Posts in category: nVidia AI

In the lead-up to next month’s CES trade show in Las Vegas, NVIDIA will unveil its latest advancements in artificial intelligence — including generative AI — and a spectrum of other cutting-edge technologies.

Scheduled for Monday, Jan. 8, at 8 a.m. PT, the company’s special address will be publicly streamed. Save the date and plan to tune in to the virtual address, which will focus on consumer technologies and robotics, on NVIDIA’s website, YouTube or Twitch.

AI and NVIDIA technologies will be the focus of 14 conference sessions, including four at CES Digital Hollywood, “Reshaping Retail – AI Creating Opportunity,” “Robots at Work” and “Cracking the Smart Car.”

And throughout CES, NVIDIA’s story will be enriched by the presence of over 85 NVIDIA customers and partners.

• Consumer: AI, gaming and NVIDIA Studio announcements and demos with partners including Acer, ASUS, Dell, GIGABYTE, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Razer, Samsung, Zotac and more.
• Auto: Showcasing partnerships with leaders including Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Kia, Polestar, Luminar and Zoox.
• Robotics: Working alongside Dreame Innovation Technology, DriveU, Ecotron, Enchanted Tools, GluxKind, Hesai Technology, Leopard Imaging, Ninebot (Willand (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd.), Orbbec, QT Company, Unitree Robotics and Voyant Photonics.
• Enterprise: Collaborations with Accenture, Adobe, Altair, Ansys, AWS, Capgemini, Dassault Systems, Deloitte, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Siemens, Wipro and others.

For the investment community, NVIDIA will participate in a CES Virtual Fireside Chat hosted by J.P. Morgan on Tuesday, Jan. 9, at 8 a.m. PT. Listen to the live audio webcast at investor.nvidia.com.

Visit NVIDIA’s event web page for a complete list of sessions and a view of our extensive partner ecosystem at the show.

Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows.

NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 for realistic ray-traced visuals is now available on D5 Render, a real-time 3D creation software. The integration features DLSS Super Resolution, Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction powered by an AI neural network.

And this week’s In the NVIDIA Studio 3D artist Michael Gilmour shares his wondrous, intricate winter worlds in long-form videos.

His winter-themed creations join Arkadly Demchenko, Austin Smith and Maggie Shelton’s works in the latest Studio Standouts video, available on the NVIDIA Studio YouTube channel.

Also, tune in to the NVIDIA special address at CES on Jan. 8 at 8 a.m. PT for the latest and greatest on content creation, AI-related news and more.

DLSS 3.5 Accelerates Real-Time Rendering

D5 Render is a software designed for 3D designers and professionals working on large-scale architectural or landscaping projects.

Support for NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation in D5 Render enhances ray-tracing performance and boosts real-time viewport frame rates for a smoother editing experience, enabling intuitive, interactive 3D creation.

Ray Reconstruction, a new neural rendering AI model, further enhances ray-traced visual quality by providing intelligent denoising solutions for an extensive variety of content at quick speeds.

With both DLSS Frame Generation and Ray Reconstruction enabled, FPS in the viewport increases by a staggering 2.5x, enabling incredible resolution and visual quality in massive scenes.

Autodesk VRED, a professional digital prototyping software, also adds DLSS 3.5 support, bringing smoother viewport movement and higher graphical fidelity.

Winter Tinker

Gilmour, this week’s featured NVIDIA Studio artist, grew up in the beautiful winters of Appleton, Wisconsin. It’s no surprise he conjured up chillingly beautiful winter worlds to share with his friends, family and the creative community — fueled by his passion for 3D art.

Shared as long-form videos, these winter wonderlands showcase breathtakingly photorealistic details.

His winter video compilation — featuring “Campfire on a Winter Cliff,” “Dickensian Christmas Reading Nook” and “Northern Lights” — is designed to offer viewers a sense of peace and relaxation while encouraging self-reflection.

Gilmour began his creative workflows in Unreal Engine, building out the environments. He used the Ultra Dynamic Sky system plug-in by game developer Everett Gunther, which offered greater flexibility and more customization options to achieve the effects in this northern lights scene.

Fully built models are available in Unreal Engine, but to achieve further customization, Gilmour created custom 3D meshes in Blender. He used Blender Cycles’ NVIDIA RTX-accelerated OptiX ray tracing in the viewport for interactive, photorealistic rendering — all powered by his GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card.

“Originally, I chose an NVIDIA RTX GPU because of its CUDA core integration in Blender’s Cycles rendering engine,” said Gilmour. “Now with ray-tracing capabilities in Unreal Engine 5, it’s a no-brainer.”

He then acquired models in Quixel Megascans to block out the scene in Unreal Engine, creating a rough draft using simple, unpolished 3D shapes. This helped to keep base meshes clean, eliminating the need to create new ones in the next iteration.

To build the fire and glowing firewood in his “Campfire on a Winter Cliff” scene, Gilmour used the M5 VFX Vol 2 and Twinmotion Backyard Pack 2 packs from Unreal Engine. The NVIDIA PhysX SDK, advanced shader support and real-time ray tracing enabled high-fidelity, interactive visualization for swift viewport movement.

By upgrading to a GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU, Gilmour could use NVIDIA DLSS Frame Generation to further improve viewport interactivity by tapping AI to generate additional, high-quality frames, ensuring increased FPS rendered at lower resolution while retaining high-fidelity detail.

