Generative AI is capable of creating more realistic verbal and facial expressions for digital humans than ever before.

This week at GDC 2024, NVIDIA announced that leading AI application developers across a wide range of industries are using NVIDIA digital human technologies to create lifelike avatars for commercial applications and dynamic game characters. NVIDIA enables developers with state-of-the-art digital human technologies, including NVIDIA ACE for speech and animation, NVIDIA NeMo for language, and NVIDIA RTX for ray-traced rendering.

Developers showcased new digital human technology demos that used NVIDIA ACE microservices at GDC.

Embracing ACE: Partners Transforming Pixels Into Personalities  

Top game and digital human developers are pioneering ways ACE and generative AI technologies can be used to transform interactions between players and NPCs in games and applications.

Developers embracing ACE include: Convai, Cyber Agent, Data Monsters, Deloitte, HippocraticAI, IGOODI, Inworld AI, Media.Monks, miHoYo, NetEase Games, Perfect World Games, Openstream, OurPalm, Quantiphi, Rakuten Securities, Slalom, SoftServe, Tencent, Ubisoft, UneeQ and Unions Avatars.

Demos Showcase New NVIDIA Digital Human Technologies

NVIDIA worked with developers Inworld AI and UneeQ on a series of new demos to display the potential of digital human technologies.

Inworld AI created Covert Protocol in partnership with NVIDIA, allowing players to become a skilled private detective, pushing the possibilities of non-playable character interactions. The demo taps into NVIDIA Riva automatic speech recognition (ASR) and NVIDIA Audio2Face microservices alongside the Inworld Engine.

The Inworld Engine brings together cognition, perception and behavior systems to create an immersive narrative along with the beautifully crafted RTX-rendered environments and art.

UneeQ is a digital human platform specialized in creating high-fidelity AI-powered 3D avatars for a range of enterprise applications. UneeQ’s digital humans power interactive experiences for brands enabling them to communicate with customers in real-time to give them confidence in their purchases. UneeQ integrated NVIDIA Audio2Face microservice into its platform and combined it with Synanim ML to create highly realistic avatars for a better customer experience and engagement.

New NVIDIA RTX Technologies for Dynamic Scenes

NVIDIA RTX revolutionized gaming several years ago by offering a collection of rendering technologies that enable real-time path tracing in games and applications.

The latest addition, Neural Radiance Cache (NRC), is an AI-driven RTX algorithm to handle indirect lighting in fully dynamic scenes, without the need to bake static lighting for geometry and materials beforehand.

Adding flexibility for developers, NVIDIA is introducing Spatial Hash Radiance Cache (SHaRC), which offers similar benefits as NRC but without using a neural network, and with compatibility on any DirectX or Vulkan ray tracing-capable GPU.

RTX. It’s On: More RTX and DLSS 3.5 Titles 

There are now over 500 RTX games and applications that have revolutionized the ways people play and create with ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS and AI-powered technologies.  And gamers have a lot to look forward to with more full ray tracing and DLSS 3.5 titles coming.

Our latest innovation, NVIDIA DLSS 3.5, features new DLSS Ray Reconstruction technology. When activated, DLSS Ray Reconstruction replaces hand-tuned ray tracing denoisers with a new unified AI model that enhances ray tracing in supported games, elevating image quality to new heights.

Full Ray Tracing and DLSS 3.5 are coming to both Black Myth: Wukong and NARAKA: BLADEPOINT. And Portal with RTX is available now with RTX DLSS 3.5, enhancing its already beautiful full ray tracing. DLSS 3.5 With Ray Reconstruction will also be coming soon to the NVIDIA RTX Remix Open Beta, enabling modders to add RTX technologies like full ray tracing and DLSS 3.5 into classic games.

Star Wars Outlaws will launch with DLSS 3 and ray-traced effects. Ray tracing joins DLSS 3 in Diablo IV March 26. The First Berserker: Khazan will launch with DLSS 3. And Sengoku Destiny introduced support for DLSS 3 and is available now.

See our Partner Ecosystem at GDC

NVIDIA and our partners will showcase the latest in digital human technologies throughout the week of GDC. Here’s a quick snapshot:

• Inworld AI (Booth P1615): Attendees will get the chance to try out Covert Protocol for themselves live at GDC.
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (Booth S941): See Covert Protocol in action, and discover the “code assist” ability of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). Register and join an exclusive networking event with Oracle and NVIDIA AI experts on March 21, open to women and allies in the gaming industry to build connections with leading voices in AI.
• Dell Technologies and International Game Developer Association (Booth S1341): Playtest while building a game-ready asset on a workstation with large GPU memory. Speak to Sophie, an AI-powered assistant created by UneeQ and powered by NVIDIA ACE. Attendees can see the latest debugging and profiling tools for making ray-traced games​ in the latest Nsight Graphics ray tracing demo.
• AWS: Developers can register and join NVIDIA, AWS, game studios, and technology partners as they discuss the game tech used to build, innovate, and maximize growth of today’s games at the AWS for Games Partner Showcase on March 20th.

Stop by these key sessions:

• Transforming Gameplay with AI NPCs: This session featuring Nathan Yu, director of product at Inworld AI, Rajiv Gandhi, master principal cloud architect at Oracle Cloud and Yasmina Benkhoui, generative AI strategic partnerships lead at NVIDIA, will showcase successful examples of developers using AI NPCs to drive core game loops and mechanics that keep players engaged and immersed. Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the potential of AI NPCs to create new and immersive experiences for players.
• Alan Wake 2: A Deep Dive into Path Tracing Technology: This session will take a deep dive into the path tracing and NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction technologies implemented in Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake 2. Developers can discover how these cutting-edge techniques can enhance the visual experience of games.

Download our show guide to keep this summary on hand while at the show.

Get Started

Developers can start their journey on NVIDIA ACE by applying for our early access program to get in-development AI models.

If you want to explore available models, evaluate and access NVIDIA NIM, a set of easy-to-use microservices designed to accelerate the deployment of generative AI, for RIVA ASR and Audio2Face on ai.nvidia.com today.

RTXGI’s NRC and SHaRC algorithms are also available now as an experimental branch.