NVIDIA recently revealed how 3D artist Rafi Nizam used NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for building and connecting custom 3D pipelines to create animated show ArtSquad. As a part of Meet the Omnivore series, the London-based showrunner, creative consultant and entertainment executive who previously worked at advertising agencies and led creative teams at Sony Pictures, BBC and NBCUniversal, creates a simple sketch before honing in on pre-production using digital content-creation apps like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Procreate.
His new computer-graphics-animated series, ArtSquad, has fun-loving, vibrant 3D characters form a band, playing instruments made of classroom objects and solving problems through the power of art.
“The myriad of 3D apps in my animation pipeline can sync and come together in Omniverse using the Universal Scene Description framework. This interoperability allows me to be 10x more productive when visualizing my show concepts — and I’ve cut my outsourcing costs by 50 per cent, as Omniverse enables me to render, lookdev, lay out scenes and manipulate cameras by myself,” Nizam said in a blog by NVIDIA .
He creates 3D production assets from his 2D sketches, manipulating them in virtual reality using Adobe Substance 3D Modeler software.
“Things start to move pretty rapidly from here; because VR is such an intuitive way to make 3D assets. Plus, rigging and texturing in the Masterpiece Studio creative suite and Adobe Substance 3D can be near automatic,” he said.
The artist uses the Omniverse Create XR spatial computing app to lay out his scenes in VR. He blocks out character actions, designs sets and finalizes textures using Unreal Engine 5, Autodesk Maya and Blender software.
“Omniverse offers me an easy entry point to USD-based workflows, live collaboration across disciplines, rapid visualzation, real-time rendering, an accessible physics engine and the easy modification of preset simulations. I can’t wait to get back in and try out more ideas,” he mentioned further.
Performance capture through Perception Neuron Studio quickly gets Nizam close to final animation. And with the easily extensible USD framework, Nizam brings his 3D assets into the Omniverse Create app for rapid look development. Here he enhances character animation with built-in hyper realistic physics and renders final shots in real time.
In addition to being an award-winning independent animator, director, character designer and storyteller who serves as chief creative officer at Masterpiece Studio, Nizam is head of story at game developer Opis Group, and showrunner at Lunar-X, a next-gen entertainment company. For his work, the artist uses the NVIDIA Studio workstation.
