Posts in category: nVidia AI

Microsoft Azure users can now turn to the latest NVIDIA accelerated computing technology to train and deploy their generative AI applications.

Available today, the Microsoft Azure ND H100 v5 VMs using NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking — enables scaling generative AI, high performance computing (HPC) and other applications with a click from a browser.

Available to customers across the U.S., the new instance arrives as developers and researchers are using large language models (LLMs) and accelerated computing to uncover new consumer and business use cases.

The NVIDIA H100 GPU delivers supercomputing-class performance through architectural innovations, including fourth-generation Tensor Cores, a new Transformer Engine for accelerating LLMs and the latest NVLink technology that lets GPUs talk to each other at 900GB/sec.

The inclusion of NVIDIA Quantum-2 CX7 InfiniBand with 3,200 Gbps cross-node bandwidth ensures seamless performance across the GPUs at massive scale, matching the capabilities of top-performing supercomputers globally.

Scaling With v5 VMs

ND H100 v5 VMs are ideal for training and running inference for increasingly complex LLMs and computer vision models. These neural networks drive the most demanding and compute-intensive generative AI applications, including question answering, code generation, audio, video and image generation, speech recognition and more.

The ND H100 v5 VMs achieve up to 2x speedup in LLMs like the BLOOM 175B model for inference versus previous generation instances, demonstrating their potential to further optimize AI applications.

NVIDIA and Azure

NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs on Azure provide enterprises the performance, versatility and scale to supercharge their AI training and inference workloads. The combination streamlines the development and deployment of production AI with the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite integrated with Azure Machine Learning for MLOps, and delivers record-setting AI performance in industry-standard MLPerf benchmarks.

In addition, by connecting the NVIDIA Omniverse platform to Azure, NVIDIA and Microsoft are providing hundreds of millions of Microsoft enterprise users with access to powerful industrial digitalization and AI supercomputing resources.

Learn more about new Azure v5 instances powered by NVIDIA H100 GPUs.

One pandemic and one generative AI revolution later, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang returns to the SIGGRAPH stage next week to deliver a live keynote at the world’s largest professional graphics conference.

The address, slated for Tuesday, Aug. 8, at 8 a.m. PT in Los Angeles, will feature an exclusive look at some of NVIDIA’s newest breakthroughs, including award-winning research, OpenUSD developments and the latest AI-powered solutions for content creation.

Huang’s address comes after NVIDIA joined forces last week with Pixar, Adobe, Apple and Autodesk to found the Alliance for OpenUSD, a major leap toward unlocking the next era of interoperability in 3D graphics, design and simulation.

The group will standardize and extend OpenUSD, the open-source Universal Scene Description framework that’s the foundation of interoperable 3D applications and projects ranging from visual effects to industrial digital twins.

Huang will also offer a perspective on what’s been a raucous year for AI, with wildly popular new generative AI applications — including ChatGPT and Midjourney — providing a taste of what’s to come as developers worldwide get to work.

Throughout the conference, NVIDIA will participate in sessions on immersive visualization, 3D interoperability and AI-mediated video conferencing and presenting 20 research papers. Attendees will also get the opportunity to join hands-on labs.

Join SIGGRAPH to witness the evolution of AI and visual computing. Watch the keynote on this page.

Image source: Ron Diering, via Flickr, some rights reserved.

Goran Vuksic is the brain behind a project to build a real-world pit droid, a type of Star Wars bot that repairs and maintains podracers which zoom across the much-loved film series.

The edge AI Jedi used an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit as the brain of the droid itself. The devkit enables the bot, which is a little less than four feet tall and has a simple webcam for eyes, to identify and move its head toward objects.

Vuksic — originally from Croatia and now based in Malmö, Sweden — recently traveled with the pit droid across Belgium and the Netherlands to several tech conferences. He presented to hundreds of people on computer vision and AI, using the droid as an engaging real-world demo.

A self-described Star Wars fanatic, he’s upgrading the droid’s capabilities in his free time, when not engrossed in his work as an engineering manager at a Copenhagen-based company. He’s also co-founder and chief technology officer of syntheticAIdata, a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge startups.

The company, which creates vision AI models with cost-effective synthetic data, uses a connector to the NVIDIA Omniverse platform for building and operating 3D tools and applications.

About the Maker

Named a Jetson AI Specialist by NVIDIA and an AI “Most Valuable Professional” by Microsoft, Vuksic got started with artificial intelligence and IT about a decade ago when working for a startup that classified tattoos with vision AI.

Since then, he’s worked as an engineering and technical manager, among other roles, developing IT strategies and solutions for various companies.

Robotics has always interested him, as he was a huge sci-fi fan growing up.

