Conference Changing the Game
ONLINE Meidinger-Saal presented by Unity Technologies Friday, May 06, 20:45

Omniverse – a new way to work collaboratively in real time and non-linearly

Video on demand

Imagine being able to create a model in a popular 3D modeling program like Maya, Houdini, or Blender, and then seeing a photorealistic ray-traced rendering of it in real-time. And then, changing some part of it, lights, the materials, update a model and it changes immediately. Would that be a fantastic productivity enhancement? Especially considering doing that, you normally involve three or more programs and a couple of libraries.

Not too long ago, no one expected to be able to do such a thing. Instead, creators spent too much time being an unwilling IT grunt. Artists working in studios, impatient with vendor formats and incompatibilities set about making changes, first with the Alembic framework developed by Sony Pictures. Then in 2016, Pixar released its universal scene description specification, USD, as an open-source solution. Many in the media and entertainment community quickly embraced it. Support has continued and by 2019 it had accumulated increased support among software vendors including Autodesk, Foundry, Maxon, SideFx, and more.

Nvidia saw the potential for USD in M&E, AEC, and beyond. As a result, the company established a dedicated team to expand on USD creating tools, plug-ins, and applications. The result is Omniverse, which has become an ongoing universal interoperability platform designed for collaboration and simulation. It is a stage designed as an interface for any 3D application to enable rich interactive experiences. Content creators can now work as their imagination and creativity take them. They will not lose the thread by being a slave to the machine. Now the machine works for and with them.

Traditionally, edits made in one program would be exported and then imported into another one. But now, using Omniverse edits made in one program get reflected at once in all associated programs. This is the long-sought dream of consolidating the production pipeline to a single viewing and editing environment. The result will be unimaginable improvements in productivity, accuracy, and collaboration. It will also free designers to create as they can think.

Jeff Kember, Director of Product Management for Omniverse Real-Time Demonstrations, Director of Executive Briefing Centers and Director of the Omniverse Technical Evangelist Team, NVIDIA

Jeff Kember - NVIDIA Director of Product Management for Omniverse Real-Time Demonstrations, Director of Executive Briefing Centers and Director of the Omniverse Technical Evangelist Team.

As a Creative Technologist, Jeff has worked as a Computer Graphics Supervisor at Framestore, Tippett Animation and Animal Logic. Over his 30+ year career, 25 years were spent in film and gaming. He has worked at a variety of companies including Pixar, Industrial Light + Magic, Sony Imageworks, Digital Domain, LucasArts and Blizzard/Activision.

Jeff is a board member for the Academy Software Foundation and a member of the VES. 

Before joining NVIDIA, Jeff was a Technical Director in the Office of the CTO at Google Cloud. 

NVIDIA Omniverse is a computer graphics simulation platform which focuses on real-time, collaborative workflows.

Jon Peddie, President & Founder, Jon Peddie Research

Dr. Jon Peddie is one of the pioneers of the graphics industry, and formed Jon Peddie Research (JPR) to provide customer intimate consulting and market forecasting services. Peddie lectures at numerous universities world-wide, conferences, and events on topics pertaining to graphics technology and the emerging trends in digital media technology. He was the president of The Siggraph Pioneers, and he is an advisor to the Siggraph Executive Committee, and in 2018 he was accepted as an ACM Distinguished Speaker.

Peddie has published hundreds of papers, and authored and contributed to fourteen books, his most recent, "Augmented Reality, where we all will live,” was an released in 2018, and “Ray Tracing a Tool for All” came out in 2019. He is currently working “The History of the GPU.

Chris Vienneau, SVP, M&E, Jon Peddie Research

Chris is a senior leader with 25+ years of experience developing tools and services for the entertainment industry for customers such as Disney, Electronic Arts, and Google. He has managed market-leading tools like Maya, FBX, and Arnold generating over $100m per year. He has fostered innovation on several groundbreaking projects like Bifrost, ShaderX, and Arnold GPU and has several authored patents. He has overseen partnerships with companies like Apple, Adobe, and Nvidia. Chris is a huge advocate for standards and open-source having driven Autodesk's contributions to the Academy Software Foundation, USD, and Materialx and is currently helping out on bringing to life the 2030 vision for production at MovieLabs.