Reviewer
Next you will use Omniverse View to explore the scene, make waypoints, create cameras, and set up renders. You will use sun study to change time of day and review the scene during day and night. First, we will need to connect to the nucleus server within Omniverse View.
Next, all 3 users will load Omniverse Launcher and then open Omniverse Create.
Double Click on the NVIDIA Omniverse Launcher shortcut on your VM’s desktop.
Once the Launcher has opened, navigate to the Library tab.
Click View.
Click the Launch button.
Nucleus allows users to store, share, and collaborate on project data and provides the unique ability to work synchronously across multiple applications. For this launchpad lab we’ll be utilizing a Nucleus Enterprise server. Follow the instructions below to connect to your shared Nucleus Enterprise server. You can log in to this server from a local web browser as well, making it easy to share files and collaborate!
When you signed up for Launchpad you received an email from NGC, where we host your Nucleus server. Log in to NGC using your account, and copy your Nucleus server’s URL from the environments tab.
After launching View click Open.
Expand the Omniverse dropdown and click Add New Connection….
Paste the URL you copied when prompted for new connection and click Ok.
This will open a browser window. Click the Log in button and log in using your NGC account credentials.
You may need to reply to a verification email the first time you login on your LaunchPad VM.
After clicking Verify Email Address, you should be prompted with a success message in your browser.
If you see a connection timeout you may need to repeat these steps and enter your credentials a second time.
You should now be able to browse the shared Nucleus server!
If you are familiar with 3D CAD or digital content creation applications, you should quickly get the hang of it!
We have provided a quick navigation video in the appendix but here are the shortcuts:
Remember that you can pick an object in the Stage (next to layer manager) and press F to center your view on it. This makes orbiting and resetting your view much simpler.
Zoom (scroll) and Pan (click + drag) |
Orbit |
|---|---|
|
|
Look Around |
Walk (While looking around) |
|---|---|
|
|
As a project manager (reviewer) will use Omniverse View to explore the scene, make waypoints, create cameras, and set up renders. You will use sun study to change time of day and review the scene during day and night.
The following skills with be used during your lab: Layers, Render Settings, Waypoints, Cameras, Depth of Field, Movie Maker, and Sun Study
If necessary, launch Omniverse View and then Connect to Nucleus Server.
We have provided a completed park scene for you to use for this section of the training.
Choose Open then navigate to the project folder
/NVIDIA/Demos/AEC/BrownstoneDemo/Worlds/and load World_BrownstoneDemopack_Park(8Gb).usd.
Choose Open Original File when prompted
Change your camera to CamPark_Demopack to get an overall view of the scene.
Turn off the grid if you don’t need it by pressing the “G” key.
First we can set the time and date for more precise sun adjustments. Let’s pick a date and apply.
Now, let’s set the location for this scene, this will allow us to get accurate lighting during our Sun Study. Click the Window pulldown, then select Set Location. We will pick Los Angeles for this training, but feel free to pick a location of your choice in the drop down menu
While we have this great aerial view, we can look at the Sun Study extension, this allows us to change the time of day to achieve accurate lighting for the location and direction we have previously chosen.
Select Window, then click Sun Study.
To get more accurate nighttime rendering in this sun study preview, let’s change the display quality from Draft to Photo. You can watch the Rendering Options skills video provided in the appendix for an overview of these three modes.
Click on the Sun Study Play Button Triangle or drag the time marker sphere to the right to see the shadows move over the environment. Note that in Draft mode the nighttime section will not be rendered accurately.
Let’s set the time back to 8:30AM to continue our review. You can either drag the time slider or click the time listed in the Sun Study window to manually enter a time.
In order to keep this camera intact let’s switch to Perspective View before moving through our scene.
Set your render mode to Draft, then use your navigation tools to move to the entrance of the park on the lower left. Once you have arrived at a similar view switch your resolution to 1080p to see the 16x9 framing we are going to be rendering. Switch your render mode back to Photo.
Now let’s save this position as a new camera. Click on the Perspective view to open the menu and select Create from View, this creates a camera in this exact location.
Call it Park_Entrance.
Notice you are no longer in perspective view. Any movement done while in this camera view will move it. Let’s switch back to Perspective view before we move to a new location to create more cameras.
Set your render mode to Draft for ease of movement then move the Perspective View to the pond area. Create a new camera named Pond by selecting Create from View again.
Set your render mode back to Photo. Adjust the zoom and exposure of this view to your liking. Although Auto Exposure (AE) is on, you may want to fine tune the look of a specific shot.
Try changing your lens to a 10 mm wide angle using the 0 - 300 mm setting and adjusting the Zoom to around 10.
Now let’s add some nice depth of field to this camera. Let’s set the F stop very low, since this is difficult to do using the slider, CTRL+Click in the F Stop dialog box, enter 0.2 and hit enter. Now that we have a very low F stop let’s set the Focal Distance. Simply click the little Crosshair icon next to the Focal Distance dialog and click the center of the pond in the viewport. Feel free to dial the F stop up to 1.2 to lessen the effect, adjust to your liking. Note that if you don’t see a blurring effect you may still be in DRAFT mode, make sure you switch to PHOTO mode to see the effect.
Now bring up the playlist to review the cameras we created.
Click on cameras to quickly change your view or click on the Play button and close the Playlist window to see a slideshow that will automatically cycle through your cameras. Explore the settings, try smooth transitions and adjust the transition time.
Save viewpoints to quickly navigate to certain locations. Be sure to change your View back to Perspective, then navigate to a point of interest and click on the waypoint icon to generate a new waypoint
Right Click on the Waypoint icon to see the list (we only have one at the moment).
Add a note in this waypoint as part of your review. Try creating a few move viewpoints and swap between them using the drop-down menu (Right click on the waypoint icon).
NoteNote that waypoints save the current time of day as well as render settings so try using the Sun Study tool to change the time of day in a few waypoints.
For a look at our final feature, navigate to a location with a good vantage point of the park or simply select an existing camera or waypoint that you have previously set. Then we will bring up the Movie Capture from the Rendering drop down menu.
Here you can set up render sequences or sun studies, select render quality, resolution and will also find useful options like White Render Style to inspect shadows more easily, a feature also available in the toolbar.
Try rendering a movie using the Sunstudy movie type. Click the Capture Sequence button to begin the rendering process. This draft video will take about 8 minutes to render. Use the settings below:
Once the render is complete click the Open directory button to view the resulting video within the Windows file system. Open and play your video using Windows Media Player!
Experiment with changing the Sun Study settings and Render Preset in the Movie Capture settings. You may want to create a final render using the Photo render preset. Note that this could take approximately 2 hours. You can always pause a render. If you choose to run a longer render you should be able to log back into your VM once it’s done and watch the resulting video!
This concludes our Omniverse View training but feel free to keep exploring and try some additional features highlighted in the Skills appendix like Stage, Materials, Skies, Light Toggle, and Asset Browser.