NVIDIA Omniverse Real-time Collaboration Capabilities Are a Hit

The beta release is wildly popular, with the product release expected in July.

NVIDIA’s Omniverse offers multiuser collaboration for all different CAD formats. (Image courtesy of NVIDIA.)

NVIDIA has been quite popular lately after its real-time collaboration, visualization and simulation platform NVIDIA Omniverse, introduced as an open beta in December 2020, received close to 50,000 downloads.

As a follow-up this past April, NVIDIA announced that NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise, a platform for collaboration, visualization and simulation that enables global 3D design teams to work in real time in a shared virtual space  while using different software applications simultaneously. Early access is slated to open in June 2021 with a commercial release set for the fall.

Since the open beta in December, more than 400 companies across industries like architecture, manufacturing, product design, and media and entertainment have tested Omniverse open beta, including car manufacturer BMW Group and architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox. Software developers like Bentley, which announced that it is developing applications using the NVIDIA Omniverse platform to enable photorealistic, real-time visualization and simulation of digital twins for infrastructure projects, are even jumping on board. As of April, Bentley had updated its iTwin platform to include some NVIDIA Omniverse capabilities.

(Video courtesy of NVIDIA.)

Part of the appeal for the 3D design community is that with Omniverse Enterprise they can use popular CAD, building information modeling (BIM) and visualization software applications through Omniverse Connectors and have access to advanced visualization and simulation tools powered by NVIDIA RTX real-time tracing technology and NVIDIA PhysX real-time physics engine. Connectors currently include Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya and Revit, Epic Games Unreal Engine 4, Graphisoft ArchiCAD, McNeel & Associates Rhino, Reallusion Character Creator, Trimble SketchUp and more. Many others are in development, including Connectors for BlenderCLO3D Marvelous Designer, PTC Onshape, and Reallusion iClone.

With these Connectors, Omniverse enables users to simultaneously perform modeling, layout, shading, animation, lighting, special effects and rendering in their preferred application and collaborate to create a scene. And users don’t have to worry about exchanging massive files as all changes to a project are automatically reflected right in the Omniverse environment. This is enabled by Universal Scene Description (USD) technology, a framework for collaboration that allows the interchange of 3D computer graphics data and was developed by Pixar.

“USD is really a game changer.… You can kind of think of it as the HTML of 3D,” said Richard Kerris, general manager of Omniverse at NVIDIA. “What it [USD] did was solved the problem of how to unify all the different parts of the 3D world and maintain their assets. It actually laid the groundwork for a common foundation for 3D across the industry. You can kind of think of it as the HTML of 3D. What it does is it takes all of the information of a 3D scene and packages it up and brings it forward. And so, there’s been wide adoption of USD across multiple verticals, not just the entertainment space where it started from, but we see it in architectural, manufacturing, design.”

In simpler terms, Kerris said that USD works like Google Docs, where you don’t have to keep uploading a file when changes are made because they are automatically updated as you work.

Kerris, who has been with NVIDIA now for about two and a half years, goes way back with NVIDIA and has worked with the company for over 20 years, mainly during his time at Lucasfilm, where he used NVIDIA products. He’s been in the media and entertainment (M&E) space for most of his career, and even worked for Pixar.

We caught up with Kerris on Zoom at his home music studio in San Jose, Calif. to learn more about the new platform and how it developed.

Richard Kerris of NVIDIA.

Kerris said that NVIDIA launched a similar platform called NVIDIA Holodeck in 2017.

“NVIDIA Holodeck had some very interesting collaboration capabilities, but what it didn’t have is wide adoption throughout the community. And one of the challenges that Omniverse has set out to solve is something that’s been pervasive throughout all areas of industries using 3D, and that is compatibility between products and collaboration between locations. And it used to be that if you were working on a project with multiple teams, they would have to take their data and export it out and send it to that team, who would import that data to try to make up what they were doing. And it was very laborious and very, very challenging. And that’s been going on across the multiple industries of 3D.

“We based Omniverse on USD at that time and we made a bet, seeing what they were doing and said yeah, this will solve some of the challenges we had with Holodeck and allow us to have a common platform going forward—and it’s been spot on. Take that and expand it out to the world of 3D, and that’s kind of what USD provides is that foundation and common environment for us to work with.

“By having a common foundation, you can connect into it with other 3D products—Maya, Revit SketchUp Rhino—you name it. And once they are on the platform, they’re all kind of in the same playground, meaning that I don’t have to export and import between them anymore—they’re all live in that platform.”

Omniverse Enterprise includes the NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise Nucleus server, which manages the database shared among clients, NVIDIA Omniverse Connectors, along with NVIDIA Omniverse View and NVIDIA Omniverse Create. NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise will also include a new version of Omniverse View, refactored to be a powerful, interactive visualization tool for project managers, clients and reviewers to visualize physically accurate RTX renderings in real time, as well as Omniverse Create for technical designers, engineers and specialists across all industries.

