Behind the Network (BTN): May 27th, 2022
Part 2 of our deeper dive into all of the updates and innovations touched on in this year’s GTC Keynote
Last week’s Behind the Network (BTN) post examined the rendering roadmap discussed in Render Network founder Jules Urbach’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) Keynote presentation. In this week’s BTN, we’re focusing on the second half of the talk, which explored how the future of Web3 and the spatial metaverse can be built on top of the Render Network’s open, decentralized rendering platform.
Key elements of the talk were focused on new blockchain integrations and NFT standards developed with Solana, infrastructure for new decentralized services built on the Render Network SDK, the future of holographic displays, and finally, the vision for how spatial mixed reality and NFTs will converge into the future of the open metaverse. Without further ado, let’s dive in:
Solana Partnership and Token Standard with Metaplex
Jules discussed some of the ways that the Render Network is collaborating with Solana for complex on-chain smart contracts using Rust and the Solana virtual machine. He outlined the virtues of a Layer 1 blockchain like Solana, which provides higher throughput with increased security when compared to side-chain architectures.
More importantly, Rust and the Solana VM enable GPU code to be a part of the smart contract itself, providing the ability to tokenize and monetize on-chain new forms of IP like SDK apps and more complex NFTs. This is especially important for real time gaming and mixed reality applications where both code and 3D rendered content are part of an asset. Plugins, modules, 3D models, textures, and shaders, not just final renders (the current state of NFTs), should be easily tokenized with full on-chain provenance and composability. This collaboration between the Render Network and Solana could make these possibilities a future reality.
Render Network NFTs
Alongside the potential for increased flexibility by using Solana’s Virtual Machine, Jules discussed the roadmap for Render Network NFTs.
As it’s currently built, everything inside an Octane scene can already be an NFT as textures, geometry and state changes are hashed when an ORBX file is uploaded to the Render Network. An L1 chain like Solana will allow more of this data to go on-chain, enabling more complex forms of digital assets. One of the goals for the Render Network is to make everything inside the Octane node graph into an NFT, validating each asset inside an NFT. What this opens up is both deeper levels of verification and provenance as well as a way to monetize dynamic NFTs.
Further, Jules showcased how using our support for all of the leading 3D DCCs (including Unreal Engine and Unity3D), 3D apps can be monetized using Render Network. A long term goal is to integrate validated offline renders with real time dynamic verified blockchain metaverses.
Render Network SDK and App
With GPU and CPU code on-chain, the Render Network is building a platform for tokenized applications — including multiple third party render engines and scene delegates that push back end rendering processes from apps to the Render Network.
The core of the discussion was focused on the Render Network iPad and iPhone app, providing 1 GPU of local rendering power on a device that can then send a scene to the network for high end rendering. With the Render Network App, 10–100 million new devices can be leveraged for high end 3D content creation, which is especially important for the future of Augmented and Mixed reality, where in-camera content and offline 3D rendered imagery will converge.
Showcased in the talk were some prototypes for real-time ray tracing of an Octane scene live, in addition to compositing precomputed imagery live inside the Render Network app. This provided a first glimpse of high quality cinematic MR live on a phone.
Holographic Displays
The talk proceeded to a discussion of holographic displays and the future of ultra high resolution rendering in the mid-2020s. Jules showcased the LightField Labs displays that Render Network is partnering with to create full glasses free holograms in settings ranging from location based entertainment (LBE) and museums, to public displays, storefronts, and tabletop holographic tables in research, design, and engineering. With full holographic displays requiring 16x the local GPU power and a 1000x increase in rendering when compared to 4K renders, holographic displays are a long term target market for the Render Network.
The Open Metaverse
The core of the talk described the efforts of Render Network to build the tools for pushing forward the metaverse as a medium to archive art and give a deep and persistent chain of authorship. Beginning with the Alex Ross archive, built around putting the entire universe of Alex’s lifetime of works on-chain, including rebuilding Alex’s paintings in 3D and creating an on-chain ontology for all the characters within Alex’s narrative universe, Universe X. Because all of Alex’s characters are part of a larger universe, the Alex Ross Archive seeks to leverage the metaverse as a storytelling medium — capturing the vast narrative interconnection across characters and universes.
The M is for Metaverse Staking Token endeavors to build deep chains of attribution and narrative interconnectivity. The token includes over 100-million human concepts which will be linked to the Octane node editor, and can be pulled down similar to the daylight system in Octane. Through this process, concepts can be linked to a 3D file, providing a rich metadata ontology that builds new forms of semantic meaning into 3D scenes. The M is for Metaverse staking tokens — through voting in a DAO and with author permissions — can link together stories, concepts, and even creator archives, with the goal being to create something akin to a narrative index connecting together characters, stories and even virtual worlds, allowing on-chain 3D archives to intersect — in the same way that the Dewey Decimal System organizes textual information.
Beeple and Roddenberry Archives
Alongside the Alex Ross archive, Jules discussed the ongoing work to develop the Beeple Archives. One of the focuses of the work is taking all the assets inside the Cinema4D and PS files and bringing it on-chain, providing full preservation of the original source artwork.
With this data all a part of the Render scene graph, it enables the final renders to be a full on-chain scene file rather than a fixed asset, providing new levels of composability. As demoed in the video below, Beeple renders were displayed as a scene rendering live in real-time on iPhones, and discussed the partnership to build the first Beeple NFTs for holographic displays that will be pulled down as holograms from the Render Network.
Finally, Jules delved into the ongoing work with the Roddenberry Estate to archive Gene Roddenberry’s lifetime of works, including letters and documents from his writings. This includes efforts to recreate a 1:1, life sized Starship Enterprise model based on documentation from original artists. With a comprehensive collection of Gene Roddenberry’s writings and life sized digital models with full historical fidelity, the archive is building a template for a fully immersive Gene Roddenberry virtual world that can be explored by future generations. You can read more about the on-going work here, including efforts to recreate The Cage set as an immersive virtual world.
Render Network Omniverse
The final focus of the talk was on the Render Network Omniverse connector, bridging all the 26+ DCCs direct to Omniverse from Octane and Render Network. The Omniverse connection will power interactive and multi-user real time experiences for gaming, virtual world, and mixed reality applications. With the Render Network connector, all Omniverse work can now be validated on-chain using Render Network. Jules concluded by describing the work with NVIDIA to develop open source standards for the metaverse and spatial web.
The keynote concluded with reiteration of Render Network’s mission to build the open metaverse and develop infrastructure that democratizes the ability to create virtual worlds, ending on a coda evoking Gene Roddenberry’s renowned phrase that “the human adventure is just beginning.” With mixed reality and new tools like virtual production, artists can explore new frontiers for creativity, collaboration and immersive storytelling in an open spatial metaverse. With all of this activity on-chain for the first time, the Render Network has the potential to open the door to a new model of value exchange and a truly decentralized metaverse.
Upcoming Work
Going forward BTN will be moving to a bi-weekly schedule! Be on the lookout for our NFT.NYC primer in the next 2 weeks, with a special announcement for Render Network community members attending the event!
Join us in the Rendering Revolution at:
Website: https://render.x.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rendernetwork
Knowledge Base: https://know.rendernetwork.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/rendernetwork
Render Network Foundation: https://renderfoundation.com/
