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 ...
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...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia backs audience-led filmmaking with new insight-driven initiativ...
02/07/2026
Screen Australia refines guidelines for Narrative Content Development and Docume...
02/07/2026
Maxon Autograph: Introduction to working with Tables
Simon Ubsdell July 1, 2026
0 Comments
An overview of Autograph's ridiculously powerful tables...
02/07/2026
Boston Conservatory's Soir e Breaks Records to Fund Student Scholarships The event achieved 127 percent of its fundraising goal in an evening celebrating ...
02/07/2026
How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Med Tech Without Missing a Beat What do the rehearsal room and the boardroom have in common? More than you might thin...
02/07/2026
Summer is heating up - and GeForce NOW is taking players along for the ride.
Start the month with Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs. Villains, bringing a galaxy fa...
01/07/2026
Broadcast Management Group (BMG) has announced the appointment of Kathy Samuels ...
01/07/2026
Shade has announced Custom Objects and Automations, a platform expansion releasing June 29, 2026, that adds database and workflow automation capabilities direct...
01/07/2026
FOR-A America has announced the addition of Jaz Wray and Fernando Cruz to its U.S. sales team. Both report to Ernie Leon, Senior VP and Head of Sales and Strate...
01/07/2026
NBC Sports will air all 15 MLB games nationally on Sunday, July 5, across NBC, P...
01/07/2026
Clear-Com has announced a wireless communications upgrade for Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, deploying FreeSpeak II and FreeSpeak Icon systems across both prod...
01/07/2026
England's performance team will use Sony's STATSports APEX GPS tracking system to monitor player physical data in real time during FIFA World Cup 2026 m...
01/07/2026
Adder Technology has announced the appointment of Neil Hillier as Chief Executive Officer, effective July 1, 2026. Hillier succeeds Adrian Dickens, who transiti...
01/07/2026
Bitcentral, Inc. has announced a strategic transaction creating two separate companies. The Production and Playout business will continue as Bitcentral, now own...
01/07/2026
DAZN has announced results from DAZN48, its creator initiative for the FIFA World Cup 2026. Launched in April 2026, the program received thousands of applicatio...
01/07/2026
Sarah Rose, VP, global services, Daktronics (NASDAQ: DAKT), will be inducted into the Information Display and Entertainment Association (IDEA) Hall of Fame at t...
01/07/2026
Gravity Media and the World Economic Forum's production team provided broadc...
01/07/2026
Insight Productions has announced the launch of Insight Storm, a 53-foot mobile broadcast unit built for esports production. The truck is built around a Ross Vi...
01/07/2026
ESPN has announced several content initiatives marking America's 250th anniversary, as part of The Walt Disney Company's Disney Celebrates America pro...
01/07/2026
Eleven production kits, REMI workflows, and cloud distribution bring 40 World Cu...
01/07/2026
The conference also discussed the opportunities offered an industry that is endu...
01/07/2026
The Mountain West Conference has announced the launch of MW , a direct-to-consumer streaming platform powered by Kiswe. The platform will carry live Mountain We...
01/07/2026
New AI Assistant, Multi-channel Audio, ARA2 improvements & more
Tracktion's DAW software has just received its latest major update, gaining a selection ...
01/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
01/07/2026
Exclusive run of limited-edition modelling pedals
Sweetwater and Andertons M...
01/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) is pleased to announce that the ca...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Manfrotto Introduces UNCOVER, the new premium camera bag collection for modern h...
01/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Powers Houston Tamil Sangam Literacy Competition
Brie Clayton July 1, 2026
0 Comments
Volunteers use ATEM Mini Pro, Blackmagic Desig...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
PlayBox Technology has published State of Broadcast Infrastructure 2026, an in-depth industry research report examining the technologies, operational challenges...
Reflections have never looked so good.