“Watching Star Wars and other films, I imagined how robots might be able to see and do stuff in the real world,” said Vuksic, also a member of the NVIDIA Developer Program.

Now, he’s enabling just that with the pit droid project powered by the NVIDIA Jetson platform, which the developer has used since the launch of its first product nearly a decade ago.

Apart from tinkering with computers and bots, Vuksic enjoys playing the bass guitar in a band with his friends.

His Inspiration

Vuksic built the pit droid for both fun and educational purposes.

As a frequent speaker at tech conferences, he takes the pit droid on stage to engage with his audience, demonstrate how it works and inspire others to build something similar, he said.

“We live in a connected world — all the things around us are exchanging data and becoming more and more automated,” he added. “I think this is super exciting, and we’ll likely have even more robots to help humans with tasks.”

Using the NVIDIA Jetson platform, Vuksic is at the forefront of robotics innovation, along with an ecosystem of developers using edge AI.

His Jetson Project

Vuksic’s pit droid project, which took him four months, began with 3D printing its body parts and putting them all together.

He then equipped the bot with the Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit as the brain in its head, which can move in all directions thanks to two motors.

The Jetson Orin Nano enables real-time processing of the camera feed. “It’s truly, truly amazing to have this processing power in such a small box that fits in the droid’s head,” said Vuksic.

He also uses Microsoft Azure to process the data in the cloud for object-detection training.

“My favorite part of the project was definitely connecting it to the Jetson Orin Nano, which made it easy to run the AI and make the droid move according to what it sees,” said Vuksic, who wrote a step-by-step technical guide to building the bot, so others can try it themselves.

“The most challenging part was traveling with the droid — there was a bit of explanation necessary when I was passing security and opened my bag which contained the robot in parts,” the developer mused. “I said, ‘This is just my big toy!’”

Learn more about the NVIDIA Jetson platform.

To grow and succeed, organizations must continuously focus on technical skills development, especially in rapidly advancing areas of technology, such as generative AI and the creation of 3D virtual worlds.  

NVIDIA Training, which equips teams with skills for the age of AI, high performance computing and industrial digitalization, has released new courses that cover these technologies. The program has already equipped hundreds of thousands of students, developers, researchers and data scientists with critical technical skills.  

With its latest courses, NVIDIA Training is enabling organizations to fully harness the power of generative AI and virtual worlds, which are transforming the business landscape. 

Get Started Building Generative AI Applications     

Generative AI is revolutionizing the ways organizations work. It enables users to quickly generate new content based on a variety of inputs, including text, images, sounds, animation, 3D models and other data types.  

New NVIDIA Training courses on gen AI include:         

• Generative AI Explained — Generative models are accelerating application development for many use cases, including question-answering, summarization, textual entailment, 2D and 3D image and audio creation. In this two-hour course, Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning research at NVIDIA, provides an overview of gen AI’s major developments, where it stands now and what it could be capable of in the future. He’ll discuss technical details and popular generative AI applications, as well as how businesses can responsibly use the technology. 

• Generative AI With Diffusion Models — Thanks to improvements in computing power and scientific theory, generative AI is more accessible than ever. Get started with gen AI application development with this hands-on course where students will learn how to build a text-to-image generative AI application using the latest techniques. Generate images with diffusion models and refine the output with various optimizations. Build a denoising diffusion model from the U-Net architecture to add context embeddings for greater user control. 

To see a complete list of courses on generative AI and large language models, check out these NVIDIA Training Learning Paths. 

Building Digital 3D Worlds

Advancements in digital world-building are transforming media and entertainment, architecture, engineering, construction and operations, factory planning and avatar creation, among other industries.

Immersive 3D environments elevate user engagement and enable innovative solutions to real-world problems. NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for connecting and developing 3D tools and applications, lets technical artists, designers and engineers quickly assemble complex and physically accurate simulations and 3D scenes in real time, while seamlessly collaborating with team members.

New NVIDIA Training courses on this topic include:

• Essentials of USD in NVIDIA Omniverse — Universal Scene Description, or OpenUSD, is transforming 3D workflows across industries. It’s an open standard enabling 3D artists and developers to connect, compose and simulate in the metaverse. Students will learn what makes OpenUSD unique for designing 3D worlds. The training covers data modeling using primitive nodes, attributes and relationships, as well as custom schemas and composition for scene assembly and collaboration. 

• Developing Omniverse Kit Applications — Learn how to use the NVIDIA Omniverse Kit development framework to build applications, custom extensions and microservices. Applications may comprise many extensions working in concert to address specific 3D workflows, like industrial digitalization and factory planning. Students will use Omniverse reference applications, like Omniverse USD Composer and USD Presenter, to kickstart their own application development.
   