When finished building his scenes, Gilmour moved to Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve to color correct and add subtle film grains, lens distortion, lens reflection and glow effects. It was all GPU-accelerated, including the process of exporting final videos with the eighth-generation NVENC encoder.

The final touch to Gilmour’s wintry scenes were peaceful tunes, sampled from royalty-free music database Splice.

All that’s left to do is kick back, relax and soak in the scenery.

Check out Gilmour’s portfolio on ArtStation.

Follow NVIDIA Studio on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Access tutorials on the Studio YouTube channel and get updates directly in your inbox by subscribing to the Studio newsletter. 

This GFN Thursday is burning rubber with the latest Forza Horizon games from Microsoft Studios. Check them out on PC Game Pass.

Plus, give the gift of cloud gaming with the latest membership bundle, which includes a free, three-month PC Game Pass subscription with the purchase of a six-month GeForce NOW Ultimate membership.

It’s all part of an exciting week, with 13 new games joining the GeForce NOW library.

Zoom, Zoom

Jump into the driver’s seat in Forza Horizon 4 and Forza Horizon 5 from Playground Games and Microsoft Studios. Explore the critically acclaimed open-world racing games, featuring dynamic weather and seasons that can make or break even the most seasoned drivers.

Race across beautiful, historical Great Britain in Forza Horizon 4. Ride solo or team up online with players from around the globe in a shared, open world. Collect, modify and drive over 450 cars from the Horizon car roster — plus, race, stunt, create and explore to become a Horizon Superstar.

Clutch in, shift gears and head over to the vibrant open world of Mexico in Forza Horizon 5. Jump-start the week with limitless driving action in hundreds of the world’s greatest cars. Join a campaign with hundreds of challenges across varied terrains and climates, or head online for multiplayer action. Members can enjoy both titles in Steam and Forza Horizon 5 in PC Game Pass. Visit this Knowledgebase article for further details.

Stream every turn at GeForce quality on nearly any device and max out image resolution thanks to the cloud. Ultimate members can get in gear at up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second for the most realistic driving experience.

The Ultimate Adventure

Minecraft Dungeons from Mojang Studios and Xbox Game Studios is an immensely popular title that’s amassed over 25 million players and brings the thrill of classic dungeon crawlers to a whole new level.

Brave the dungeons alone or team up with a squad. Up to four players can battle together online or in couch co-op, making it a great game for group gatherings. Fight through action-packed, treasure-stuffed, wildly varied levels — all part of an epic quest to save the villagers and take down the evil Arch-Illager, preventing his army from controlling the Overworld.

Stream it on an Ultimate and Priority account for longer gaming sessions and faster access to GeForce RTX-powered servers. Venture forth across devices and play it on the big screen with NVIDIA SHIELD TV or on Samsung and LG smart TVs for the ultimate couch co-op experience.

Games, Games, Games

Time for some new games. Explore, discover and reunite the fantastical islands of Pagonia in Pioneers of Pagonia from Envision Entertainment. Build over 40 types of buildings, use more than 70 types of goods, manage widely branched production chains and get creative to establish a thriving economy.

Don’t miss the 13 newly supported games joining the GeForce NOW library this week:

• Stellaris Nexus (New release on Steam, Dec. 12)
• Tin Hearts (New release on Xbox, available PC Game Pass, Dec. 12)
• Pioneers of Pagonia (New release on Steam, Dec. 13)
• House Flipper 2 (New release on Steam, Dec. 14)
• Soulslinger: Envoy of Death (New release on Steam, Dec. 14)
• Escape the Backrooms (Steam)
• Flashback 2 (Steam)
• Forza Horizon 4 (Steam)
• Forza Horizon 5 (Steam, Xbox, and available on PC Game Pass)
• The Front (Steam)
• Minecraft Dungeons (Steam, Xbox and available on PC Game Pass)
• Primal Carnage: Extinction (Steam)
• Universe Sandbox (Steam)

What are you planning to play this weekend? Let us know on Twitter or in the comments below.

Dungeons & Drag– Racing

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) December 13, 2023

The Wild West had gunslingers, bank robberies and bounties — today’s digital frontier has identity theft, credit card fraud and chargebacks.

Cashing in on financial fraud has become a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise. And generative AI in the hands of fraudsters only promises to make this more profitable.

Credit card losses worldwide are expected to reach $43 billion by 2026, according to the Nilson Report.

Financial fraud is perpetrated in a growing number of ways, like harvesting hacked data from the dark web for credit card theft, using generative AI for phishing personal information, and laundering money between cryptocurrency, digital wallets and fiat currencies. Many other financial schemes are lurking in the digital underworld.

To keep up, financial services firms are wielding AI for fraud detection. That’s because many of these digital crimes need to be halted in their tracks in real time so that consumers and financial firms can stop losses right away.

So how is AI used for fraud detection?

AI for fraud detection uses multiple machine learning models to detect anomalies in customer behaviors and connections as well as patterns of accounts and behaviors that fit fraudulent characteristics.

Generative AI Can Be Tapped as Fraud Copilot

Much of financial services involves text and numbers. Generative AI and large language models (LLMs), capable of learning meaning and context, promise disruptive capabilities across industries with new levels of output and productivity. Financial services firms can harness generative AI to develop more intelligent and capable chatbots and improve fraud detection.

On the opposite side, bad actors can circumvent AI guardrails with crafty generative AI prompts to use it for fraud. And LLMs are delivering human-like writing, enabling fraudsters to draft more contextually relevant emails without typos and grammar mistakes. Many different tailored versions of phishing emails can be quickly created, making generative AI an excellent copilot for perpetrating scams. There are also a number of dark web tools like FraudGPT, which can exploit generative AI for cybercrimes.