Sounds promising, right? You may be wondering how much it costs. Kerris said that Omniverse Enterprise is for companies of all sizes, but that given the cost and name, it may appeal more to larger companies with bigger budgets than to smaller organizations.

NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise software is available on a subscription basis and includes NVIDIA’s enterprise support services.

The Omniverse Enterprise solution starts at $14,000 per year for a workgroup of 5 concurrent 3D creators and an unlimited number of “viewers”—nontechnical project managers, reviewers or clients who are interactively viewing project models in Omniverse in real time.

 The Omniverse Enterprise has three subscription offerings:

1. Omniverse Enterprise Nucleus Subscription—$5,000 per CPU socket per year

• Includes collaboration and core microservices such as Live Edit and Large File Transfer

2. Omniverse Enterprise Creator Subscription—$1,800 per concurrent user per year

• Requires a minimum order quantity of 5 users
• Includes use of applications, toolkits, Connectors, extensions, and microservices such as rendering

3. Omniverse Enterprise Viewer Subscription—free for unlimited viewers

• Includes use of Omniverse View visualization app, for reviewers and “read-only” collaborators

Omniverse Enterprise can be deployed on a local area network (LAN) or a hybrid solution of local and cloud, with globally dispersed teams working from a central data center.

Small workgroups in a LAN can deploy Omniverse Enterprise across any NVIDIA RTX professional workstation or laptop. Larger enterprises teams on various devices can work virtualized from the data center with NVIDIA RTX Virtual Workstations (vWS), or they can connect to the same Omniverse environment using a local NVIDIA RTX professional workstation or laptop.

Kerris said there are many different deployments as with any platform. For instance, users can run Omniverse on a workstation or laptop either on-premise or on their machines locally where everyone has access to it, or they can run it in their own private cloud if they want to run Nucleus in the cloud.

How are customers using NVIDIA Omniverse and what are they saying?

Kerris said the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is the most active user base for the software right now.

For instance, global architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) has used the platform to bring together its worldwide offices and have its staff work simultaneously on projects.

“The future of architectural design will rely on the accessibility of all design data in one accurate visualization and simulation application. We’ve been testing NVIDIA Omniverse and it shows great potential to allow our entire design team to use a variety of applications to collaborate in real time—wherever they’re working,” said Cobus Bothma, director of applied research at KPF.

(Image courtesy of KPF.)

Foster + Partners, the UK architectural design and engineering firm, is also implementing Omniverse for collaborative design, and its visualization capabilities to its teams spread across 14 countries.

“Omniverse is a revolutionary platform that has allowed our designers to collaborate and visualize multiple design changes to a scene simultaneously while working on their software of choice. As we can review design options in parallel, we have much more time for creative design and visualization. Integration of futuristic technologies such as machine learning will bring more opportunities to assist the creative process in the future,” said Martha Tsigkari, partner with the Applied Research and Development Group at Foster + Partners.

The BMW Group is using NVIDIA Omniverse to design a digital twin of one of its factories. The platform has enabled thousands of planners, product engineers and facility managers within the company’s global production network to collaborate in a single virtual environment to design, plan, engineer and simulate its complex manufacturing systems before a factory is built or a new product is integrated.

Kerris said that BMW Group has seen close to 30 percent in cost improvements around its factory because Omniverse has enabled the company to simulate an entire factory in a digital twin environment. “It allows them to understand and make decisions in a digital world before committing to it in the physical world,” said Kerris.

“NVIDIA Omniverse and NVIDIA AI give us the chance to simulate all 31 factories in our production network. All elements of the complete factory model including the associates, the robots, the buildings and the assembly parts can be simulated to support a wide range of AI-enabled use cases such as virtual factory planning, autonomous robots, predictive maintenance and big data analytics. These new innovations will reduce the planning times, improve flexibility and precision, and at the end produce 30 percent more efficient planning processes. Omniverse is a game-changer that is setting the standard for collaboration platforms for our industry,” said Milan Nedeljkovic, member of the board of management of BMW AG, responsible for production.

AI factory. (Image courtesy of NVIDIA.)

Below we’ll look at some more of the key features and apps available with NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise.

The NVIDIA Omniverse View app is a tool that enables users to visualize design projects in physically accurate photorealism. As mentioned earlier, Omniverse View is in the process of being updated, but currently the features are as follows.

Specifically, Omniverse View enables users to collaboratively build, modify and enhance a complex scene with physically accurate materials and leading-edge simulation tools.

With Omniverse View, users can explore any data that is saved to Omniverse. Multiple designs can be imported and viewed in an interactive visualization through the various Omniverse Connectors mentioned above. This enables users to combine separate design files from different software applications into one project and make iterations to the project or individual design documents. Omniverse View tracks project modifications and updates so that users don’t have to worry about that.