• Bootstrapping Computer Vision Models With Synthetic Data — Learn how to use NVIDIA Omniverse Replicator, a core Omniverse extension, to accelerate the development of computer vision models. Generate accurate, photorealistic, physics-conforming synthetic data to ease the expensive, time-consuming task of labeling real-world data. Omniverse Replicator accelerates AI development at scale and reduces time to production. 

To see a complete list of courses on graphics and simulation, check out these NVIDIA Training Learning Paths.  

Wide Portfolio of Courses 

NVIDIA Training offers courses and resources to help individuals and organizations develop expertise in using NVIDIA technologies to fuel innovation. In addition to those above, a wide range of courses and workshops covering AI, deep learning, accelerated computing, data science, networking and infrastructure are available to explore in the training catalog. 

At the SIGGRAPH conference session “Reimagine Your Curriculum With OpenUSD and NVIDIA Omniverse,” Laura Scholl, senior content developer on the Omniverse team at NVIDIA, will discuss how to incorporate OpenUSD and Omniverse into an educational setting using teaching kits, programs for educators and other resources available from NVIDIA.  

Learn about the latest advances in generative AI, graphics and more by joining NVIDIA at SIGGRAPH. NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will deliver a keynote address on Tuesday, Aug. 8, at 8 a.m. PT.

The Ultimate upgrade is complete — GeForce NOW Ultimate performance is now streaming all throughout North America and Europe, delivering RTX 4080-class power for gamers across these regions. Celebrate this month with 41 new games, on top of the full release of Baldur’s Gate 3 and the first Bethesda titles coming to the cloud as the NVIDIA and Microsoft partnership benefits gamers everywhere.

And catch GeForce NOW at QuakeCon — the popular bring-your-own-PC mega-event running Aug. 10-13 — where the in-person and digital GeForce NOW Ultimate challenge will kick off.

Plus, game on with gaming peripherals and accessories company SteelSeries, which will be giving away codes for three-day GeForce NOW Ultimate and Priority memberships, along with popular GeForce NOW games and in-game goodies.

The Ultimate Rollout

The rollout of GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPODs across the world this year lit up cities with cutting-edge performance from the cloud. RTX 3080 members were introduced to the Ultimate membership, featuring gaming at 4K resolution 120 frames per second, or even up to 240 fps with ultra-low latency thanks to NVIDIA Reflex technology.

Ultimate memberships also bring the benefits of the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture — including DLSS 3 with frame generation for the highest frame rates and visual fidelity, and full ray tracing for the most immersive, cinematic, in-game lighting experiences. Plus, ultrawide resolutions were supported for the first time ever from the cloud.

And members can experience it all without having to upgrade a single piece of hardware. With RTX 4080-class servers fully deployed, gamers can now experience ultra-high fps streaming from GeForce RTX 4080-class power in the cloud and see how an Ultimate membership raises the bar on cloud gaming.

To celebrate, the GeForce NOW team will be showing off Ultimate at QuakeCon with a special GeForce NOW Ultimate challenge. Members can register now to be first in line to get a free one-day upgrade to an Ultimate membership and see how their skills improve with 240 fps gaming when the challenge launches next week. Top scorers at QuakeCon can win various prizes, along with those participating in the challenge from home. Keep an eye out on GeForce NOW’s Twitter and Facebook accounts for more details.

It’s Party Time

The best thing to pair with an Ultimate membership are the best games in the cloud. Members have been enjoying early access to Baldur’s Gate 3 from Larian Studios, the role-playing game set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons that raised the bar for the RPG genre.

Now, the full PC game launches and is streamable from GeForce NOW today. Choose from a wide selection of D&D races and classes, or play as an origin character with a handcrafted background. Adventure, loot, battle and romance while journeying through the Forgotten Realms and beyond. The game features a turn-based combat system, a dialogue system with choices and consequences, and a rich story that adapts to player actions and decisions.

Stream it across devices, whether solo or with others in online co-op mode. Those playing from the cloud will be able to enjoy it without worrying about download times or system requirements.

The Ultimate Shooters

Several titles from Bethesda’s well-known franchises — DOOM, Quake and Wolfenstein — will join the cloud this month for a mix of modern and classic first-person shooter games to enjoy across nearly all devices.

Feel the heat with the DOOM franchise, recognizable through its fast-paced epic gameplay and iconic heavy-metal soundtrack. Players take on the role of the DOOM Slayer to fight hordes of invading demons.

In addition, the Quake series features single- and multiplayer campaigns with gritty gameplay and epic music scores in which members can enjoy two sides of the legendary series.