Generative AI can be exploited for financial harm in voice authentication security measures as well. Some banks are using voice authentication to help authorize users. A banking customer’s voice can be cloned using deep fake technology if an attacker can obtain voice samples in an effort to breach such systems. The voice data can be gathered with spam phone calls that attempt to lure the call recipient into responding by voice.

Chatbot scams are such a problem that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission called out concerns for the use of LLMs and other technology to simulate human behavior for deep fake videos and voice clones applied in imposter scams and financial fraud.

How Is Generative AI Tackling Misuse and Fraud Detection? 

Fraud review has a powerful new tool. Workers handling manual fraud reviews can now be assisted with LLM-based assistants running RAG on the backend to tap into information from policy documents that can help expedite decision-making on whether cases are fraudulent, vastly accelerating the process.

LLMs are being adopted to predict the next transaction of a customer, which can help payments firms preemptively assess risks and block fraudulent transactions.

Generative AI also helps combat transaction fraud by improving accuracy, generating reports, reducing investigations and mitigating compliance risk.

Generating synthetic data is another important application of generative AI for fraud prevention. Synthetic data can improve the number of data records used to train fraud detection models and increase the variety and sophistication of examples to teach the AI to recognize the latest techniques employed by fraudsters.

NVIDIA offers tools to help enterprises embrace generative AI to build chatbots and virtual agents with a workflow that uses retrieval-augmented generation. RAG enables companies to use natural language prompts to access vast datasets for information retrieval.

Harnessing NVIDIA AI workflows can help accelerate building and deploying enterprise-grade capabilities to accurately produce responses for various use cases, using foundation models, the NVIDIA NeMo framework, NVIDIA Triton Inference Server and GPU-accelerated vector database to deploy RAG-powered chatbots.

There’s an industry focus on safety to ensure generative AI isn’t easily exploited for harm. NVIDIA released NeMo Guardrails to help ensure that intelligent applications powered by LLMs, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are accurate, appropriate, on topic and secure.

The open-source software is designed to help keep AI-powered applications from being exploited for fraud and other misuses.

What Are the Benefits of AI for Fraud Detection?

Fraud detection has been a challenge across banking, finance, retail and e-commerce.  Fraud doesn’t only hurt organizations financially, it can also do reputational harm.

It’s a headache for consumers, as well, when fraud models from financial services firms overreact and register false positives that shut down legitimate transactions.

So financial services sectors are developing more advanced models using more data to fortify themselves against losses financially and reputationally. They’re also aiming to reduce false positives in fraud detection for transactions to improve customer satisfaction and win greater share among merchants.

Financial Services Firms Embrace AI for Identity Verification

The financial services industry is developing AI for identity verification. AI-driven applications using deep learning with graph neural networks (GNNs), natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision can improve identity verification for know-your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, leading to improved regulatory compliance and reduced costs.

Computer vision analyzes photo documentation such as drivers licenses and passports to identify fakes. At the same time, NLP reads the documents to measure the veracity of the data on the documents as the AI analyzes them to look for fraudulent records.

Gains in KYC and AML requirements have massive regulatory and economic implications. Financial institutions, including banks, were fined nearly $5 billion for AML, breaching sanctions as well as failures in KYC systems in 2022, according to the Financial Times.

Harnessing Graph Neural Networks and NVIDIA GPUs 

GNNs have been embraced for their ability to reveal suspicious activity. They’re capable of looking at billions of records and identifying previously unknown patterns of activity to make correlations about whether an account has in the past sent a transaction to a suspicious account.

NVIDIA has an alliance with the Deep Graph Library team, as well as the PyTorch Geometric team, which provides a GNN framework containerized offering that includes the latest updates, NVIDIA RAPIDS libraries and more to help users stay up to date on cutting-edge techniques.

These GNN framework containers are NVIDIA-optimized and performance-tuned and tested to get the most out of NVIDIA GPUs.

With access to the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, developers can tap into NVIDIA RAPIDS, NVIDIA Triton Inference Server and the NVIDIA TensorRT software development kit to support enterprise deployments at scale.

Improving Anomaly Detection With GNNs

Fraudsters have sophisticated techniques and can learn ways to outmaneuver fraud detection systems. One way is by unleashing complex chains of transactions to avoid notice. This is where traditional rules-based systems can miss patterns and fail.

GNNs build on a concept of representation within the model of local structure and feature context. The information from the edge and node features is propagated with aggregation and message passing among neighboring nodes.

When GNNs run multiple layers of graph convolution, the final node states contain information from nodes multiple hops away. The larger receptive field of GNNs can track the more complex and longer transaction chains used by financial fraud perpetrators in attempts to obscure their tracks.

GNNs Enable Training Unsupervised or Self-Supervised 

Detecting financial fraud patterns at massive scale is challenged by the tens of terabytes of transaction data that needs to be analyzed in the blink of an eye and a relative lack of labeled data for real fraud activity needed to train models.

While GNNs can cast a wider detection net on fraud patterns, they can also train on an unsupervised or self-supervised task.

By using techniques such as Bootstrapped Graph Latents — a graph representation learning method — or link prediction with negative sampling, GNN developers can pretrain models without labels and fine-tune models with far fewer labels, producing strong graph representations. The output of this can be used for models like XGBoost, GNNs or techniques for clustering, offering better results when deployed for inference.

