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.
3D artist Edward McEvenue shares his imaginative, holiday-themed short film The Great Candy Inquisition this week In the NVIDIA Studio. The artist, recently featured in our Meet the Omnivore series, is creating the film with Autodesk 3ds Max, Houdini, Adobe Substance 3D and Unreal Engine — as well as the NVIDIA Omniverse Create app.
In addition, NVIDIA artist Michael Johnson brings holiday cheer with more winter-themed artwork built in Omniverse Create.
Santa brought creative app upgrades and optimizations early, as video-editing app Filmora added NVIDIA AV1 dual encoder support with GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, slashing export times in half.
Technology company CORSAIR’s iCUE software release 4.31 enabled NVIDIA Broadcast integration, unlocking Noise Reduction and Room Echo cancellation features in systems powered by RTX 40 Series GPUs.
Get into the holiday mood with incredible wintery art in the latest “Studio Standouts,” featuring pieces from the #WinterArtChallenge.
There’s still time to enter by sharing winter-themed art on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook for a chance to be featured on NVIDIA Studio’s social media channels. Be sure to tag #WinterArtChallenge to join.
Hide Your Candy
The Great Candy Inquisition is a whimsical short film full of childlike wonder. Jealous that children often only want candy, the reindeer toys, nutcrackers and other animated characters in the film go on a sticky, sweet inquisition to remove candy from the toy kingdom. Will the gingerbread boy, whose gingerbread parents are sent to the “gulnog” for refusing to comply, be able to stop them?
Find out by watching the final video next year, being beautifully pieced together in NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for building and operating metaverse applications, using the Omniverse Create app for large-scale world-building and scene composition.
Virtually all of McEvenue’s creative workflow is accelerated by his GeForce RTX 3080 Ti GPU. As the founder of EDSTUDIOS, McEvenue takes on freelance work for which it’s critical that he and his team complete tasks quickly and efficiently.
Modeling for The Great Candy Inquisition is being split between Houdini, which has an RTX-accelerated Karma XPU renderer that enables fast rendering of complex 3D models and simulations, and Autodesk 3ds Max, which uses RTX-accelerated AI denoising to unlock smooth, interactive rendering. 3D assets were sourced from Sketchfab and Turbosquid, using the built-in asset browser within Omniverse Create.
McEvenue then built textures and materials in Adobe Substance 3D Painter and Designer, which he baked (rather than gingerbread men or women) in seconds, thanks to RTX-accelerated light and ambient occlusion.
Animations in Unreal Engine 5 were quick and easy, McEvenue said. RTX-accelerated rendering guaranteed photorealistic detail, further enhanced by AI features in NVIDIA DLSS to upscale frames rendered at lower resolution while still retaining high-fidelity details.
At this juncture, McEvenue imported 3D elements into Omniverse Create to piece together stunning scenes.
Omniverse Create houses the advanced, multi-GPU-enabled, path-traced RTX Renderer capable of global illumination, reflections and refractions — all at the speed of light, powered by an RTX GPU. McEvenue tickled and touched up scenes without changes in the stunning level of detail. Omniverse Create includes access to NVIDIA vMaterials for even more realistic scenes and true-to-reality visualizations.
“The ability to progressively iterate on designs and see your work rendered in real time in the viewport, with full-fidelity lighting, materials and post-production effects like DOF, Bloom and atmospheric fog makes all the difference in finalizing artwork,” said McEvenue.
With The Great Candy Inquisition close to completion, the team applied final details in their preferred 3D apps by live-syncing Omniverse Connectors in Autodesk 3ds Max, Adobe Substance 3D Painter and Unreal Engine, simultaneously, despite working in several different physical locations. Working in such a cohesive virtual environment eliminated the need to download, reupload and redownload files.
EDSTUDIOS’ upcoming projects will be completed much quicker thanks to GeForce RTX GPUs, McEvenue said. “Real-time rendering is the future, and only possible with GPU-powered systems — and NVIDIA GPUs lead the pack,” the artist said.
Check out Edward McEvenue’s website for more inspirational artwork.
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Omniverse
NVIDIA artist Michael Johnson is a big fan of the holiday season. Unable to resist the temptation to create winter-themed art in Omniverse Create, he decided to work on a piece for the #WinterArtChallenge, which runs through the end of the month and is open to creatives from around the globe. Johnson spent a week creating different assets and assembled the image.
A steaming mug of hot cocoa — studded with creamy marshmallows and emblazoned with “Happy Holidays, From Ours to Yours” — sets the scene. Scattered around the mug are squares of chocolate, gingerbread cookies, shimmering ornaments and a furry throw, all aglow from twinkling holiday lights.
“The holiday season tends to make me feel warm inside,” Johnson said. “Listening to music, decorating a tree with family and wearing cozy clothes while eating sweet treats — this is the feeling I wanted to give off with this piece of art.”
Like McEvenue, Johnson maneuvered his piece quickly, changing angles and lighting in the viewport with little to no delay, while incredibly realistic visuals populated the scene.
Johnson manipulates ornaments, in the video below, resizing assets and adding fine detail.
He then easily applied colors and textures with the Adobe Substance 3D Painter Connector.
Download Omniverse to build magnificent virtual worlds.
Creative App Updates Come Early This Holiday Season
Wondershare’s intuitive video-editing app, Filmora, with over 100 million users, has integrated NVIDIA AV1 dual encoders in the latest version 12 update, powered by GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs. The dual encoders can work in tandem, dividing work automatically to double output and cut export times in half.
GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs also unlock faster decoding with NVIDIA decoder (NVDEC) for smooth playback of high-resolution and high-dynamic-range videos, plus faster rendering of GPU-accelerated video effects.
Learn more about the Filmora update.
A leader in high-performance gear and systems for gamers, content creators and PC enthusiasts, CORSAIR has released iCUE software now with support for the new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs.
iCUE Version 4.31 and later updates will integrate NVIDIA Broadcast technology to take advantage of AI-powered features. Noise Reduction and Room Echo cancellation eliminate keyboard typing, annoying microphone static, loud PC fans and more, ensuring content creators and creative professionals can find a quiet place to work with their systems powered by GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs.
For the latest creative app updates, download the monthly NVIDIA Studio Driver.
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