetaHuman Creator to build custom characters, how to import and export them, and how to animate them using various techniques, including audio-driven animation. The hosts demonstrate the process of animating MetaHumans with audio files, bypassing the need for traditional motion capture. The overall focus is on streamlining the workflow for creating and implementing high-quality digital humans in game development and other projects.
The hosts discuss Unreal Engine 5.5's new experimental lighting feature, MegaLights. the hosts talk about MegaLights' capabilities, showcasing its ability to render thousands of dynamic, shadow-casting lights in real-time on current-generation consoles. They highlight the technology's impact on workflows and its potential to revolutionize 3D environments, while others provide technical explanations of its underlying mechanisms and limitations. The hosts also feature interviews with developers and artists who worked on MegaLights demos and offer insights into their experiences using this new tool. Finally, they talk about the offer of practical guidance on implementing and optimizing MegaLights within Unreal Engine projects.
The hosts provide an overview of realtime pathtracing and NVIDIA's advanced graphics technologies, focusing on how they enhance the visual fidelity and performance of video games. Finally, they first explore real-time path tracing in Unreal Engine 5, highlighting how this technology allows for more realistic lighting and shadows by simulating the way light interacts with the environment. The talk also describes NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Image Scaling, explaining how these techniques use AI and algorithms to improve image quality while maintaining high frame rates. Also they delves into the NVIDIA Image Scaling SDK, a tool that allows developers to integrate spatial upscaling into their games across various platforms. The hosts talk on Shader Execution Reordering (SER), an API that optimizes ray tracing performance by reordering shader execution.
The hosts primarily discuss Twinmotion and Unreal Engine, focusing on how they can be used for real-time visualization and virtual production in the architecture, film, and gaming industries. They emphasize the ease of use of Twinmotion for quickly creating and iterating on designs, while Unreal Engine allows for more advanced interactivity and customization. The hosts showcase various applications, including virtual scouting, stage planning, collaborative workflows, and exporting designs to LED walls for virtual production.
The hosts discuss 3D Gaussian Splatting, a technique for creating photorealistic 3D scenes using photographs or videos. This method differs from photogrammetry by creating a point cloud or radiance field instead of a traditional mesh. Advantages of 3D Gaussian Splatting include faster computation, smaller file sizes, and more predictable results. However, it is not as sophisticated as NeRFs, which use machine learning to create more detailed representations. The hosts explore various applications of 3D Gaussian Splatting, such as virtual production, virtual reality, and medical imaging. Furthermore, the sources cover research efforts to improve the technique, including optimization methods, training strategies, and hybrid approaches. The information suggests 3D Gaussian Splatting is a promising technique that could have a significant impact on various fields.
The hosts explore the rapidly evolving field of AI-powered 3D content creation. They describe various platforms and tools that utilize text prompts and images to generate realistic 3D models, textures, and animations. The platforms include Meshy, Luma AI's Genie, and MotionGPT, each offering unique features and capabilities for creating assets for gaming, design, and other applications. The talk also provides detailed instructions on using these platforms, highlighting their workflow, prompt guidelines, and limitations. They further discuss the potential of these technologies to revolutionize the 3D design industry by automating traditional processes and empowering artists and developers to create content faster and more efficiently.
The hosts discuss the real-time visual effects software EmberGen developed by JangaFX. The talk offers details about the features, functions, and capabilities of EmberGen, showcasing how it can be used to create realistic and stylized fire, smoke, and explosions. They also highlight EmberGen's ability to generate game-ready flipbooks and sprite sheets, making it a popular choice for game developers. Additionally, the hosts provide insights into the user interface, node list, and workflow of the software, offering tutorials and practical examples to guide users through the process of creating stunning visual effects.
DCC export automation and operators provide an automated workflow with Houdini's TOPs system, a powerful tool for automating and managing complex workflows. TOPs networks are comprised of nodes that generate "work items," which represent individual tasks or units of work. Work items can be static, meaning their properties are known ahead of time, or dynamic, meaning their properties are determined as the network runs. These networks are used to manage complex processing tasks such as rendering, simulation, and asset generation. Attributes can be used to control parameters of nodes within the network and to pass information between work items. PDG (Procedural Dependency Graph) is the overarching system that manages these workflows, allowing for parallelization, optimization, and efficient task execution. The talk also discusses various nodes within TOPs, including processors, schedulers, partitioners, mappers, and more. These nodes provide tools for generating work items, scheduling their execution, grouping them together, and establishing dependencies between them.