The modern Wolfenstein games feature intense first-person combat against oversized Nazi robots, hulking super soldiers and elite shock troops. Discover an unfamiliar world ruled by a familiar enemy — one that’s changed and twisted history as you know it.

Experience all of these iconic franchises with an Ultimate or Priority membership. Priority members get faster access to GeForce RTX servers in the cloud over free members, along with up to six-hour gaming sessions. Ultimate members can raze their enemies in epic 4K and ultrawide resolution, with up to eight-hour gaming sessions.

Ready, Set, Play!

GeForce NOW and SteelSeries are rewarding gamers ‌throughout‌ August as part of the SteelSeries’ Game On sweepstakes.

Each week, gamers will have a chance to win three-day GeForce NOW Ultimate and Priority codes bundled with popular titles supported in the cloud — RuneScape, Genshin Impact, Brawlhalla and Dying Light 2 — as well in-game goodies.

Check GFN Thursday each week to see what the reward drop will be and head over to the SteelSeries Games site for more details on how to enter. Plus, save 20% with code “NVIDIAGAMEON” this month for premium SteelSeries products, which are perfect to pair with GeForce NOW cloud gaming.

Members can look forward to the 10 new games joining this week:

• F1 Manager 2023 (New release on Steam, July 31)
• Bloons TD 6 (Free on Epic Games Store, Aug. 3)
• Bloons TD Battles 2 (Steam)
• Brick Rigs (Steam)
• Demonologist (Steam)
• Empires of the Undergrowth (Steam)
• Stardeus (Steam)
• The Talos Principle (Steam)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (Steam)
• Yet Another Zombie Survivors (Steam)

And here’s what the rest of August looks like:

• WrestleQuest (New release on Steam, Aug. 7)
• I Am Future (New release on Steam, Aug. 8)
• Atlas Fallen (New release on Steam, Aug. 10)
• Sengoku Dynasty (New release on Steam, Aug. 10)
• Tales & Tactics (New release on Steam, Aug. 10)
• Moving Out 2 (New release on Steam, Aug. 15)
• Hammerwatch II (New release on Steam, Aug. 15)
• Desynced (New release on Steam, Aug. 15)
• Wayfinder (New release on Steam, Aug. 15)
• The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (New release on Steam, Aug. 16)
• Gord (New release on Steam, Aug. 17)
• Book of Hours (New release on Steam, Aug. 17)
• Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew (New release on Steam, Aug. 17)
• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (New release on Steam, Aug. 18)
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (New release on Steam, Aug. 18)
• Jumplight Odyssey (New release on Steam, Aug. 21)
• Blasphemous 2 (New release on Steam, Aug. 24)
• RIDE 5 (New release on Steam, Aug. 24)
• Sea of Stars (New release on Steam, Aug. 29)
• Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy (New release on Steam, Aug. 31)
• Deceit 2 (New release on Steam, Aug. 31)
• Inkbound (Steam)
• LEGO Brawls (Epic Games Store)
• Regiments (Steam)
• Session (Epic Games Store)
• Smalland: Survive the Wilds (Epic Games Store)
• Superhot (Epic Games Store)
• Terra Invicta (Epic Games Store)
• Wall World (Steam)
• Wild West Dynasty (Epic Games Store)
• WRECKFEST (Epic Games Store)
• Xenonauts 2 (Epic Games Store)

A Jammin’ July

On top of the 14 games announced in July, four extra joined the cloud last month:

• Let’s School (New release on Steam, July 26)
• Grand Emprise: Time Travel Survival (New release on Steam, July 27)
• Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (Steam)
• OCTOPATH TRAVELER (Epic Games Store)

What are you looking forward to streaming this month? Let us know your answer on Twitter or in the comments below.

August is here and we can’t wait for you to see what surprises we have in store for this month.

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) August 2, 2023

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.

Principal NVIDIA artist and 3D expert Michael Johnson creates highly detailed art that’s both technically impressive and emotionally resonant. It’s evident in his latest piece, Father-Son Collaboration, which draws on inspiration from the vivid imagination of his son and is highlighted this week In the NVIDIA Studio.

“I love how art can bring joy and great memories to others — great work makes me feel special to be a human and an artist,” said Johnson. “Art can flip people’s perspectives and make them feel something completely different.”

“The story behind this piece is that I simply wanted to inspire my son and teach him how things can be perceived — how people can be inspired by others’ art,” said Johnson, who could tell that his son — a doodler himself — often considered his own artwork not good enough.

“I wanted to show him what I saw in his art and how it inspired me,” Johnson said.

Through this project, Johnson also aimed to demonstrate the NVIDIA Studio-powered workflows of art studios and concept artists across the world.