Tackling Model Explainability and Bias

GNNs also enable model explainability with a suite of tools. Explainable AI is an industry practice that enables organizations to use such tools and techniques to explain how AI models make decisions, allowing them to safeguard against bias.

Heterogeneous graph transformer and graph attention network, which are GNN models, enable attention mechanisms across each layer of the GNN, allowing developers to identify message paths that GNNs use to reach a final output.

Even without an attention mechanism, techniques such as GNNExplainer, PGExplainer and GraphMask have been suggested to explain GNN outputs.

Leading Financial Services Firms Embrace AI for Gains

• American Express: Improved fraud detection accuracy by 6% with deep learning models and used NVIDIA TensorRT on NVIDIA Triton Inference Server.

• BNY Mellon: Bank of New York Mellon improved fraud detection accuracy by 20% with federated learning. BNY built a collaborative fraud detection framework that runs Inpher’s secure multi-party computation, which safeguards third-party data on NVIDIA DGX systems.​

• PayPal: PayPal sought a new fraud detection system that could operate worldwide continuously to protect customer transactions from potential fraud​ in real time.​ The company delivered a new level of service, using NVIDIA GPU-powered inference to improve real-time fraud detection by 10% while lowering server capacity nearly 8x.
• Swedbank: Among Sweden’s largest banks, Swedbank trained NVIDIA GPU-driven generative adversarial networks to detect suspicious activities in efforts to stop fraud and money laundering, saving $150 million in a single year.

Learn how NVIDIA AI Enterprise addresses fraud detection at this webinar.

Zipline isn’t just some pie-in-the-sky drone startup.

The San Francisco-based company has completed more than 800,000 deliveries in seven countries since its start in 2011. It recently added services for Seattle’s Pagliacci Pizza, vitamin and supplement giant GNC, and large health systems like Intermountain Health, OhioHealth and Michigan Medicine.

Zipline developed its drones — which have now flown more than 55 million miles — for autonomous navigation and precision landings using the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI and robotics platform.

The fast-growing company recently landed $330 million in funding at a more than $4 billion valuation.

Zipline is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a program that provides startups with technological support and AI platform guidance.

Delivering With Jetson-Powered Fleets

The company’s P1 drone, or platform one, has been deployed in production for seven years and currently uses the Jetson Xavier NX system-on-module to process its sensor inputs. It’s guided by GPS, air traffic control communications, inertial measurement unit sensors and its onboard detection and avoidance system, with redundancy of guidance for safety.

“The NVIDIA Jetson module in the wing is part of what delivers our acoustic detection and avoidance system, so it allows us to listen for other aircraft in the airspace around us and plot trajectories that avoid any conflict,” said A.J. Frantz, navigation lead at Zipline.

The company’s fixed-wing drones can fly out more than 55 miles, at 70 miles per hour, for deliveries from one of several Zipline distribution centers and then return. Capable of hauling up to four pounds of cargo, they autonomously fly over delivery locations and release packages that float down to their destination by parachute.

The company’s P2, or platform two, is a hybrid drone that can fly fast on fixed-wing flights — but also hover. It can carry eight pounds of cargo for 10 miles and packs a droid that can be lowered on a tether to complete deliveries with precision placement. It’s intended for use in dense, urban environments.

The P2 uses two Jetson Orin NX modules. One is for the drone’s sensor fusion system to understand environments. The other is in the droid that descends by tether — for redundancy to provide added safety.

“The P2 droid is about bringing the smallest, quickest, safest, quietest drone in for delivery, coming down precisely and leaving the package — and then going back up,” said Joseph Mardall, head of engineering at Zipline. “We want to integrate into people’s lives in a way that they love and that feels magical.”

Zipline completes one delivery every 70 seconds globally.

Flying Away With a Roster of Customers

Zipline’s service offers advantages that are attracting customers. Its drones, fondly nicknamed ‘Zips,’ are capable of 7x faster delivery times compared with vehicle deliveries, according to the company.

“Our aircraft fly at 70 miles per hour, as the crow flies, so no traffic, no waiting at lights — we’re talking minutes here in terms of delivery times,” said Mardall. “Single-digit minutes are common for deliveries, so it’s faster than any alternative, for sure.”

In addition to services for pizza, vitamins and courier meds, Zipline works with Walmart, restaurant chain Sweetgreen, Michigan Medicine, MultiCare Health Systems, Intermountain Health and the government of Rwanda, among others. It also delivers to more than 4,000 hospitals and health centers, according to the company.

Zipline started its service delivering blood in Rwanda seven years ago and later expanded into food and convenience.

Riding Jetson Orin for Energy Efficiency, Environmental Benefits

Delivering energy-efficient computing is mission-critical for the run-time of autonomous machines, used in everything from delivery services and agriculture to mining and undersea exploration. NVIDIA Jetson Orin modules offer up to 275 trillion operations per second while providing market-leading energy efficiency.

“You can pick the right place for your algorithms to run to make sure you’re getting the most out of the hardware and the power that you are putting into the system,” said Frantz.

Startups using Jetson-driven applications are also leading the way in sustainability, as more next-generation electric-driven autonomous machines replace those contributing to pollution.

Deliveries by Zipline offer a 97% reduction in carbon emissions compared with gasoline-driven vehicles, according to the company.

