
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
11/12/2025
Thomson and the Center for News, Technology and Innovation (CNTI) convened a two-day workshop in Sarajevo bringing together more than 35 journalists, editors, p...
11/12/2025
ESPN's Aims for Spectacular With Heisman Trophy ShowEvent firsts include 1080p HDR production airing on both national broadcast and cableBy Dan Daley, Audio...
11/12/2025
SVG Students To Watch: Frankie Patton, University of ColoradoThe 2025 grad is hitting the ground running as a PA on national broadcastsBy Brandon Costa, Directo...
11/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Technology Exhibits Preview, Part 3By SVG Staff
Thursday, December 11, 2025 - 7:24 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The 2...
11/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: What Makes Gen Z, X, and Y Fans Tick? Dave Gavant of WSC Sports Go...
11/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: 5G, MXL, Spectrum Loss, and Outerspace on Tap for Tues...
11/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: David Levy, Turner Titan and Master of Al...
11/12/2025
SVG Launches Follow the Money' Podcast: Go Inside the Sports Media Biz with...
11/12/2025
A Deep Dive Inside Game Creek Video's Bird and Magic Mobile Units, Home to A...
11/12/2025
How Sound Effects for Monsters Funday Football' Emulated the Sonic Soul of ...
11/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: CSP Mobile Productions' Len Chase on Upgrading Tr...
11/12/2025
Having the right song soundtrack your moves can make all the difference when gam...
11/12/2025
It's been a big year for Taylor Swift. Her highly anticipated album The Life...
11/12/2025
New satellites for the SDA Tranche 1 Tracking program in production at L3Harris&...
11/12/2025
The Meadowlands system, a compact and mobile version of the CCS, uses ground-based radio frequency units to disrupt satellite communications....
11/12/2025
The L3Harris demonstration united tactical communications devices, counter-UAS c...
11/12/2025
Throughout 2025, L3Harris delivered innovative solutions to U.S. and allied warfighters across every domain.
With an unrelenting commitment to excellence, our...
11/12/2025
A Majority of the World's Population (51%) Identify As Soccer Fans
The 2025 MLB postseason notched 58.2 billion viewing minutes, up +24% from the prior y...
11/12/2025
WALTHAM, Mass. Video-over-IP software provider Zixi said Roi Sasson has joined the company as vice president, engineering....
11/12/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. In a move that highlights the growing competition between broadcasters and CTV platforms for local advertising, LG Ad Solutions has announ...
11/12/2025
Boston Conservatory Earns Several Best of Accolades in 2025 Highlights include a faculty Grammy win, a seventh consecutive year on Playbill's list of co...
11/12/2025
RASTATT, Germany Lawo and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) have partnered to launch the SMPTE ST 2110 Practical Lab, an immersive ...
11/12/2025
PHILADELPHIA Comcasts Xfinity operating brand has announced the launch of new national video plans with all-in pricing that the operator said will provide custo...
11/12/2025
After eight years of declines, MoffettNathansons new Cord Cutting Monitor for Q3 2025 shows that pay TV subscribers to linear TV packages rose by 303,000, the f...
11/12/2025
Happy Holidays from Berklee Enjoy this years holiday student-performance video.
December 10, 2025
By
Office of the President
Dear Berklee community,
As w...
11/12/2025
11 Dec 2025
VEON's Banglalink Receives Regulatory Approval to Launch Digita...
11/12/2025
Thursday 11 December 2025
Sky Arts paints a picture of Britain's beauty as ...
11/12/2025
Back to All News
Meet the Most Relatable Hero This Holiday: Main Trailer and Po...
11/12/2025
Back to All News
High Tides: Netflix Shares Release Date Final Season
Credit: Netflix / Thomas Nolf
Entertainment
11 December 2025
GlobalNetherlandsBelgium...
11/12/2025
Back to All News
Made in Texas: How Netflix House Dallas Is Leaving a Lasting Footprint
From left to right: America's Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerl...
11/12/2025
Back to All News
The Second Part of One Hundred Years of Solitude Will Arrive i...
11/12/2025
It's not every day we're asked to create a website for a classical musician!
So, we were delighted to help pianist Georgina Duncan as she embarks on he...
11/12/2025
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) today announced additional programm...
11/12/2025
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
Irish golfing hero Shane Lowry...
11/12/2025
RT Sport Awards 2025 live on RT One and RT Player at 8:05pm on Saturday 20 December
On Saturday 20 December live on RT One and RT Player at the earlier ti...
11/12/2025
Hunters, saddle up - adventure awaits in the cloud.
Journey into the world of M...
11/12/2025
Sash is ready to samba as Fair City star Stephanie Kelly is revealed as the late...
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
10/12/2025
Sound-Alike Commercials Are Part of Sports' Soundtrack Johnny Cash for Coca-Cola is the latest in a long litany of sonic approximationsBy Dan Daley, Audio ...
10/12/2025
Immersive Sound Is Logical Next Step for Sports VenuesSound-systems suppliers are sanguine, but the market has its challengesBy Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednes...
10/12/2025
The Romans Built Arenas for Immersive Sound 2,000 Years AgoThe historic Arena of Nimes in France is still in use todayBy Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Wednesday, De...
10/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Audio Workshop Hits on Immersive, Virtualized, and Next...
10/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Technology Exhibits Preview: Audio SpotlightBy SVG Staff
Wednesday, December 10, 2025 - 8:21 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlig...
10/12/2025
SVG Europe Audio: Listening to the sounds of powder and ice at Milano Cortina wi...
10/12/2025
Advancements in audio technology: Capturing the atmosphere of live sports By David Davies
Tuesday, November 25, 2025 - 09:27
Print This Story
Although wor...
10/12/2025
Everything smelled of popcorn: The art of bringing the complex sound of esports ...
10/12/2025
Top L-R: Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, Hanging by a Wire, Broken English, Buddy
C...
10/12/2025
For the first time, Spotify is giving users the power to steer the algorithm. Gustav S derstr m, Spotify's Co-President, CPO, and CTO, shares the vision beh...
10/12/2025
L3Harris' new contract for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System Insensitive ...
10/12/2025
L3Harris Meadowlands system has been designed with an open architecture software system that allows for more flexible and efficient software updates. This capab...