NVIDIA RTX GPU technology plays a pivotal role in accelerating Johnson’s creativity. “As an artist, I care about quick feedback and stability,” he said. “My NVIDIA A6000 RTX graphics card speeds up the rendering process so I can quickly iterate.”

For Father-Son Collaboration, Johnson first opened Autodesk Maya to model the creature’s basic 3D shapes. His GPU-accelerated viewport enabled fast, interactive 3D modeling.

Next, he imported models into ZBrush for further sculpting, freestyling and details. “After I had my final sculpt down, I took the model into Rizom-Lab IV software to lay out the UVs,” Johnson said. UV mapping is the process of projecting a 3D model’s surface to a 2D image for texture mapping. It makes the model easier to texture and shade later in the creative workflow.

Johnson then used Adobe Substance 3D Painter to apply standard and custom textures and shaders on the character.

“Substance 3D Painter is really great because it displays the final look of the textures without bringing it into an external renderer,” said Johnson.

His GPU unlocked RTX-accelerated light and ambient occlusion baking, optimizing assets in mere seconds.

With the textures complete, Johnson imported his models back into Autodesk Maya for hair, grooming, lighting and rendering. For the hair and fur, the artist used XGen, Autodesk Maya’s built-in instancing tool. Autodesk Maya also offers third-party support of GPU-accelerated renderers such as Chaos V-Ray, OTOY OctaneRender and Maxon Redshift.

“Redshift is great — and having a great GPU makes renders really quick,” Johnson added. Redshift’s RTX-accelerated final-frame rendering with AI-powered OptiX denoising exported files with plenty of time to spare.

Johnson put the final touches on Father-Son Collaboration in Adobe Photoshop. With access to over 30 GPU-accelerated features, such as blur gallery, object selection, perspective warp and more, he applied the background and added minor touch-ups to complete the piece.

The joy, awe and wonderment he’d hoped to invoke in his son came to fruition when Johnson finally shared the piece.

“Art is one of the rare things in life that really has no end goal — as it’s really about the process, rather than the result,” Johnson said. “Every day, you learn something new, grow and see things in different ways.”

Check out Johnson’s portfolio on Instagram.

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. 

Learn about the latest with OpenUSD and Omniverse at SIGGRAPH, running August 6-10. Take advantage of showfloor experiences like hands-on labs, special events and demo booths — and don’t miss NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address on Tuesday, Aug. 8, at 8 a.m. PT. 

NVIDIA joined Pixar, Adobe, Apple and Autodesk today to found the Alliance for OpenUSD, a major leap toward unlocking the next era of 3D graphics, design and simulation.

The group will standardize and extend OpenUSD, the open-source Universal Scene Description framework that’s the foundation of interoperable 3D applications and projects ranging from visual effects to industrial digital twins.

Several leading companies in the 3D ecosystem already signed on as the alliance’s first general members — Cesium, Epic Games, Foundry, Hexagon, IKEA, SideFX and Unity.

Standardizing OpenUSD will accelerate its adoption, creating a foundational technology that will help today’s 2D internet evolve into a 3D web. Many companies are already working with NVIDIA to pioneer this future.

From Skyscrapers to Sports Cars

OpenUSD is the foundation of NVIDIA Omniverse, a development platform for connecting and building 3D tools and applications. Omniverse is helping companies like Heavy.AI, Kroger and Siemens build and test physically accurate simulations of factories, retail locations, skyscrapers, sports cars and more.

For IKEA, OpenUSD represents “a nonproprietary standard format to author and store 3D content to connect our value chain even closer, and develop home furnishing solutions to a lower price,” Martin Enthed, an innovation manager at IKEA, said in a press release the alliance issued today.

“By joining the alliance, we’re demonstrating our dedication to the advantages that OpenUSD provides our clients when linking with cloud-based platforms, including Nexus, Hexagon’s manufacturing platform, HxDR, Hexagon’s digital reality platform, and NVIDIA Omniverse to build innovative solutions in their industries,” said Burkhard Boeckem, CTO of Hexagon.

The Origins of OpenUSD

Pixar started work on USD in 2012 as a 3D foundation for its feature films, offering interoperability across data and workflows. The company made this powerful, multifaceted technology open source four years later, so anyone can use OpenUSD and contribute to its development.

OpenUSD supports the requirements of building virtual worlds — like geometry, cameras, lights and materials. It also includes features necessary for scaling to large, complex datasets, and it’s tremendously extensible, enabling the technology to be adapted to workflows beyond visual effects.

One unique capability of OpenUSD is its layering system, which lets users collaborate in real time without stepping on each other’s toes. For example, one artist can model a scene while others create the lighting for it.