“We are super excited to significantly reduce carbon emissions,” said Mardall. “And when building an electric aircraft, efficiency is totally key — every watt, every fraction of a watt, every joule that we can claw back can be turned into payload and range.”

Learn more about NVIDIA Jetson Orin.

Editor’s note: This post is part of our weekly In the NVIDIA Studio series, which celebrates featured artists, offers creative tips and tricks, and demonstrates how NVIDIA Studio technology improves creative workflows. We’re also deep diving on new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU features, technologies and resources, and how they dramatically accelerate content creation.

The creative team at Moonshine Studio — an artist-focused visual effects (VFX) studio specializing in animation and motion design — was tasked to solve a problem.

At their Taiwan office, receptionists were constantly engaged in meeting and greeting guests, preventing them from completing other important administrative work. To make matters worse, the automated kiosk greeting system wasn’t working as expected.

Senior Moonshine Studio 3D artist and this week’s In the NVIDIA Studio creator Eric Chiang stepped up to the challenge. He created a realistic, interactive 3D model that would serve as the foundation of a new AI-powered virtual assistant — NANA. The avatar can welcome guests and provide basic company info, easing the strain on the receptionist team.

Chiang built NANA using GPU-accelerated features in his favorite creative apps — powered by his NVIDIA Studio-badged MSI MEG Trident X2 PC, which is equipped with a GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card.

His creative workflow was enhanced by the Tensor Cores in his GPU, which supercharged AI-specific tasks — saving him time and elevating the quality of his work. RTX and AI also improve performance in gaming, boost productivity and more.

These advanced features are supported by NVIDIA Studio Drivers, — free for RTX GPU owners — which add performance and reliability. The December Studio Driver provides support for the Reallusion iClone AccuFACE plugin, GPU audio enhancements, AV1 in HandBrake and more — and is now ready for download.

Contests and Challenges Calling All Creators

Creative community The Rookies is hosting Meet Mat 3 — the 3D digital painting contest. Open to students and professionals with no more than a year of industry experience, it challenges contestants to use Adobe Substance 3D Painter to texture a blank character, MAT, in their own unique style. Prizes include GeForce RTX GPUs, Wacom Cintiq displays and more. Register today — entries close Jan. 5, 2024.

And though temperatures continue to drop, the #WinterArtChallenge is heating up with un-brrrrrr-lievable entries like this extraordinary #InstantNeRF by @RadianceFields.

Let’s see your creativity shine!

Winter is here, and we’re excited to join the #WinterArtChallenge

Share your winter-themed art using the hashtag for a chance to be featured on our social channels.

Get inspired by this incredible #InstantNeRF by @RadianceFields. pic.twitter.com/IwUgXqXx6o

— NVIDIA AI Developer (@NVIDIAAIDev) December 4, 2023

Be sure to include the #WinterArtChallenge hashtag for a chance to be featured on the @NVIDIAStudio, @NVIDIAOmniverse or @NVIDIAAIDev social channels.

An AI on the Future

Chiang began in Blender, sculpting intricate 3D models that served as the building blocks for NANA. Blender Cycles’ RTX-accelerated OptiX ray tracing in the viewport unlocked interactive, photorealistic modeling.

He then used the Marvelous Designer software for making, editing and reusing 3D clothes to create realistic clothing for NANA. This streamlined the design and simulation process, ensuring that the avatar is not only structurally sound but impeccably dressed.

Chiang deployed Quixel Mixer and Adobe Substance 3D Painter for shading, adding depth, texture and realism to the 3D models.

He then used the Blender plug-in AccuRIG to efficiently create precise, adaptable character rigs.

Chiang put everything together in Unreal Engine, where he seamlessly integrated 3D objects into the scene, leveraging real-time rendering to create visually stunning results.

NVIDIA DLSS further increased viewport interactivity by using AI to upscale frames rendered at lower resolution while still retaining high-fidelity detail. All of this was powered by his GeForce RTX 4090 GPU.

Chiang is excited about what AI can do for creators and society at large.

“What was once science fiction is now becoming reality, opening the door to a whole new stage of scientific and technological development,” he said. “We are fortunate to participate in and witness this new stage.”

Visit Moonshine Studio and say hello to NANA.

Follow NVIDIA Studio on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Access tutorials on the Studio YouTube channel and get updates directly in your inbox by subscribing to the Studio newsletter. 

Great companies thrive on stories. Sid Siddeek, who runs NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, knows this well.

Siddeek still remembers one of his first jobs, schlepping presentation materials from one investor meeting to another, helping the startup’s CEO and management team get the story out while working from a trailer that “shook when the door opened,” he said.

That CEO was Jensen Huang. The startup was NVIDIA.

Siddeek, who has worked as an investor and an entrepreneur, knows how important it is to find the right people to share your company’s story with early on, whether they’re customers or partners, employees or investors.

It’s this very principle that underpins NVIDIA’s multifaceted approach to investing in the next wave of innovation, a strategy also championed by Vishal Bhagwati, who leads NVIDIA’s corporate development efforts.

It’s an effort that’s resulted in more than two dozen investments so far this year, accelerating as the pace of innovation in AI and accelerated computing quickens.

NVIDIA’s Three-Pronged Strategy to Support the AI Ecosystem

There are three ways that NVIDIA invests in the ecosystem, driving the transformation unleashed by accelerated computing. First, through NVIDIA’s corporate investments, overseen by Bhagwati. Second, through NVentures, our venture capital arm, led by Siddeek. And finally, through NVIDIA Inception, our vehicle for supporting startups and connecting them to venture capital.

