DXR Indie Spotlight Contest Winners Revealed by NVIDIA

A couple of months back, during the first anniversary of Microsoft’s Direct Ray Tracing API announcement, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Epic partnered together to host an Indie Spotlight contest. The contest involved creating tech demos utilizing Direct Ray Tracing (DXR) and Unreal Engine 4.22 and featuring within them a combination of ray trace effects like reflections and shadows.

This month, NVIDIA announced the winners of that competition, picked from the “dozens” of participants who undertook the opportunity. Each of the winners will receive an NVIDIA TITAN RTX graphics card plus developer support from Microsoft and NVIDIA.

Check out the three winners below:

Attack from Outer Space by Christian Hecht

Christian Hecht is a 3D artist for design company Tendril, based in Toronto. His tech demo Attack from Outer Space recreates the look of classic 1950s sci-fi films by using ray-traced reflections, shadows and ambient illumination — all in real time — to deliver a truly nostalgic feel to this giant robot invasion.

Diode by Alden Filion

Alden Fillion is a 3D artist based in Kansas City with an extensive game development background. He’s worked on well-known titles like Battlefield 4, Crackdown 3 and Lost Planet 3. In his demo Diode, you infiltrate a castle with a futuristic knight battling the forces of evil. The demo uses real-time ray-traced reflections to achieve stunning results.

LP Trailer by Opus Visual

Opus Visual is an architectural visualization and 3D visual rendering company based out of Houston. Their tech demo LP Trailer allows you to drive your big rig around a truck yard and uses ray-traced reflections and ambient occlusion to deliver life-like lighting.

All the the winning entries of the DXR Indie Spotlight contest are available for download here.