Forging a Shared Standard

As its first priority, the alliance will develop a specification that describes the core functionality of OpenUSD. That’ll provide a recipe tool builders can implement, encouraging adoption of the open standard across the widest possible array of use cases.

The alliance will operate as part of the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), a branch of the Linux Foundation. The JDF provides a path to turn written specifications into industry standards suitable for adoption by globally respected groups like the International Organization for Standardization, or the ISO.

From OpenUSD to Omniverse

NVIDIA has a deep commitment to OpenUSD and working with ecosystem partners to accelerate the framework’s evolution and adoption across industries.

At last year’s SIGGRAPH, NVIDIA detailed a multiyear roadmap of contributions it’s making to enable OpenUSD use in architecture, engineering, manufacturing and more. An update on these plans will be presented by NVIDIA as part of the alliance at this year’s conference on computer graphics.

Help Build the 3D Future

Collaboration is key to the alliance and evolution of OpenUSD.

To get involved or learn more, attend NVIDIA’s keynote, OpenUSD day, hands-on labs and other showfloor activities at SIGGRAPH, running Aug. 6-10.

The Alliance for OpenUSD also will host a keynote panel session at the Academy Software Foundation’s Open Source Days 2023.

For a deeper dive on OpenUSD:

• Check out our USD resources page.
• Watch a video series on getting started with OpenUSD.
• Take a course on using OpenUSD in 3D workflows.
• And watch a webinar about building applications with NVIDIA Omniverse.

From smart factories to next-generation railway systems, developers and enterprises across the world are racing to fuel industrial digitalization opportunities at every scale.

Key to this is the open-source Universal Scene Description (USD) framework, or OpenUSD, along with metaverse applications powered by AI.

OpenUSD, originally developed by Pixar for large-scale feature film pipelines for animation and visual effects, offers a powerful engine for high-fidelity 3D worlds, as well as an expansive ecosystem for the era of AI and the metaverse. Across automotive, healthcare, manufacturing and other industries, businesses are adopting OpenUSD for various applications.

How Developers Use OpenUSD

Developers can use the extensibility of OpenUSD to integrate the latest AI tools, as well as top digital content-creation solutions, into their custom 3D workflows and applications.

At enterprises like BMW Group, in-house developers are building custom applications to optimize and interact with their digital twin use cases. The automaker developed an application that allows factory planners to collaborate in real time on virtual factories using NVIDIA Omniverse, an OpenUSD development platform for building and connecting 3D tools.

Startups like Move.ai, SmartCow and ipolog are also developing groundbreaking metaverse technologies with OpenUSD. Using USD in Omniverse’s modular development platform allows startups and small businesses to easily launch new tools in the metaverse for larger enterprises to use.

In addition, leading 3D solution providers, including Esri, Bentley Systems and Vectorworks, are connecting their technologies with OpenUSD to enable new capabilities in the metaverse and reach more customers. Building on OpenUSD ensures their applications can be continuously expanded to meet the industrial metaverse’s evolving needs.

“USD helps us provide customers with even more flexibility in the 3D design process,” said Dave Donley, senior director of rendering and research at Vectorworks. “By embracing USD, Vectorworks and its users are poised to lead the charge toward a more collaborative and innovative future in industries such as architecture, landscape design and entertainment.”

Why Developers Use OpenUSD

Linear and siloed workflows used to be the norm in 3D content creation. Today, enterprises must integrate their diverse, distributed, highly skilled teams and expand their offerings to remain competitive — most notably in generative AI.

Fluid design collaboration is critical for this, as is the ability for developers to work in open, modular and extensible frameworks. As the pace of AI and metaverse innovation increases, businesses attempting to build new features and capabilities in closed environments are likely to lag behind.

The 3D worlds of the metaverse — which are ushering in a new era of design, simulation and AI advancements — require a common framework to enable scalability and interconnection. As with the 2D web, the success of the metaverse will depend on its interoperability as governed by open standards and protocols.

OpenUSD is well-suited for diverse metaverse applications due to its extensibility and ability to support a wide variety of properties for defining and rendering objects. More than just a file format, the interchange framework connects a robust ecosystem of creative and developer tools.

Cesium, a platform for 3D geospatial workflows, uses USD to enable enterprises building industrial metaverse applications in construction, robotics, simulation and digital twins for climate change.

“Leveraging the interoperability of USD with 3D Tiles and glTF, we create additional workflows, like importing content from Bentley LumenRT, Trimble Sketchup, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk 3ds Max and Esri ArcGIS CityEngine into NVIDIA Omniverse in precise 3D geospatial context,” said Shehzan Mohammed, director of 3D engineering and ecosystems at Cesium.