In addition, Omniverse View has a number of visualization, rendering and simulation tools.

For instance, users can export photorealistic renderings as high-fidelity images and 360-degree panoramas or high-quality captures with a movie tool. Users can also add trees, grass and vegetation into a scene with the Paint tool and translate existing assets they own or ones they choose from populated Omniverse View libraries of materials, skies, trees and foliage.

The Material Mapping tool lets users change materials without having to edit individual meshes.

Plus, there is a configurable Section tool for creating visualizations for building interiors to evaluate things like lighting schemes and floorplans.

Omniverse View includes the NVIDIA RTX Renderer, which creates visualizations in real time. The multi-GPU renderer features two modes: RTX-enabled ray tracing for lightning-fast performance, and path tracing for the highest-fidelity results.

Not only that, but Omniverse View has simulation tools for sun studies, which can be played as an animation. In fact, any animation saved in Omniverse from connected applications can be replayed in the Omniverse View app.

The NVIDIA Omniverse Create app is a tool for scene composition that allows technical users to interactively assemble, light, simulate and render scenes in real time.

Omniverse Create enables technical artists, designers and engineers to build complex, physically accurate, real-time simulations, images or movies with its toolkit built on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD).

Create users can work in the same live environment or publish separately and combine design files from different industry solutions into one project, where Create automatically handles updates and modifications.

Create lets users navigate, modify and render data. Like View, Create can connect to many of the top industry software brands using Omniverse Connectors to publish 3D models, materials, animations and lighting into USD format.

Create has its own unique set of layout tools to help users make photorealistic visualizations as well. For instance, users can move 3D objects with Zero Gravity Mode, a placement tool that lets users easily manipulate assets. In addition, users can translate existing assets they own or they can choose from Create’s libraries of assets, including trees, furniture, roads and people. And with Omniverse Connectors, designers can also import landscapes from solutions like Epic Games Unreal Engine 4.

Create also supports animation from tools like Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, including features such as animation clips, skeletal animation, animation caches, and blend shapes. In Create, users also have the ability to play back animations in real time or render into movies.

Omniverse Create includes the NVIDIA RTX Renderer, which creates visualizations in real time. The multi-GPU renderer features two modes: RTX-enabled ray tracing for lightning-fast performance, and path tracing for the highest-fidelity results. Users can export photorealistic renderings as high-fidelity images and 360-degree panoramas, or as high-quality captures with a movie tool. Plus, Create enables users to render billions of polygons with global illumination, reflections and refractions.

Create includes advanced simulation capabilities for true-to-reality physics, destruction, fire and smoke simulation. Users can also apply tools like SideFX Houdini to export USD animations and effects that can be brought into Create and rendered.

Simulations can be exported as an MP4, sequential images, or an interactive stand-alone playback with the app’s Movie Maker tool.

NVIDIA also offers other apps for an additional cost, including NVIDIA Isaac Sim, a robotics app designed to import, build and test robots in a photorealistic and high-fidelity physics 3D environment. For a complete list of available apps, visit NVIDIA Omniverse Apps.

Not only are design professionals interested in Omniverse, but software developers like Bentley Systems are also integrating the platform into their own solutions. Bentley has extended Omniverse to its Bentley iTwin platform, a cloud platform that enables engineering firms and owner-operators to create, visualize and analyze digital twins of infrastructure assets.

These days, Bentley is sticking to what it does best and is focusing on solutions for the infrastructure industry by taking advantage of technology that’s already available such as NVIDIA Omniverse. Bentley has also partnered with Microsoft Azure for cloud-based capabilities in the past. So, it makes sense that Bentley would turn to NVIDIA for its graphics processing unit (GPU) computing solutions.

Essentially what the iTwin/Omniverse integration provides is a way for iTwin users to render massive infrastructure models photorealistically.

The Bentley press release stated that “this integration allows engineering-grade, millimeter-accurate digital content to be visualized with photorealistic lighting and environmental effects on multiple devices including web browsers, workstations, tablets, and virtual reality and augmented reality headsets from anywhere in the world.”

Bentley digital twin. (Image courtesy of NVIDIA.)

In closing, Kerris said that NVIDIA has many enterprise customers anxious to get their hands on the Enterprise version. Whether you are a designer or developer, you can get a feel for how Omniverse works today, but the catch is that you must have an NVIDIA RTX-based system.

To download the open beta of NVIDIA Omniverse for individuals, visit NVIDIA Omniverse.

Those interested in the Omniverse Enterprise early access program available in July can apply here:  https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/omniverse/enterprise/.

Stay tuned this fall for the commercial release of Omniverse Enterprise from NVIDIA’s partner network of computer makers.