NVIDIA Announces the #MadeInMachinima Contest Winners

During NVIDIA's Special Address at SIGGRAPH 2022, NVIDIA Omniverse announced the winners of its #MadeInMachinima contest launched in May.

The participants of the contest had to build animated short stories – composed of characters from Squad, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, and Mechwarrior Mercenaries 5 – using Omniverse Machinima, a reference application that allows users to collaborate in real-time to animate and manipulate characters and environments inside of virtual worlds.

The winner of #MadeInMachinima was announced Simon Lavit, whose entry, Painting the Astronaut, was selected by a panel of judges that included a number of creative experts. Lavit’s workflow was powered by a GeForce RTX 3090 GPU and, according to NVIDIA, showcased the interoperability of Omniverse, its Apps, and Connectors.

To populate the scene, Lavit used NVIDIA’s built-in 3D asset library, created 3D models for some of his hero assets in Autodesk Maya, and with the help of the Maya Omniverse Connector, visualized the scene within Omniverse Create. Then, he textured the models in Adobe Substance 3D, which also has an Omniverse Connector, and returned to Machinima for the final layout, animation, and render. 

Here is Simon Lavit's work:

Painting the Astronaut by Simon Lavit

As a winner of the contest, Lavit received 1 of 3 grand prize NVIDIA Studio laptops – an ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 which offers an exceptional technology that enables users to work on the go with cutting-edge power from a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Laptop GPU and vivid color 4K display.

The second place was taken by Nicklas Lotz with the Switch project and Ted Saguindel took the third place for his entry, The Cake Mission. The two talented artists also got one of three NVIDIA Studio laptops from Razer and MSI.

Switch by Nicklas Lotz

The Cake Mission by Ted Saguindel

And here are some honorable mentions:

You can check out the list of winners and runners-up by visiting the Machinima Contest page. Also, don't forget to join our Reddit page and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.