3D tools interoperate seamlessly with OpenUSD, allowing users to work efficiently across various tools and pipelines. USD’s efficient referencing and layering allows teams to non-destructively edit projects in real time and preserve all source content, enabling iterative, collaborative workflows. Designed to handle large-scale scenes with millions of assets and complex datasets, OpenUSD is ideal for developers building applications to support virtual worlds.

Learn more about the unique capabilities of USD in the video below, as well as in the article, “What You Need to Know About Universal Scene Description.”

Omniverse: The Platform for Building With OpenUSD

NVIDIA Omniverse interconnects diverse 3D tools and datasets with OpenUSD to unlock new possibilities for large-scale, physically accurate virtual worlds and industrial digitalization applications.

Built for developers by developers, Omniverse is open and highly modular. Omniverse Code and Kit enable developers to build advanced, real-time simulation solutions for industrial digitalization and perception AI. They can use all of the platform’s key components, such as Omniverse Nucleus and RTX Renderer, and core technologies to develop solutions designed for their customer needs.

People of all experience levels can build with OpenUSD on Omniverse. Beginners can develop tools with little to no code using existing platform extensions. Experienced developers can use templates or build from scratch with Python or C++ to produce their own powerful apps and extensions — as well as combine them with existing ones to create tools customized for their needs. In addition, visual programming tools like OmniGraph make it easy to set up and perform advanced procedural tasks with just a few clicks.

For example, a warehouse simulation tool can be developed by combining extensions for building layout, warehouse objects, smart object placement and user interfaces that can be fine-tuned for specific needs.

Plus, Omniverse foundation applications like USD Composer and USD Presenter are modular, so users can work with just the functionality they need, and add their own code or extensions to customize apps for different workflows. Developers can easily access and tap into the Python source code of Omniverse extensions in Omniverse Kit.

See What’s Next for OpenUSD

Learn about the latest advancements in design, simulation and AI by joining NVIDIA at SIGGRAPH, a computer graphics conference running Aug. 6-10. NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will deliver a keynote address on Tuesday, Aug. 8, at 8 a.m. PT.

Join NVIDIA for OpenUSD day at SIGGRAPH on Wednesday, Aug. 9, starting at 9 a.m. PT, for a full day of presentations about the framework’s latest developments. NVIDIA will also present award-winning research on rendering and generative AI, as well as host various sessions and hands-on labs for attendees to experience the latest developments in OpenUSD, graphics and more.

Get started with NVIDIA Omniverse by downloading the standard license free, or learn how Omniverse Enterprise can connect your team. Developers can check out these Omniverse resources to begin building on the platform. 

Stay up to date on the platform by subscribing to the newsletter and following NVIDIA Omniverse on Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Threads and Twitter. For more, check out our forums, Discord server, Twitch and YouTube channels.

AI is improving ways to power the world by tapping the sun and the wind, along with cutting-edge technologies.

The latest episode in the I AM AI video series showcases how artificial intelligence can help optimize solar and wind farms, simulate climate and weather, enhance power grid reliability and resilience, advance carbon capture and power fusion breakthroughs.

It’s all enabled by NVIDIA and its energy-conscious partners, as they use and develop technology breakthroughs for a cleaner, safer, more sustainable future.

Homes and businesses need access to reliable, affordable fuel and electricity to power day-to-day activities.

Renewable energy sources — such as sunlight, wind and water — are scaling in deployments and available capacity. But they also burden legacy power grids built for traditional one-way power flow: from generation plants through transmission and distribution lines to end customers.

The latest advancements in AI and accelerated computing enable energy companies and utilities to balance power supply and demand in real time and manage distributed energy resources, all while lowering monthly bills to consumers.

The enterprises and startups featured in the new I AM AI video, and below, are using such innovations for a variety of clean energy use cases.

Power-Generation Site Optimization

Companies are turning to AI to improve maintenance of renewable power-generation sites.

For example, reality capture platform DroneDeploy is using AI to evaluate solar farm layouts, maximize energy generated per site and automatically monitor the health of solar panels and other equipment in the field.

Renewable energy company Siemens Gamesa is working with NVIDIA to apply AI surrogate models to optimize its offshore wind farms to output maximum power at minimal cost. Together, the companies are exploring neural super resolution powered by the NVIDIA Omniverse and NVIDIA Modulus platforms to accelerate high-resolution wake simulation by 4,000x compared with traditional methods–from 40 days to just 15 minutes.

Italy-based THE EDGE COMPANY, a member of the NVIDIA Metropolis vision AI partner ecosystem, is tracking endangered birds near offshore wind farms to provide operators with real-time suggestions that can help prevent collisions and protect the at-risk species.

Grid Infrastructure Maintenance

Energy grids also benefit from AI, which can help keep their infrastructure safe and efficient.

