Congratulations to the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) for the introduction of NanoVDB as part of the OpenVDB project! Developed at NVIDIA by OpenVDB inventor Ken Museth, NanoVDB will enable faster performance, easier development, and GPU acceleration.
OpenVDB is an industry standard library for manipulating sparse dynamic volumes, used by VFX studios for creating realistic volumetric images such as water/liquid simulations and environmental effects like clouds and ice. It has been used on films and shows including Frozen 2, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Stranger Things and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.
From asset storage to simulations and rendering, it is widely used at DNEG and we are excited for NanoVDB to push OpenVDB’s performance even further!
“OpenVDB is a large part of our VFX pipeline. NanoVDB offers exciting new potential for asset storage, simulation and rendering. It allows us to design more GPU-tailored VDB tools for faster and more responsive artist workflows,” says Nick Avramoussis, FX R&D Programmer at DNEG and member of the OpenVDB Technical Steering Committee (TSC). “We’re excited to investigate how NanoVDB can be combined with OpenVDB AX to provide an artist friendly interface for customizable GPU kernels throughout our pipeline.”
Founded in 2018 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (AMPAS), the ASWF aims at ensuring a healthy open source community. It provides a neutral forum for open source software developers in the motion picture and broader media industries to share resources and collaborate on technologies for image creation, visual effects, animation and sound. With Graham Jack, DNEG’s CTO as one of the members of the Governing Board, DNEG is a proud and active member of the Academy Software Foundation.
You can find more information about NanoVDB here.