NVIDIA outlines how RTX technologies helped create Avatar, Batman, and Top Gun

To celebrate the upcoming Academy Awards for film, particularly the Best Visual Effects category, NVIDIA has posted an update outlining how some of the biggest spectacle-driven movies today incorporate NVIDIA RTX technologies. It states that all five nominated films incorporated NVIDIA tech while creating their impressive visual effects.

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The five films are All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Top Gun: Maverick.

"For over a decade, filmmakers and VFX studios around the world have used NVIDIA technologies to power the most advanced, visually rich movies ever made," NVIDIA writes. And even though each frame of special effects heavy film goes through multiple renders and post-processing work with artists and technicians, things like real-time ray tracing, physics simulation, AI, and virtual production all use NVIDIA RTX hardware.

It's an interesting look at the process, and for a film like Avatar: The Way of Water, where visual effects comprise 98% of the total shots in that film we learn that effects house Weta FX used a real-time "GPU-based ocean spectrum deformer" to help out on set during filming. This extended to simulating hair, cloth, air, and water and using AI and deep learning models to generate 3D images and facial animation.

GPU power has increased considerably recently, with something like the GeForce RTX 4090 pushing real-time game visuals to new heights. This is a nice little reminder that having things like real-time ray tracing and AI rendering in games translates to the movies we watch.

Weta FX also created the visuals for The Batman, with the highway chase between the Dark Knight and the Penguin making use of simulating raindrops and even water from wheel-spray. It's a testament to how far we have come when, outside of obvious things like explosions and elaborate stunts, you can't tell that even something like water hitting the windshield of a vehicle is a visual effect.

The 95th annual Academy Awards are set to take place this Sunday, March 12.