NVIDIA Metropolis partner Noteworthy AI deployed smart cameras powered by the NVIDIA Jetson platform for edge AI and robotics on Ohio-based utility FirstEnergy’s field trucks. Along with AI-enhanced computer vision, the cameras automate manual inspections of millions of power lines, poles and mounted devices.

Orbital Sidekick, a member of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge startups, has used hyperspectral imagery and edge AI to detect hundreds of suspected gas and hydrocarbon leaks across the globe. This protects worker health and safety while preventing costly accidents.

And Sweden-based startup Eneryield is using AI to detect signal anomalies in undersea cables, predict equipment failures to avoid costly repairs and enhance reliability of generated power.

Climate and Weather Simulation

AI and digital twins are unleashing a new wave of climate research, offering accurate, physics-informed weather modeling, high-resolution simulations of Earth and more.

NVIDIA Inception member Open Climate Fix built transformer-based AI models trained on terabytes of satellite data. Through granular, near-term forecasts of sunny and cloudy conditions over the U.K.’s solar panels, the nonprofit product lab has improved predictions of solar-energy generation by 3x. This reduces electricity produced using fossil fuels and helps decarbonize the country’s grid.

Plus, a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and NVIDIA developed a neural operator architecture called Nested FNO to simulate pressure levels during carbon storage in a fraction of a second while doubling accuracy on certain tasks. This can help industries decarbonize and achieve emission-reduction goals.

And Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory demonstrated the first successful application of nuclear fusion — considered the holy grail of clean energy — and used AI to simulate experimental results.

Learn more about AI for autonomous operations and grid modernization in energy.

Get ready for Gunfire Games and Gearbox Publishing’s highly anticipated Remnant II, available for members to stream on GeForce NOW at launch. It leads eight new games coming to the cloud gaming platform.

Ultimate and Priority members, make sure to grab the Guild Wars 2 rewards, available now through Thursday, Aug. 31. Visit the GeForce NOW Rewards portal and opt in to rewards.

Strange New Worlds

Kick off the weekend with one of the hottest new games in the cloud. Remnant II from Gunfire Games and Gearbox Publishing, sequel to the hit game Remnant: From the Ashes, is newly launched in the cloud for members to stream.

Go head to head against new deadly creatures and god-like bosses while exploring terrifying new worlds with different types of creatures, weapons and items. With various stories woven throughout, each playthrough will be different from the last, making each experience unique for endless replayability.

Find secrets and unlock different Archetypes, each with their own special set of abilities. Members can brave it alone or team up with buddies to explore the depths of the unknown and stop an evil from destroying reality itself. Just remember — friendly fire is on, so pick your squad wisely.

Upgrade to an Ultimate membership to play Remnant II and more than 1,600 titles at RTX 4080 quality, with support for 4K 120 frames per second gameplay and ultrawide resolutions. Ultimate and Priority members can also experience higher frame rates with DLSS technology for AI-powered graphics on their RTX-powered cloud gaming rigs.

Reward Yourself

Ultimate and Priority members can now grab their free, exclusive rewards for Guild Wars 2, featuring the “Always Prepared” and “Booster” bundles, available through the end of August.

The “Always Prepared” bundle includes ten Transmutation Charges to change character appearance, a Revive Orb that returns a player to 50% health at their current location and a top hat to add style to the character. On top of that, the “Booster” bundle includes an Item Booster, Karma Booster, Experience Booster, a 10-Slot Bag and a Black Lion Miniature Claim Ticket, which can be exchanged in game for a mini-pet of choice.

Visit the GeForce NOW Rewards portal to update the settings to receive special offers and in-game goodies. Better hurry — these rewards are available for a limited time on a first-come, first-served basis.

Grab them in time for the fourth expansion of Guild Wars 2, coming to GeForce NOW at launch on Tuesday, Aug. 22. The “Secrets of the Obscure” paid expansion includes a new storyline, powerful combat options, new mount abilities and more.

Racing Into the Weekend

Remnant II is one of the eight games available this week on GeForce NOW. Check out the complete list of new games:

• Remnant II (New release on Steam, July 25)
• Let’s School (New release on Steam, July 26)
• Grand Emprise: Time Travel Survival (New release on Steam, July 27)
• MotoGP23 (Steam)
• OCTOPATH TRAVELER (Epic Games Store)
• Pro Cycling Manager 2023 (Steam)
• Riders Republic (Steam)
• Starship Troopers: Extermination (Steam)

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

It’s up to you to save humanity from the Root. Which Archetype are you choosing:

Challenger
Medic
Gunslinger
Handler
Hunter

— NVIDIA GeForce NOW (@NVIDIAGFN) July 26, 2023