Meet the Omnivore: Indie Showrunner Transforms Napkin Doodles Into Animated Shorts With NVIDIA Omniverse

Editor’s word: This put up is part of our Meet the Omnivore collection, which options particular person creators and builders who use NVIDIA Omniverse to speed up their 3D workflows and create digital worlds.

3D artist Rafi Nizam has worn many hats since beginning his profession as an internet designer greater than 20 years in the past, again when “designing for the net was nonetheless wild,” as he put it.

He’s now changing into a pacesetter within the subsequent wave of creation — utilizing prolonged actuality and digital manufacturing — with the assistance of NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for constructing and connecting customized 3D pipelines.

The London-based showrunner, artistic marketing consultant and leisure government beforehand labored at promoting companies and led artistic groups at Sony Photos, BBC and NBCUniversal.

Along with being an award-winning impartial animator, director, character designer and storyteller who serves as chief artistic officer at Masterpiece Studio, he’s head of story at recreation developer Opis Group, and showrunner at Lunar-X, a next-gen leisure firm.

Plus, in recent times, he’s taken on what he considers his most vital function of all — being a father. And his artwork is now usually impressed by household.

“Being current within the second with my kids and observing the world with out preconceptions usually sparks concepts for me,” Nizam mentioned.

His animated shorts have to date targeted on themes of self care and discovering stillness amidst chaos. He’s at work on a brand new computer-graphics-animated collection, ArtSquad, wherein fun-loving, vibrant 3D characters type a band, taking part in devices manufactured from classroom objects and fixing issues by the facility of artwork.

“The myriad of 3D apps in my animation pipeline can sync and are available collectively in Omniverse utilizing the Common Scene Description framework,” he mentioned. “This interoperability permits me to be 10x extra productive when visualizing my present ideas — and I’ve reduce my outsourcing prices by 50%, as Omniverse allows me to render, lookdev, lay out scenes and manipulate cameras on my own.”

From Idea to Creation

Nizam mentioned he usually begins his tasks with “good ol’ pencil and paper on a Put up-it word or serviette, each time inspiration strikes.”

He then takes his concepts to a drawing desk, the place he creates a easy sketch earlier than honing in on pre-production utilizing digital content-creation apps like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Procreate.

Nizam subsequent creates 3D manufacturing belongings from his 2D sketches, manipulating them in digital actuality utilizing Adobe Substance 3D Modeler software program.

“Issues begin to transfer fairly quickly from right here,” he mentioned, “as a result of VR is such an intuitive solution to make 3D belongings. Plus, rigging and texturing within the Masterpiece Studio artistic suite and Adobe Substance 3D might be close to automated.”

The artist makes use of the Omniverse Create XR spatial computing app to put out his scenes in VR. He blocks out character actions, designs units and finalizes textures utilizing Unreal Engine 5, Autodesk Maya and Blender software program.

Efficiency seize by Notion Neuron Studio rapidly will get Nizam near closing animation. And with the simply extensible USD framework, Nizam brings his 3D belongings into the Omniverse Create app for fast look improvement. Right here he enhances character animation with built-in hyperrealistic physics and renders closing pictures in actual time.

“Omniverse affords me a simple entry level to USD-based workflows, reside collaboration throughout disciplines, fast visualization, real-time rendering, an accessible physics engine and the simple modification of preset simulations,” Nizam mentioned. “I can’t wait to get again in and check out extra concepts.”

At residence, Nizam makes use of an NVIDIA Studio workstation powered by an NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPU. To create on the go, the artist turns to his NVIDIA Studio laptop computer from ASUS, outfitted with a GeForce RTX 3060 GPU.

As well as, his complete workflow is accelerated by NVIDIA Studio, a platform of NVIDIA RTX and AI-accelerated creator apps, Studio Drivers and a set of unique artistic instruments.

When not creating transmedia tasks and franchises for his shoppers, Nizam might be discovered mentoring younger creators for Sony Expertise League, taking part in make imagine together with his kids or chilling together with his two cats, Hamlet and Omelette.

Be a part of In on the Creation

Creators and builders the world over can obtain NVIDIA Omniverse without spending a dime, and enterprise groups can use the platform for his or her 3D tasks.

Take a look at paintings from different “Omnivores” and submit tasks within the gallery. Join your workflows to Omniverse with software program from Adobe, Autodesk, Epic Video games, Maxon, Reallusion and extra.

Comply with NVIDIA Omniverse on Instagram, Medium, Twitter and YouTube for added sources and inspiration. Take a look at the Omniverse boards, and be part of our Discord server and Twitch channel to talk with the group.