Fasten your seatbelts. NVIDIA Research is revving up a new deep learning engine that creates 3D object models from standard 2D images - and can bring iconic cars like the Knight Rider's AI-powered KITT to life - in NVIDIA Omniverse.
Developed by the NVIDIA AI Research Lab in Toronto, the GANverse3D application inflates flat images into realistic 3D models that can be visualized and controlled in virtual environments. This capability could help architects, creators, game developers and designers easily add new objects to their mockups without needing expertise in 3D modeling, or a large budget to spend on renderings.
A single photo of a car, for example, could be turned into a 3D model that can drive around a virtual scene, complete with realistic headlights, tail lights and blinkers.
To generate a dataset for training, the researchers harnessed a generative adversarial network, or GAN, to synthesize images depicting the same object from multiple viewpoints - like a photographer who walks around a parked vehicle, taking shots from different angles. These multi-view images were plugged into a rendering framework for inverse graphics, the process of inferring 3D mesh models from 2D images.
Once trained on multi-view images, GANverse3D needs only a single 2D image to predict a 3D mesh model. This model can be used with a 3D neural renderer that gives developers control to customize objects and swap out backgrounds.
When imported as an extension in the NVIDIA Omniverse platform and run on NVIDIA RTX GPUs, GANverse3D can be used to recreate any 2D image into 3D - like the beloved crime-fighting car KITT, from the popular 1980s Knight Rider TV show.
Previous models for inverse graphics have relied on 3D shapes as training data.
Instead, with no aid from 3D assets, We turned a GAN model into a very efficient data generator so we can create 3D objects from any 2D image on the web, said Wenzheng Chen, research scientist at NVIDIA and lead author on the project.
Because we trained on real images instead of the typical pipeline, which relies on synthetic data, the AI model generalizes better to real-world applications, said NVIDIA researcher Jun Gao, an author on the project.
The research behind GANverse3D will be presented at two upcoming conferences: the International Conference on Learning Representations in May, and the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, in June.
From Flat Tire to Racing KITT Creators in gaming, architecture and design rely on virtual environments like the NVIDIA Omniverse simulation and collaboration platform to test out new ideas and visualize prototypes before creating their final products. With Omniverse Connectors, developers can use their preferred 3D applications in Omniverse to simulate complex virtual worlds with real-time ray tracing.
But not every creator has the time and resources to create 3D models of every object they sketch. The cost of capturing the number of multi-view images necessary to render a showroom's worth of cars, or a street's worth of buildings, can be prohibitive.
That's where a trained GANverse3D application can be used to convert standard images of a car, a building or even a horse into a 3D figure that can be customized and animated in Omniverse.
To recreate KITT, the researchers simply fed the trained model an image of the car, letting GANverse3D predict a corresponding 3D textured mesh, as well as different parts of the vehicle such as wheels and headlights. They then used NVIDIA Omniverse Kit and NVIDIA PhysX tools to convert the predicted texture into high-quality materials that give KITT a more realistic look and feel, and placed it in a dynamic driving sequence.
Omniverse allows researchers to bring exciting, cutting-edge research directly to creators and end users, said Jean-Francois Lafleche, deep learning engineer at NVIDIA. Offering GANverse3D as an extension in Omniverse will help artists create richer virtual worlds for game development, city planning or even training new machine learning models.
GANs Power a Dimensional Shift Because real-world datasets that capture the same object from different angles are rare, most AI tools that convert images from 2D to 3D are trained using synthetic 3D datasets like ShapeNet.
To obtain multi-view images from real-world data - like images of cars available publicly on the web - the NVIDIA researchers instead turned to a GAN model, manipulating its neural network layers to turn it into a data generator.
The team found that opening the first four layers of the neural network and freezing the remaining 12 caused the GAN to render images of the same object from different viewpoints.
Keeping the first four layers frozen and the other 12 layers variable caused the neural network to generate different images from the same viewpoint. By manually assigning standard viewpoints, with vehicles pictured at a specific elevation and camera distance, the researchers could rapidly generate a multi-view dataset from individual 2D images.
The final model, trained on 55,000 car images generated by the GAN, outperformed an inverse graphics network trained on the popular Pascal3D dataset.
Read the full ICLR paper, authored by Wenzheng Chen, fellow NVIDIA researchers Jun Gao and Huan Ling, Sanja Fidler, director of NVIDIA's Toronto research lab, University of Waterloo student Yuxuan Zhang, Stanford student Yinan Zhang and MIT professor Antonio Torralba. Additional collaborators on the CVPR paper include Jean-Francois Lafleche, NVIDIA researcher Kangxue Yin and Adela Barriuso.
The NVIDIA Research team consists of more than 200 scientists around the globe, focusing on areas such as AI, computer vision, self-driving cars, robotics and graphics. Learn more about the company's latest research and industry breakthroughs in NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's k
Most recent headlines
17/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
17/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
17/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
17/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
17/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
17/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
17/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
17/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
17/12/2025
KPop Demon Hunters Stars Visit Berklee for Weeklong Celebration Andrew Choi and EJAE, who voiced the film's main characters and contributed to its soundtr...
17/12/2025
With the new season of Dancing with the Stars shimmering in the not-too-distant future this New Year, the celebrity and dancer pairings of the twelve couples ha...
16/12/2025
Hawkins has landed on Spotify, just in time for Stranger Things Season 5, Volume...