The adoption of SMPTE 2110, a suite of standards for sending digital media over IP networks, in various aspects of media production, including virtual production, live events, and research is crucial. The talk highlights the benefits of SMPTE 2110, including its ability to facilitate high-performance networks, reduce latency, and enhance flexibility in production workflows. However, we also acknowledge the challenges associated with SMPTE 2110, such as the need for specialized hardware and software and the lack of a fully unified control system. The talk explores specific implementations of SMPTE 2110 within Unreal Engine, Nvidia Rivermax, and other technologies, along with discussions of the evolving landscape of media production in the IP-based world.
Procedural Tools are a variety of rules and maths to model procedurally in 3D design software such as Blender and Houdini. We explore different aspects of procedural modeling, such as creating a procedural cabinet, building a snowman from a cube, generating a table with dishes and chairs, creating a building with windows and doors, and designing a race track with barriers. It also demonstrate how to use specific nodes and tools within these software programs to create intricate and detailed 3D models. Additionally, we discuss the benefits of using procedural modeling, such as creating variations of models quickly and efficiently.
GhostFrame or frame remapping, a technology that allows for the display of hidden content on LED screens. The Technology uses LED panels with extremely high processing power to interleave multiple video sources, enabling cameras to capture different images simultaneously while the human eye only sees one. Frame Remapping has numerous applications in virtual production, enhancing workflows by enabling hidden chromakey backgrounds, tracking patterns, and multiple video feeds. GhostFrame is also compatible with camera tracking systems like TrackMen, providing precise positioning for virtual set extensions. These features, combined with Frame Remapping's ability to work with normal frame rates in 4K and 8K formats, make it a game-changing technology for film, broadcast, and event production.
In this episode, we’re exploring ComfyUI – the Swiss Army knife for AI. This powerful, all-in-one tool is making waves in the AI community by simplifying complex workflows and offering a wide range of customizable features. Join us as we discuss how ComfyUI is transforming AI development, its versatility, and why it’s becoming the go-to solution for both beginners and experts alike in the AI space.
More information:
https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI
In this episode, we're taking a look at Virtual Production Fundamentals. This comprehensive guide offers valuable insights into the world of virtual production, covering essential techniques, workflows and technologies that are shaping the industry today. Whether you're a filmmaker, a VFX artist or just curious about the latest trends, this discussion is the essential way to navigate the future of digital filmmaking.
In this episode, we dive into the future of the virtual production industry, exploring a new report that forecasts the market to surpass $8 billion by 2030 with a rapid annual growth rate of 18.27%. Join us as we break down key insights from the report, including the rising adoption of virtual production in corporate and education sectors, and the transformative role of generative AI. We'll discuss both the opportunities and the ethical challenges this tech brings, and why embracing innovation will be essential to staying competitive in this fast-evolving space.
More information:
https://www.vu.network/state-of-virtual-production
Welcome to our podcast, where we dive into the world of Universal Scene Description, or USD, with your hosts! In this episode, we'll break down the essentials of USD, starting with the basics—what are stages, LOPS, and primitives? Then, we'll explore how developers can get started with OpenUSD, including where to find libraries and tools. We'll also take a deeper dive into USD's architecture and its role in production pipelines, and wrap up by discussing NVIDIA's major influence on the development of OpenUSD and its exciting applications in digital twins and simulations across industries.
This set of sources provides an overview of Universal Scene Description (USD), a 3D scene description format. The first source provides an introduction to USD basics, explaining concepts like stages, LOPS, and primitives. The second source explains how OpenUSD can be used by developers and provides a guide for getting started with OpenUSD, including links to download prebuilt libraries and tools. The third source provides more in-depth information about USD, including its architecture, how it can be used in a production pipeline, and its various features. The final source emphasizes NVIDIA's role in the development and use of OpenUSD, highlighting its applications in various industries, particularly digital twins and simulation. Together, these sources paint a comprehensive picture of USD, outlining its versatility, applications, and potential.
More information:
https://openusd.org/release/index.html
https://www.nvidia.com/de-de/omniverse/usd/