Nvidia is most known for its hard-to-find graphics cards, but the company also produces some intriguing software. The noise-reduction feature known as RTX voice, which was enhanced to work with all GeForce GPUs earlier this year and does a fantastic job of removing background noise, is an example of this.
This year, Nvidia (thanks, 80. lv) has been showing off a new sound-related tool in beta. Audio2Face is a visually stunning auto rigging method that operates on Nvidia’s Omniverse open real-time simulation platform. It can take an audio clip and apply amazingly well-matched animations to the Digital Mark 3D character model that comes with it. It does this automatically, is compatible with most languages, and can be fine-tuned using sliders.
Nvidia has done this by using a deep neural network to match face motions to audio in real-time. When you initially start the program, the Tensor RT Engine, which optimizes the neural network for your hardware, may take a few moments to create. However, as long as your hardware can hack it, you should be able to view updates in real-time or bake them in from there.
Nvidia on Demand, the company’s tutorial website, has many videos on Omniverse and Audio2Face as an added benefit. The initial Audio2Face video was released in March 2020, but more current instructions show how to export the process to different programs like Unreal Engine 4. Even after seeing a few videos, it seems that the quality of the audio is a factor. One video is Charlie Chaplin’s uncharacteristically famous statement from the film The Great Dictator, and the movements aren’t as apparent as they are on crisper, current recordings.
Nonetheless, unlike some audio quality, this tool is likely to improve over time. According to the recent GPU grapevine, Nvidia’s next-gen graphics cards, which are said to be based on its ‘Lovelace’ architecture, might be twice as robust as RTX 3000 models twice as power-hungry. Greymon55, who is now a frequent presence on Twitter regarding hardware leaks, says this.
While that tweet doesn’t make it apparent at first, Greymon55 later confirms that they’re talking to Nvidia’s Lovelace GPUs and what will undoubtedly be RTX 4000 models if the company sticks to its naming policy, with the RTX 4080 expected to be the top-end GPU. Nvidia’s Lovelace graphics cards are slated to debut in 2022, most likely later, though they could debut before the fourth quarter of the following year.
When they do appear, RTX 4000 GPUs are projected to provide a significant performance improvement, with rumors claiming that Lovelace might be a generational leap equal to the one made from Maxwell to Pascal (which, in case you forgot, was a significant ole uptick in favor of better frame rates). A healthy punch of skepticism is needed here, but the more we learn about Nvidia’s Lovelace graphics cards, the more it appears that the GPUs will have high power demand, despite their excellent performance.
