NVIDIA GPUs Used To Create Academy Award Nominated Movies Including Avatar 2 & The Batman

What do the movies All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Top Gun Maverick have in common? Outside of being nominated in the Visual Effects category for the 95th annual Academy Awards on Sunday, March 12, the five movies also share a common graphics technology for their visual effects, powered by NVIDIA RTX GPUs.

Over the last fifteen years, NVIDIA's technologies and advancements have helped all films to be nominated for Best Visual Effects by the Academy Awards. NVIDIA technologies, such as ray tracing in real-time, AI modeling and simulation, and virtual productions, are all possible in today's television and film.

Weta FX, one of the most prominent award-winning studios, worked on the visual effects of the newest Avatar movie, Avatar: The Way of Water. The company delivered a fantastic 3,240 shots comprising 98% of what audiences see in the film, most featuring lifelike water. Weta FX was required to push the boundaries of realism in the sequel's water environments, especially in shots where clothing and skin were needed to appear as natural as possible with realistic water drips and water flow on the body. This required the visual effects team to develop a new toolset specifically focused on realistic water imagery that would assist with rendering images and more.

The process is quite revolutionary. The visual effects studio began with performance captures during pre-production using "a real-time, GPU-based ocean spectrum deformer." This was the starting point for Weta FX to create realistic water on the set. Next, the company introduced "a new suite of water solvers." Weta FX utilized the company's Loki framework, designed in-house for multiphysics simulation. The framework couples several solvers for any configuration, including the rendering of hair, clothing, air, and water to be simulated in real-time.

Additionally, the studio introduced new AI learning models to assist with images and maps to composite along with neural networks to render musculature and facial animations.

Weta FX was also onboard for the movie The Batman by enhancing the filmed shots of the highway chase scene between Batman and The Penguin and adding computer-generated renders for lighting, raindrops, water effects from the movement of vehicles, and lighting effects between streetlights and rain. The studio, such as the Batcave and City Hall in Gotham, also rendered some background environments.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever also incorporated water into the film more significantly. Weta FX used its toolset for the underwater scenes to create a higher level of realism in the movie. A combination of water tanks used for filming in addition to "dry-for-wet shots" made hyper-realistic moments in the film.

Method Studios, another visual effects studio that utilized NVIDIA technology, aided filmmakers with the movie Top Gun: Maverick. This visual effects studio started with over 800 hours of filmed aerial stunts in addition to air and ground footage of jets to create 2,400 VFX scenes. A combination of planes, missiles, smoke, and explosions throughout the film

Cine Chromatix and VFX Supervisor Markus Frank for the movie All Quiet on the Western Front ensured that fine details to build the visual effects for the film did not go unnoticed, and once again, NVIDIA technology assisted in making the film a nominee for Best Visual Effects for this year's Academy Awards. You can see the team's individual steps here to bring the film to life.

NVIDIA GTC, the online global technology conference, will be held between March 20 to 23. You can see more of the company's advancements that range in film and so much more in less than a few weeks.

News Source: NVIDIA