In the fast-paced world of game development, enhancing creative workflows is key to delivering stunning and immersive experiences for players. With the advancements of AI technology, character animators can push the boundaries of real-time workflows to elevate their pipeline and explore endless generative concept variations. GenAI unlocks new possibilities allowing designers, animators and artists to unify applications and assets in real time.
Streamlined Development Pipeline
Recently, character animator Sir Wade Neistadt embarked on a project to test the power and reliability of the Precision 7780 mobile workstation with an NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation laptop GPU. Neistadt utilized a collection of studio tools: high-end motion capture hardware from Xsens, IK Retargeting in Unreal Engine 5 and Niagara particle systems. Neistadt was able to work with real-time lighting enabled and perfect framerates to preview animation within the scene context and have several different 3D applications running simultaneously. The project aimed to test high-fidelity motion capture and prop tracking workflows for a multi-character choreographed action scene using OpenUSD (Universal Scene Description) as the bridge between various applications.
Neistadt used the NVIDIA Omniverse platform for developing and connecting OpenUSD applications, along with its Unreal Engine 5.3 and native Maya connectors, which further streamlined the development pipeline. NVIDIA Omniverse allows integration of preferred tools seamlessly with a rich catalog of third-party extensions that can be easily modified and adjusted for specific workflows. The platform allowed Neistadt to model assets in Maya, adjust layouts in Unreal to fit the scene composition and drop material presets from the Omniverse sample app USD Composer—all while viewing the scene in a ray-traced environment. The ability to receive immediate feedback within the final scene’s context allows for an unbroken flow of the creative thought process.
“The system allowed me to simply focus on the work without being hindered by issues or needing to wait for previews, and that’s every artist’s best-case scenario.”
– Sir Wade Neistadt, Character Animator
Unleashing Creative Inspiration
The thought process for this project was driven by Neistadt’s desire to test knowledge of real-time workflows and explore studio tools. Drawing inspiration from movies and games, such as Edge of Tomorrow, Terminator, Robocop, Code 8 and District 9, the aim was to create a serious action-adventure story with a fantasy or sci-fi twist. Using GenAI tools, such as Stable Diffusion in Blender, DALL-E and ChatGPT to brainstorm concept ideas, allowed Neistadt to transform his simple doodles into a storyboard, fueling his inspiration and steering creative direction.
The scene features a four-character choreographed action fight scene, incorporating full-body motion capture with independent prop tracking. Neistadt captured each character separately, essentially shadow boxing against the other recordings. This allowed for quick iteration within the creative feedback loop, enabling the preview of new ideas and resulting in significant project evolutions. These changes included complete rewrites of shot layout, blocking and character performances within a timeframe that would typically be dedicated to a single, inflexible idea.
Dell Precision AI-ready workstations powered by NVIDIA RTX professional GPUs deliver the performance, stability and reliability creators need to unlock new possibilities in their 3D workflows.
“Throughout this entire process, I was in the middle of a cross-country move that would normally put any projects like this on pause. Despite all that I had going on, I was able to complete every step of this project without issue. Because of the experience, I’m confident that using Dell and NVIDIA technologies can allow me to pursue just about any creative project, regardless of the scope, without issue,” Neistadt said.
Watch Sir Wade Neistadt’s behind-the-scenes experience with Dell Precision workstations and NVIDIA Omniverse here, and try out NVIDIA Omniverse for free.