16/12/2025
Wherever you are, your favorite music and audio content should go seamlessly with you. That's why Spotify has partnered with NAVER Corp, Korea's leading...
16/12/2025
2025 Wrapped arrived bigger and bolder than ever. This year's experience is designed to be ultra personal and shareable, with new features like Wrapped Part...
16/12/2025
Three 12-kilowatt Advanced Electric Propulsion System thrusters, supplied by L3Harris Technologies, form the core of Gateway's propulsion system. Pictured i...
16/12/2025
The challenge facing America's defense industrial base is not just about speed - its about rebuilding the foundation that makes speed possible. Our nations ...
16/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
16/12/2025
SEVILLE, Spain Canal Sur, the public broadcasting service for Andalusia, Spain, has completed a total technology refresh based on Pebble's resilient, softwa...
16/12/2025
NEW YORK Teleprompting hardware provider Telescript International has acquired all software code and intellectual property previously owned by Telescript West. ...
16/12/2025
As cable operators face increased competition from 5G fixed wireless access providers, a new report from Ookla Research finds that T-Mobile is the FWA speed lea...
16/12/2025
Apple has announced a major upgrade to the Apple TV app for device owners outside the Apple ecosystem with news that the Apple TV app for Android now supports G...
16/12/2025
Space42 grows Direct-to-Device partner ecosystem through a Memorandum of Underst...
16/12/2025
16 Dec 2025
VEON Announces Release Date for Full Year and Fourth Quarter 2025 R...
16/12/2025
16 Dec 2025
VEON's Kyivstar Invests in Renewable Energy in Ukraine with Acq...
16/12/2025
Back to All News
Emma Appleton, Fares Fares, Frida Gustavsson and Jakob Oftebro...
16/12/2025
Back to All News
Docu-reality My Korean Boyfriend Gets a Trailer and Premiere D...
16/12/2025
Harmonic's XOS Advanced Media Processor Improves Streaming Video Quality and Boosts Viewer Engagement SAN JOSE, Calif. - Dec. 16, 2025 - Harmonic (NASDAQ: ...
16/12/2025
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 t...
16/12/2025
Singer -songwriter Brian Kennedy has been announced as the final celebrity dance...
15/12/2025
Harlem Globetrotters Celebrate 100th Anniversary With New Brand Campaign From Th...
15/12/2025
Top L-R: La Tierra Del Valor (The Home of the Brave), Mangittatuarjuk (The Gnawe...
15/12/2025
L3Harris will leverage 15 years of experience supporting the E-4B Nightwatch and...
15/12/2025
CONWAY, Ark. In a notable example of how the loss of federal funding is forcing public stations to make massive cuts and operational changes, the statewide pub...
15/12/2025
BOULDER, Colo. Public Media Venture Group (PMVG), Venture Technologies Group (VTG), and WQED have completed a multipart agreement that they say will significant...
15/12/2025
Cape Town, November 13, 2025 - SES and International artist and humanitarian, Fo...
15/12/2025
Luxembourg, December 15, 2025 - SES, a leading space solutions company, and Abra Group launched fast and reliable multi-orbit inflight connectivity service on t...
15/12/2025
How Rivian s Design Puts Drivers First-And Why That Matters Published on Dec 15, 2025 Categories: Business Solutions
LinkedIn Corporate Communications
Sha...
15/12/2025
Space42 and Cobham Satcom completed the full range of advanced terminals for the...
15/12/2025
15 Dec 2025
VEON's Beeline Kazakhstan Delivers First Starlink Direct to Cel...
15/12/2025
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor finds himself the topic of year's cracker jokes
Oasis, David Harbour, Celebrity Traitors and Angela Rayner all feature in this y...
15/12/2025
Comscore Expands Cross-Platform Campaign Measurement to Include Audio and Social New capabilities strengthen cross-platform campaign reporting suite; CCR rebran...
15/12/2025
NVIDIA today announced it has acquired SchedMD - the leading developer of Slurm, an open-source workload management system for high-performance computing (HPC) ...
15/12/2025
RT .ie has reached one billion page views this year and is on track to finish 2025 2% ahead of last year. Average time spent on the site is up 3% on 2024, with ...
15/12/2025
Modern workflows showcase the endless possibilities of generative and agentic AI on PCs.
Of many, some examples include tuning a chatbot to handle product-supp...
13/12/2025
Powering Client Growth: Horizon Deepens Nielsen Partnership, Enabling More Effic...
13/12/2025
In a move that will help it offer more flexible and less costly programming options, YouTube TV has announced that it will be launching YouTube TV Plans with mo...
13/12/2025
SINGAPORE Magna Systems has designed, built and completed what is believed to be the first full UHD and IP-based OB truck in Southeast Asia for a Singapore medi...
12/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Everything You Need to Know for Next Week's Big Sho...
12/12/2025
Hailey Gates at the Atropia premiere (photo by George Pimentel / Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)...
12/12/2025
Last month, Spotify announced a new collaboration with the ATP Tour, the global governing body of men's professional tennis, aimed at bringing the next gene...
Fasten your seatbelts. NVIDIA Research is revving up a new deep learning engine that creates 3D object models from standard 2D images - and can bring iconic cars like the Knight Rider's AI-powered KITT to life - in NVIDIA Omniverse.