There couldn’t be a better time to support companies harnessing NVIDIA technologies. AI alone could contribute more than $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030, according to PwC.

And if you’re working in AI and accelerated computing right now, NVIDIA stands ready to help. Developers across every industry in every country are building accelerated computing applications. And they’re just getting going.

The result is a collection of companies that are advancing the story of AI every day. They include Cohere, CoreWeave, Hugging Face, Inflection, Inceptive and many more. And we’re right alongside them.

“Partnering with NVIDIA is a game-changer,” said Ed Mehr, CEO of Machina Labs. “Their unmatched expertise will supercharge our AI and simulation capabilities.”

Corporate Investments: Growing Our Ecosystem

NVIDIA’s corporate investments arm focuses on strategic collaborations. These partnerships stimulate joint innovation, enhance the NVIDIA platform and expand the ecosystem. Since the beginning of 2023, announcements have been made about 14 investments.

These target companies include Ayar Labs, specializing in chip-to-chip optical connectivity, and Hugging Face, a hub for advanced AI models.

The portfolio also includes next-generation enterprise solutions. Databricks offers an industry-leading data platform for machine learning, while Cohere provides enterprise automation through AI. Other notable companies are Recursion, Kore.ai and Utilidata, each contributing unique solutions in drug discovery, conversational AI and smart electricity grids, respectively.

Consumer services are another investment focus. Inflection is crafting a personal AI for creative expression, while Runway serves as a platform for art and creativity through generative AI.

The investment strategy extends to autonomous machines. Ready Robotics is developing an operating system for industrial robotics, and Skydio builds autonomous drones.

NVIDIA’s most recent investments are in cloud service providers like CoreWeave. These platforms cater to a diverse clientele, from startups to Fortune 500 companies seeking to build next-generation AI services.

NVentures: Investing Alongside Entrepreneurs

Through NVentures, we support innovators who are deeply relevant to NVIDIA. We aim to generate strong financial returns and expand the ecosystem by funding companies that use our platforms across a wide range of industries.

To date, NVentures has made 19 investments in companies in healthcare, manufacturing and other key verticals. Some examples of our portfolio companies include:

• Genesis Therapeutics, Inceptive, Terray, Charm, Evozyne, Generate, Superluminal: revolutionizing drug discovery
• Machina Labs, Seurat Technologies: disrupting industrial processes to improve manufacturing
• PassiveLogic: automating building systems with AI
• MindsDB: for developers that need to connect enterprise data to AI
• Moon Surgical: improving laparoscopic surgery with AI
• Twelve Labs: developing multimodal foundation models for video understanding
• Flywheel: accelerating medical imaging data development
• Luma AI: developers of visual and multimodal models
• Outrider: automating logistics hub operation
• Synthesia: AI Video for the enterprise
• Replicate: developer platform for open-source and custom models

All these companies are building on work being done inside and outside NVIDIA.

“NVentures has a network, not just within NVIDIA, but throughout the industry, to make sure we have access to the best technology and the best people to build all the different modules that have to come together to define the distribution and supply chain of the future,” said Andrew Smith, CEO of Outrider.

NVIDIA Inception: Supporting Startups and Connecting Them to Investors

In addition, we’re continuing to support startups with NVIDIA Inception. Launched in 2016, this free global program offers technology and marketing support to over 17,000 startups across multiple industries and over 125 countries.

And, as part of Inception, we’re partnering with venture capitalists through our VC Alliance, a program that offers benefits to our valued network of venture capital firms, including connecting startups with potential investors.

Partnering With Innovators in Every Industry

Whatever our relationship, whether as a partner or investor, we can offer companies unique forms of support.

NVIDIA has the technology. NVIDIA has the richest set of libraries and the deepest understanding of the frameworks needed to optimize training and inference pipelines.

We have the go-to-market skills. NVIDIA has tremendous field sales, solution architect and developer relations organizations with a long track record of working with the most innovative startups and the largest companies in the world.

We know how to grow. We have people throughout our organization who are recognized leaders in their respective fields and can offer expert advice to companies of all sizes and industries.

“Partnering with NVIDIA was an easy choice,” said Victor Riparbelli, cofounder and CEO of Synthesia. “We use their hardware, benefit from their AI expertise and get valuable insights, allowing us to build better products faster.”

Accelerating the Greatest Breakthroughs of Our Time

In turn, these investments augment our R&D in the software, systems and semiconductors undergirding this ecosystem.

With NVIDIA’s technologies poised to accelerate the work of researchers and scientists, entrepreneurs, startups and Fortune 500 companies, finding ways to support companies that rely on our technologies— with engineering resources, marketing support and capital — is more vital than ever.

We’re celebrating a milestone this week with 500 RTX games and applications utilizing NVIDIA DLSS, ray tracing or AI technologies. It’s an achievement anchored by NVIDIA’s revolutionary RTX technology, which has transformed gaming graphics and performance.

The journey began in 2018 at an electrifying event in Cologne. In a steel and concrete music venue amidst the city’s gritty industrial north side, over 1,200 gamers, breathless and giddy, erupted as NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang introduced NVIDIA RTX and declared, “This is a historic moment … Computer graphics has been reinvented.”

This groundbreaking launch, set against the backdrop of the world’s largest gaming expo, Gamescom, marked the introduction of the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, 2080 and 2070 GPUs.

The most technically advanced games now rely on the techniques that RTX technologies have unlocked.

