Digital human simulations are key to adapting factory planning to human worker ergonomics
The next era of simulation for manufacturing Is showcased inside BMW Group’s factory of the future project – designed, simulated, operated, and maintained entirely in NVIDIA Omniverse, a 3D real-time simulation, and collaboration platform.
Reallusion collaborated with NVIDIA and BMW Group to generate a diverse workforce of digital humans for the digital twin of a factory. Utilizing Character Creator and headshot photos from Generated.Photos AI, a range of characters were designed to simulate ergonomics for the real-world workers. The digital twin workers can be assigned tasks with core Omniverse and NVIDIA AI technologies, allowing BMW to fully simulate complex factory workflows involving humans, robots, and vehicles – all working in sync.
“BMW regularly reconfigures its factories to accommodate new vehicle launches,” said Dr. Milan Nedeljkovic, member of the board of management BMW AG Production, who unveiled the demo with Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO at GTC21.
“We would like to be able to do this at scale in simulation. Digital humans are trained with data from real associates. You could then use digital humans and simulation to test new workflows for worker ergonomics and efficiency,” Nedeljkovic said.
NVIDIA Omniverse is an open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation. The platform enables real-time collaboration between design tools, assets, and projects for collaborative iteration in a virtual world. With Omniverse, BMW Group can collaboratively design, plan, and simulate their factory in real time.
“There is a huge demand for digital humans and character motions across industries, but they have been challenging to create due to the complex process and costs involved,” says John Martin, VP of Product Marketing, Reallusion. “With the Omniverse Character Creator Connector, artists, designers, and developers can create digital humans for projects with ease, eliminating the need to outsource or incur associated costs.”
Automated virtual workers are able to move to designated locations and perform required tasks, which helps factory designers and planners understand design impacts on real-world workers’ ergonomics and comfort.
Why Reallusion is the Digital Twin Workforce of the Future
The Character Creator Omniverse Connector adds the power of a full character generation system with motions and unlimited human variations to Omniverse. Professionals of any skill level can leverage the tools to create digital humans for projects with efficiency and without the need to outsource or forego digital humans due to cost or human resource challenges. Enable rapid character creation, choose animations from a vast library of motion capture, or add and edit custom motion with iClone. Transfer characters and motions from Character Creator with the Omniverse Exporter for a solution that is easy to learn and deploy digital humans for Omniverse Create and Omniverse Machinima.
The Character Creator Connector is the complete solution to design and deploy digital humans in Omniverse. Designers can create, morph, edit, skin, clothe, animate and transfer characters with tools designed to develop and bring to life real-time, photorealistic digital humans in Omniverse. With the Universal Scene Description (USD) file framework, the user can senda model and motion from Character Creator to Omniverse, allowing full characters and performances to be transferred directly. Omniverse Connectors, plugins to leading industry software applications, enable users to work across other tools such as Epic Games Unreal Engine, Autodesk Maya or 3ds Max, and more in a simultaneous scene building effort.
The Character Creator Connector aims to populate digital humans anywhere and by anyone who desires to utilize 3D characters in their Omniverse projects. The USD format is the common way all DCC tools connected to Omniverse can load, edit and manage content collaboratively, in real time.
The factory’s workforce is animated with intelligent motion design from Reallusion’s Motion Matching mocap data, Actor Core motion library, and assembly line movement for factory motions from performance motion capture sessions.
“120 AI-driven animated digital workers are inside the digital twin of BMW’s assembly system powered by Omniverse. For the first time we are able to have our entire factory in simulation. Global teams can collaborate using different software packages like Revit, CATIA or point clouds to design and plan the factory in real-time 3D. The capability to operate in a perfect simulation revolutionizes BMW’s planning processes,” says Dr. Nedeljkovic
Omniverse and the Character Creator Connector provide a creation workflow that is adaptable to any individual or corporation. Plus, with the ability to integrate NVIDIA AI technologies into the Omniverse platform, the Character Creator digital humans become intelligent animated workers within virtual factories to simulate real-world operations.
Create Digital Humans for Omniverse with Reallusion Character Creator https://www.reallusion.com/cha
Get the tools to create Omniverse-ready digital humans.
Download a full evaluation trial of Character Creator 3 Pipeline to design custom characters with ease.
https://www.reallusion.com/cha
Get started with NVIDIA Omniverse by downloading the Launcher and Character Creator Omniverse Connector. Use the Omniverse Exporter from Character Creator 3 to export and transfer any CC3 character and motion as USD to Omniverse.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/o
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