Reflections have never looked so good.
Artists are using NVIDIA RTX GPUs to take real-time graphics to the next level, creating visuals with rendered surfaces and light reflections to produce incredible photorealistic details.
The Marbles RTX technology demo, first previewed at GTC in March, ran on a single NVIDIA RTX 8000 GPU. It showcased how complex physics can be simulated in a real-time, ray-traced world.
During the GeForce RTX 30 Series launch event in September, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang unveiled a more challenging take on the NVIDIA Marbles RTX project: staging the scene to take place at night and illustrate the effect of hundreds of dynamic, animated lights.
Marbles at Night is a physics-based demo created with dynamic, ray-traced lights and over 100 million polygons. Built in NVIDIA Omniverse and running on a single GeForce RTX 3090 GPU, the final result showed hundreds of different light sources at night, with each marble reflecting lights differently and all happening in real time.
Beyond demonstrating the latest technologies for content creation, Marbles at Night showed how creative professionals can now seamlessly collaborate and design simulations with incredible lighting, accurate reflections and real-time ray tracing with path tracing.
Pushing the Limits of Creativity
A team of artists from NVIDIA collaborated and built the project in NVIDIA Omniverse, the real-time graphics and simulation platform based on NVIDIA RTX GPUs and Pixar's Universal Scene Description.
Working in Omniverse, the artists were able to upload, store and access all the assets in the cloud, allowing them to easily share files across teams. They could send a link, open the file and work on the assets at the same time.
Every single asset in Marbles at Night was hand-made, modeled and textured from scratch. Marbles RTX Creative Director Gavriil Klimov bought over 200 art supplies and took reference photos of each to capture realistic details, from paint splatter to wear and tear. Texturing - a process that allows artists to transfer details from one model to another - was done entirely in Substance Painter, with multiple variations for each asset.
In Omniverse, the artists manually crafted everything in the Marbles project using RTX Renderer and a variety of creative applications like 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, ZBrush and Blender. The simulation platform enabled the creative team to view all content at the highest possible quality in real time, resulting in shorter cycles and more iterations.
Nearly a dozen people were working on the project remotely from locations as far afield as California, New York, Australia and Russia. Although the team members were located around the world, Omniverse allowed them to work on scenes simultaneously thanks to Omniverse Nucleus. Running on premises or in the cloud, the module enabled the teams to collaborate in real time across vast distances.
The collaboration-based workflow, combined with the fact the project's assets were stored in the cloud, made it easier for everyone to access the files and edit in real time.
The final technology demo completed in Omniverse resulted in over 500GB worth of texture data, over 100 unique objects, more than 5,000 meshes and about 100 million polygons.
The Research Behind the Project
NVIDIA Research recently released a paper on the reservoir-based spatiotemporal importance resampling (ReSTIR) technique, which details how to render dynamic direct lighting and shadows from millions of area lights in real time. Inspired by this technique, the NVIDIA rendering team, led by distinguished engineer Ignacio Llamas, implemented an algorithm that allowed Klimov and team to place as many lights as they wanted for the Marbles demo, without being constrained by lighting limits.
Before, we were limited to using less than 10 lights. But today with Omniverse capabilities using RTX, we were able to place as many lights as we wanted, said Klimov. That's the beauty of it - you can creatively decide what the limit is that works for you.
Traditionally, artists and developers achieved complex lighting using baked solutions. NVIDIA Research, in collaboration with the Visual Computing Lab at Dartmouth College, produced the research paper that dives into how artists can enable direct lighting from millions of moving lights.
The approach requires no complex light structure, no baking and no global scene parameterization. All the lights can cast shadows, everything can move arbitrarily and new emitters can be added dynamically. This technique is implemented using DirectX Ray Tracing accelerated by NVIDIA RTX and NVIDIA RT Cores.
Get more insights into the NVIDIA Research that's helping professionals simplify complex design workflows, and learn about the latest announcement of Omniverse, now in open beta.
Additional Resources:
Register for the Omniverse open beta
Learn about Universal Scene Description at NVIDIA
Get the latest news on NVIDIA Omniverse
Dive deeper into Pixar USD
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
22/07/2026
RT REPORTS NET SURPLUS OF 22.5 MILLION IN 2025...
22/07/2026
In the Opinion of the Censor airs Monday 27 July at 9.35pm on RT One and RT Player
In the Opinion of the Censor looks at how films for theatrical release wer...
22/07/2026
Before a healthcare robot can be useful in the real world, it has to learn how the physical world pushes back. Anatomy varies. Instruments bend, press, slip and...
21/07/2026
New research involving a cross-section of Mongolias independent media landscape finds enthusiasm for AI as a tool to improve efficiency, sustainability and resi...
21/07/2026
With winners Spain having already paraded the World Cup trophy through Madrid in front of millions of fans and the dust now settling on an epic tournament of th...
Reflections have never looked so good.