Ray tracing, enabled by dedicated RT Cores, delivers immersive, realistic lighting and reflections in games.

The technique has evolved from games with only a single graphics element executed in ray tracing to games such as Alan Wake 2, Cyberpunk 2077, Minecraft RTX and Portal RTX that use ray tracing for all the light in the game.

And NVIDIA DLSS, powered by Tensor Cores, accelerates AI graphics, now boosting performance with DLSS Frame Generation and improving RT effects with DLSS Ray Reconstruction in titles like Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.

Beyond gaming, these technologies revolutionize creative workflows, enabling real-time, ray-traced previews in applications that once required extensive processing time.

Ray tracing, a technique first described in 1969 by Arthur Appel, mirrors how light interacts with objects to create lifelike images.

Ray tracing was once limited to high-end movie production. NVIDIA’s RTX graphics cards have made this cinematic quality accessible in real-time gaming, enhancing experiences with dynamic lighting, reflections and shadows.

High engagement rates in titles like Cyberpunk 2077, NARAKA: BLADEPOINT, Minecraft with RTX, Alan Wake 2 and Diablo IV, where 96% or higher of RTX 40 Series t gamers use RTX ON, underscore this success.

To commemorate this milestone, 20 $500 Green Man Gaming gift cards and exclusive #RTXON keyboard keycaps are up for grabs. Participants must follow GeForce’s social channels and comply with the sweepstakes rules.

Stay tuned for more RTX 500 giveaways.

NVIDIA’s advancement from the first RTX graphics card to powering 500 RTX games and applications with advanced technologies heralds a new gaming and creative tech era. And NVIDIA continues to lead, offering unparalleled experiences in gaming and creativity.

Stay tuned to GeForce News for more updates on RTX games and enhancements.

Accessibility is a key element that all designers must consider before constructing a space or product — but the evaluation process has traditionally been tedious and time-consuming.

Mathew Schwartz, an assistant professor in architecture and design at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, is using the NVIDIA Omniverse platform and the Universal Scene Description framework, aka OpenUSD, to help architects, interior designers and industrial designers address this challenge.

Schwartz’s research and design lab SiBORG — which stands for simulation, biomechanics, robotics and graphics — focuses on understanding and improving design workflows, especially in relation to accessibility, human factors and automation. Schwartz and his team develop algorithms for research projects and turn them into usable products.

Using Omniverse  — a development platform that enables multi-app workflows and real-time collaboration — the team developed open-source, OpenUSD-based code that automatically generates a complex accessibility graph for building design. This code is based on Schwartz’s research paper, “Human centric accessibility graph for environment analysis.”

The graph provides feedback related to human movement, such as the estimated energy expenditure required for taking a certain path, the number of steps it takes to complete the path, or the angles of any inclines along it.

With Omniverse, teams can use Schwartz’s code to visualize the graph and the paths that it creates. This can help designers better evaluate building code and safety for occupants while providing important accessibility insights.

The Power of OpenUSD

Traditionally, feedback on accessibility and environmental conditions during the building design process has been limited to building code analysis. Schwartz’s work enables designers to overcome this obstacle by seamlessly integrating Omniverse and OpenUSD.

Previously, he had to switch between multiple applications to achieve different aspects of his simulation and modeling projects. His workflows were often split between tools such as Unity, which supports simulations with people, and McNeel Rhino3D, which offers 3D modeling features.

With OpenUSD, he can now combine his research, Python code, 3D environments and renders, and favorite tools into Omniverse.

“What got me hooked on Omniverse was how it allows me to combine the Python application programming interface with powerful physics, rendering and animation software,” he said. “My team took full advantage of the flexible Python APIs in Omniverse to develop almost the entire user interface.”

Schwartz’s team uses Omniverse to visualize and interact with existing open-source Python code in ways that don’t require external work, like seamlessly linking to a third-party app. The lab’s versatile data analysis tool can interact with any program that’s compatible with OpenUSD.

“With OpenUSD and Omniverse, we’ve been able to expand the scope of our research, as we can easily combine data analysis and visualization with the design process,” said Schwartz.

Running Realistic Renderings and Simulations

Schwartz also uses Omniverse to simulate crowd movement and interactions.

He accelerates large crowd simulations and animations using two NVIDIA RTX A4500 GPUs, which enable real-time visualization. These accelerated simulations can help designers gain valuable insights into how people with reduced mobility can navigate and interact in spaces.

“We can also show what locations will offer the best areas to place signage so that it’s most visible,” said Schwartz. “Our simulation work can be used to visualize paths taken in an early-stage design — this provides feedback on accessibility to prevent problems with building code, while allowing users to create designs that go beyond the minimum requirements.”

Schwartz also taps the feedback and assistance of many developers and researchers who actively engage on the Omniverse Discord channel. This collaborative environment has been instrumental in Schwartz’s journey, he said, as well as to the platform’s continuous improvement.

Schwartz’s open-source code is available for designers to use and enhance their design workflows. Learn more about his work and how NVIDIA Omniverse can revolutionize building design.

Join In on the Creation

Anyone can build their own Omniverse extension or Connector to enhance 3D workflows and tools.

Check out artwork from other “Omnivores” and submit projects in the Omniverse gallery. See how creators are using OpenUSD to accelerate a variety of 3D workflows in the latest OpenUSD All Stars.

Get started with NVIDIA Omniverse by downloading the standard license free, access OpenUSD resources, and learn how Omniverse Enterprise can connect your team. Stay up to date on Instagram, Medium and Twitter. For more, join the Omniverse community on the  forums, Discord server, Twitch and YouTube channels.

