2021 Marked the Year of Virtual Worlds with Innovative Tools from NVIDIA Omniverse

An illustration with several Omniverse graphics highlights. NVIDIA Omniverse for virtual world building brought design collaboration and digital twins to center stage in 2021.

2021 was a landmark year for NVIDIA Omniverse, the multi-GPU enabled open platform for 3D design collaboration and real-time simulation. The platform became generally available to millions of creators, developers, and enterprise leaders looking to enhance 3D workflows and develop physically accurate digital twins.

Recognized by TIME Magazine as a Best Invention, NVIDIA Omniverse is laying the foundation for robust virtual world creation and opening new paths to market for developers around the world.

Figure 1. The Omniverse Showroom app gives beginners a look into the foundational technologies of Omniverse, with new content regularly released.

With the growth of the platform last year came major new updates and releases for NVIDIA Omniverse Apps including Omniverse Create, Omniverse View, Omniverse Audio2Face, Omniverse Machinima, Omniverse Kaolin, and Omniverse XR Remote.

Powerful new features and frameworks include:

Omniverse Farm, a systems layer for users to orchestrate multiple computing resources to execute batch and interactive tasks.
Omniverse VR, a new functionality coming to Omniverse Kit, with the world’s first full-fidelity, real-time ray traced VR
Omniverse Avatar, a developer’s technology platform for generating interactive virtual robots easily customizable for virtually any industry.
Omniverse Replicator, a powerful synthetic-data-generation engine that produces physically simulated synthetic data for training deep neural networks.
Connectors to applications like Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya, and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. Many more are in the pipeline, with an Adobe Substance 3D Material Extension coming soon.
A custom Blender 3.0 Alpha release with advanced USD and MDL support, opening Omniverse to millions of Blender artists
Omniverse-ready USD assets from leading 3D marketplaces including TurboSquid by Shutterstock, CGTrader, Sketchfab, and Twinbru.

Over 100,000 individual creators, designers, engineers, and students downloaded the NVIDIA Omniverse platform in 2021, while numerous leading companies explored NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise to unite their teams, tools, and assets in a shared virtual space.

Figure 2. NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise is an end-to-end real-time collaboration and true-to-reality simulation platform for complex design workflows.

Some of the incredible work from the community, partners, customers, and senior NVIDIA Omniverse designers and engineers made in Omniverse are listed below.

Enterprise Highlights

Factory of the Future, BMW Group

At GTC in Spring of 2021, BMW Group debuted how they are using NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise to create a digital twin of their automotive factory to reduce planning times and improve flexibility and precision.

Figure 3. Inside the factory simulation digital twin of BMW’s assembly system—powered by Omniverse.

Creator Highlights

A Graphics Flashback, Yenifer Macias

One of the #CreateYourRetroverse contest winners, Yenifer, used Omniverse Create, Adobe Substance Painter, Autodesk Maya, and ZBrush to design this nostalgic scene.

A retro-inspired arcade bedroom scene created with Omniverse. — *Figure 4. A retro-inspired scene from the #CreateYourRetroverse by third-place winner Yenifer Macias.*

Animated Films with Omniverse Audio2Face, Jae Solina

The creator behind the popular YouTube channel, JSFILMZ, Jae Solina is using NVIDIA Omniverse Audio2Face to save time and money on virtual production. “With Omniverse, I don’t have to wait a full week to render a 30-second animation,” Solina said. “The rendering speed in Omniverse is superb and saves me a lot of time, which is important when balancing my filmmaking, noncreative work, and family.”

Figure 5. Solina’s Omniverse Audio2Face Metahuman tutorial.

Character Creation, Benny Dee

Cartoon Network animator Benny Sokomba Dazhi, Benny Dee, uses the Reallusion iClone Omniverse Connector to streamline his 3D workflow. “The main challenges I faced when trying to meet deadlines were long render times and difficulties with software compatibility, but using an Omniverse Connector for Reallusion’s iClone app has been game-changing for my workflow,” he said.

Figure 6. Dazhi’s holiday video showcasing an Omniverse and Reallusion iClone workflow.

Developer Highlights

Connecting in the Metaverse: The Making of the GTC Keynote

At SIGGRAPH, NVIDIA premiered a documentary highlighting the creative minds and revolutionary technologies behind the GTC 2021 keynote, detailing how Omniverse was used to create a virtual version of NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang.

Figure 7. See how a small team of artists were able to blur the lines between real and rendered with the NVIDIA GTC keynote in this behind-the-scenes documentary.

New Trainings and Tools for Developers Building on the Omniverse Platform

NVIDIA launched a new self-paced Deep Learning Institute training course, Getting Started with Universal Scene Description for Collaborative 3D Workflows, that familiarizes users with Universal Scene Description. The inaugural NVIDIA Omniverse Developer Day was also introduced at GTC in November, providing developers access to technical and business-focused sessions for building, extending, and connecting tools and platforms to the growing Omniverse ecosystem.

Resources

To learn more about NVIDIA Omniverse highlights from 2021, and to get an insider’s look at the 2022 product roadmap:

Watch the recent Twitch livestream on-demand.
Download NVIDIA Omniverse for free to get started.
Watch step-by-step tutorials on the Omniverse YouTube channel.
Follow Omniverse on Instagram, Twitter, and Medium.
Check out the Omniverse forums to chat with the community and join the Discord Server.