Editor’s note: This is one in a series of Meet the Omnivore posts, featuring individual creators and developers who use the NVIDIA Omniverse 3D simulation and collaboration platform to boost their artistic or engineering processes.
It was memories of playing Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros while growing up in Colombia’s sprawling capital of Bogotá that inspired Yenifer Macias’s award-winning submission for the #CreateYourRetroverse contest, featured above.
The contest asked NVIDIA Omniverse users to share scenes that visualize where their love for graphics began. For Macias, that passion goes back to childhood. She loved video games — but was all the more wowed by their art.
Now, using Omniverse, a physically accurate 3D design collaboration platform that runs on NVIDIA Studio products and supports the leading 3D content creation tools of the industry, Macias accelerates her work as a 3D artist — making environments and props for video games, animation, films and advertisements.
She aimed in her #CreateYourRetroverse scene, she said, to “immerse viewers in the game world for a bit and remind them of childhood.”
The Artist’s Journey
Macias loved to doodle and always knew she’d study art.
A 3D animation course she took at a vocational institute in Bogotá confirmed her passion. She wanted to make 3D art all day, every day. Due to financial hardships, however, Macias didn’t have a home computer.
To practice her graphics skills, Macias took classes and completed internships — and with her first paycheck as a 3D artist, she bought a PC to continue her projects at home.
Over the past eight years, Macias has completed a wide range of work including visual effects, architectural drawings and freelance animations. She uses design tools like Adobe Substance Painter, Autodesk Maya and ZBrush.
From Concept to Execution
For her #CreateYourRetroverse scene, Macias started with an initial sketch:
Based on references, she then created all of the props and objects for the environment from scratch in Autodesk Maya. Next, she brought her assets into the Omniverse Create app — using an Omniverse Connector — where she fine-tuned lighting, texture and render.
“I found Omniverse’s powerful render engine to be incredible — you can make changes to the lighting and materials, seeing the results in real time,” Macias said.
Despite being a first-time user of Omniverse, Macias said the Omniverse Create app for massive 3D world building helped her finish the project on a tight timeline and “was very user friendly.”
Looking forward, she plans to use Omniverse’s real-time collaboration feature to team up on projects with artists across the world.
With Omniverse, NVIDIA Studio creators like Macias can supercharge their artistic workflows with optimized RTX-accelerated hardware and software drivers, and state-of-the-art AI and simulation features.
Explore the NVIDIA Omniverse gallery, forums and Medium channel. Check out Omniverse tutorials on Twitter and YouTube, and join our Discord server and Twitch channel to chat with the community.