It’s a fortuitous GFN Thursday with 17 new games joining the GeForce NOW library, including The Day Before, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and the 100th PC Game Pass title to join the cloud — Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

This week also marks a milestone: over 500 games and applications now support RTX ON. GeForce NOW Ultimate and Priority members can experience cinematic ray tracing on nearly any device thanks to NVIDIA RTX-powered gaming rigs in the cloud. Check out the RTX ON game row in the GeForce NOW app to play even more titles featuring this stunning graphics technology.

Stayin’ Alive

The Day Before, Fntastic’s new open-world horror massively multiplayer online game, is a uniquely reimagined journey of survival set on the east coast of the present-day U.S. after the world has been overrun by zombies. Priority and Ultimate members can stream the game on nearly any device with support for RTX ON.

Explore the beautifully detailed New Fortune City, filled with skyscrapers, massive malls and grand stadiums, with a variety of vehicles. Fight against other players and those infected by a deadly virus. Survive by collecting loot, completing quests and building houses — all on a day-and-night cycle.

Help rebuild society from the comfort of the couch and across devices, streaming from the cloud. Priority members can build and survive at up to 1080p and 60 frames per second. Ultimate members can take advantage of longer session lengths, gain support for ultrawide resolutions and stream at up to 4K 120 fps. Both memberships offer support for real-time ray tracing, bringing cinematic lighting to every zombie encounter.

A New Adventure in the Clouds

Fight for the future of the Na’vi in Ubisoft’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Expanding on the stories told in the hit Avatar films, the open-world action-adventure game explores a never-before-seen region of Pandora called the Western Frontier, with all-new environments, creatures and enemies.

Discover what it means to be Na’vi and join other clans to protect Pandora from the RDA, a corporation looking to exploit Pandora’s resources. Harness incredible strength and agility with character customization, craft new gear, and upgrade skills and weapons. Members can enjoy soaring across the skies with their Banshees, dragon-like creatures useful for exploring the vast Western Frontier and engaging the RDA in aerial combat.

Experience the epic adventure on nearly any device with a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership, streaming from GeForce RTX 4080-powered servers in the cloud. Ultimate members can save the Na’vi at up to 4K resolution or take in Pandora’s beautiful vistas at ultrawide resolution for the most cinematic, immersive gameplay.

A Journey of Courage

Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition and Ori and the Will of the Wisps are the newest Xbox PC games to join GeForce NOW, which now includes 100 PC Game Pass titles. Developed by Moon Studios and published by Xbox Game Studios, the award-winning adventure series follows a spirit guardian named Ori as he explores beautiful, dangerous worlds.

In Ori and the Blind Forest, members must help Ori restore balance to the forest. Separated from his home during a storm and adopted by a creature called Naru, Ori must team up with a spirit named Sein to find his true destiny when calamity strikes the world of Nibel.

The sequel, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, brings Ori’s journey to a new world, Niwen, a hidden land of wonders and dangers. Ori must help a young, broken-winged owl named Ku and heal the land from dark corruption — all while encountering new friends, foes and mysteries that will test the spirit guardian’s courage and skills.

Members can take the adventure with them, streaming Ori’s adventures across nearly all of their devices thanks to the cloud. GeForce NOW Ultimate members can also light their journeys with high dynamic range on supported devices for an unparalleled visual experience.

Explore the Ori series and other games on GeForce NOW with PC Game Pass. Give the gift of cloud gaming with the latest membership bundle and get three months of PC Game Pass for free with the purchase of a six-month GeForce NOW Ultimate membership.

Building Blocks

The magic of LEGOs and Fortnite collide in Epic Games’ LEGO Fortnite, launching in the cloud today. ​Get creative in building and ​customizing​​​ the ultimate home base​ using collected LEGO elements. Recruit villagers to gather materials and survive the night. Gear up and drop into deep caves to search for rare resources in hidden areas.

Don’t miss the 17 newly supported games joining the GeForce NOW library this week:

• World War Z: Aftermath (New release on Xbox, available on PC Game Pass, Dec. 5)
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (New release on Ubisoft, Dec. 7)
• Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (New release on Steam, Dec. 7)
• The Day Before (New release on Steam, Dec. 7)
• Goat Simulator 3 (New release on Xbox, available on PC Game Pass, Dec. 7)
• LEGO Fortnite (New release on Epic Games Store, Dec. 7)
• Against the Storm (New release on Xbox, available on PC Game Pass, Dec. 8)
• Rocket Racing (New release on Epic Games Store, Dec. 8)
• Fortnite Festival (New release on Epic Games Store, Dec. 9)
• Agatha Christie – Murder on the Orient Express (Steam)
• BEAST (Steam)
• Dungeons 4  (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Farming Simulator 22 (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Hollow Knight (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)
• Ori and the Will of the Wisps (Steam, Xbox and available on PC Game Pass)
• Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (Steam)
• Spirittea (Xbox, available on PC Game Pass)

Halo Infinite was planned to join the cloud in September but encountered some technical issues. The GeForce NOW team is working with Microsoft and game developer 343 Industries to bring the game to the service in the coming months. Stay tuned to GFN Thursday for further updates.

What are you planning to play this weekend? Let us know on Twitter or in the comments below. Bonus points if it includes #RTXON.

you get to bring 1 video game item to a post-apocalyptic world…

what is it?

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) December 6, 2023