On June 1, Nvidia made a release that rocked the AR/VR world. Nvidia releases Neuralangelo, a new product. What is it? The name being a pun on the Michelangelo’s David sculpture, the new AI model allows for 3d reconstruction of 2d video clips. Meaning you can generate lifelike virtual replicas of buildings and other real world objects.
In a recent demo video, Neuralangelo was able to recreate items such as Michelangelo’s David, a truck, building exteriors and interiors, as well as a detailed remodeling of NVIDIA’s Bay Area HQ.
Why is this huge?
Allegedly, this is the best quality we have seen to date. According to NVIDIA, “prior AI models have struggled to accurately capture repetitive texture patterns, homogenous colors and strong color variations.”
Once 3D structures are generated, end users can import these objects into their applications for further use and editing. Nvidia hopes, with this new project, to allow end users to “rapidly create usable virtual art objects for their projects using footage captured by smartphones.”
Using proprietary algorithms, Neuralangelo is unique in that it “selects several frames that capture different viewpoints — like an artist considering a subject from multiple sides to get a sense of depth, size, and shape. Once it determines the camera position of each frame, Neuralangelo’s AI creates a rough 3D representation of the scene, much like a sculptor starting to chisel the subject’s shape.”
From here, the AI model refines the rendering like a sculptor. The end products can then be used in virtual reality applications, and other use cases like robotics development.
When is this available?
Neuralangelo will debut at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition between June 18-22 in Vancouver. The reception so far has been positive, with end users being curious around advanced features and full usability. NVIDIA has yet to release more since the demo video. We will be covering this topic as things develop. So for now, we will all have to wait until Nvidia officially releases Neuralangelo.
All the best out there and happy rendering!
TJ