3D Creators Share Art From the Heart This Week ‘In the NVIDIA Studio’

Join challenges from the NVIDIA Omniverse and Instant NeRF teams; plus, check out creator sessions at NVIDIA GTC, a conference for the era of AI and the metaverse.
by Gerardo Delgado

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.

Love and creativity are in the air this Valentine’s Day In the NVIDIA Studio, as 3D artist Molly Brady presents a parody scene inspired by the iconic The Birth of Venus painting by Sando Botticelli.

Plus, join the #ShareYourHeART challenge by sharing what Valentine’s Day means to you in a scene built with NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for creating and operating metaverse applications. Use the hashtag to post artwork — whether heartened by love, chocolate, teddy bears or anything else Valentine’s-themed — for a chance to be featured across NVIDIA social media channels.

3D artist Tanja Langgner’s delectable scene with chocolate hearts, featured below, is just one example.

Also, get a chance to win a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti GPU in the NVIDIA Instant NeRF VR sweepstakes. Named by TIME Magazine as one of the best inventions of 2022, NVIDIA Instant NeRF enables creators to rapidly create 3D models from 2D images and use them in virtual scenes. The tool provides a glimpse into the future of photography, 3D graphics and virtual worlds. Enter the sweepstakes by creating your own NeRF scene, and look to influencer Paul Trillo’s Instagram for inspiration.

New NVIDIA Studio laptops powered by GeForce RTX 40 Series Laptop GPUs are now available, including MSI’s Stealth 17 Studio and Razer’s 16 and 18 models — with more on the way. Learn why PC Gamer said the “RTX 4090 pushes laptops to blistering new frontiers: Yes, it’s fast, but also much more.”

Download the latest NVIDIA Studio Driver to enhance existing app features and reduce repetitive tasks. ON1 NoNoise AI, an app that quickly removes image noise while preserving and enhancing photo details, released an update speeding this process by an average of 50% on GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs.

And NVIDIA GTC, a global conference for the era of AI and the metaverse, is running online March 20-23, with a slew of creator sessions, Omniverse tutorials and more — all free with registration. Learn more below.

A Satirical Valentine

Molly Brady is a big fan of caricatures.

“I love parody,” she gleefully admitted. “Nothing pleases me more than taking the air out of something serious and stoic.”

Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus painting, often referenced and revered, presented Brady with an opportunity for humor through her signature visual style.

According to Brady, “3D allows you to mix stylistic artwork with real-world limitations,” which is why the touchable, cinematic look of stop-motion animation heavily inspires her work.

“Stop-motion reforms found items into set pieces for fantastical worlds, giving them a new life and that brings me immense joy,” she said.

Brady’s portfolio features colorful, vibrant visuals with a touch of whimsical humor.

Brady composited Birth of Venus (Redux) with placeholder meshes, focusing on the central creature figure, before confirming the composition and scale were to her liking. She then sculpted finery details in the flexible 3D modeling app Foundry Modo, assisted by RTX acceleration in OTOY OctaneRender, which was made possible by her GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs.

Advanced sculpting was completed in Modo.

She then applied materials and staged lighting with precision, and added speed with the RTX-accelerated ray tracing renderer. Brady has the option to deploy Octane Render, her preferred 3D renderer, in over 20 3D applications, including Autodesk 3ds Max, Blender and Maxon’s Cinema 4D.

After rendering the image, Brady deployed several post-processing features in Adobe Photoshop to help ensure the colors popped, as well as to add grain to compensate for any compression when posted on social media. Her RTX GPU affords over 30 GPU-accelerated features, such as blur gallery, object selection, liquify and smart sharpen.

“Art has been highly therapeutic for me, not just as an outlet to express emotion but to reflect how I see myself and what I value,” Brady said. “Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the pressure of expectation, whether internal or external, I redirect my efforts and instead create something that brings me joy.”

3D artist Molly Brady.

View more of Brady’s artwork on Instagram.

Valen(time) to Join the #ShareYourHeART Challenge

The photorealistic, chocolate heart plate beside a rose-themed mug and napkins, featured below, is 3D artist and illustrator Tanja Langgner’s stunning #ShareYourHeART challenge entry.

Hungry?

Langgner gathered assets and sculpted the heart shape using McNeel Rhino and Maxon ZBrush. Next, she assembled the pieces in Blender and added textures using Adobe Substance 3D Painter. The scene was then exported from Blender as a USD file and brought into Omniverse Create, where the artist added lighting and virtual cameras to capture the sweets with the perfect illuminations and angles.

“The main reason I started using Omniverse was its capability to link all my favorite apps,” Langgner said. “Saving time on exporting, importing and recreating materials in each app is a dream come true.”

Learn more about Langgner’s creative journey at the upcoming Community Spotlight livestream on the Omniverse Twitch channel and YouTube on Wednesday, Feb. 22, from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. PT.

Join the #ShareYourHeART challenge by posting your own Valentine’s-themed Omniverse scene on social media using the hashtag. Entries could be featured on the NVIDIA Omniverse Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts.

Creative Boosts at GTC 

Experience this spring’s GTC for more inspiring content, expert-led sessions and a must-see keynote to accelerate your life’s creative work.

Catch these sessions live or watch on demand:

  • 3D Art Goes Multiplayer: Behind the Scenes of Adobe Substance’s “End of Summer” Project With Omniverse [S51239]
  • 3D and Beyond: How 3D Artists Can Build a Side Hustle in the Metaverse [SE52117]
  • NVIDIA Omniverse User Group [SE52047]
  • Accelerate the Virtual Production Pipeline to Produce an Award-Winning Sci-Fi Short Film [S51496]
  • 3D by AI: How Generative AI Will Make Building Virtual Worlds Easier [S52163]
  • Custom World Building With AI Avatars: The Little Martians Sci-Fi Project [S51360]
  • AI-Powered, Real-Time, Markerless: The New Era of Motion Capture [S51845]

Search the GTC session catalog or check out the Media and Entertainment and Omniverse topics for additional creator-focused talks.

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 more about Omniverse on Instagram, Medium, Twitter and YouTube for additional resources and inspiration. Check out the Omniverse forums, and join our Discord server and Twitch channel to chat with the community.