In Start Here: Product Visualization for 3D Artists, I introduced product visualization as one of the fastest-growing career paths for 3D artists. Then, in Deep Dive 1: The Importance of CAD, we looked at how CAD models form the backbone of most product pipelines.
This week, let’s talk about a company you might not immediately associate with product visualization: NVIDIA.
When I first wrote about NVIDIA Omniverse, it was because I kept hearing all this hype around it but nobody I knew was actually using it. The technology was impressive, but the positioning was off. At the time, Omniverse was primarily showcased as a platform for industrial simulations, including robotics, automotive, and factory layouts. Engineers and technical directors were the target users, not the creative or marketing teams most of us work with. Definitely not for independent artists or companies just starting on their 3D journeys.
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Feb 16
Nvidia’s Omniverse has been circling around conversations in my network for years. Friends and colleagues have praised its potential—optimizing 3D workflows, automating tedious tasks, and producing high-quality renders.
Now, things are changing in a big way. NVIDIA has started publishing customer stories in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), with Unilever as the flagship example. Suddenly, Omniverse isn’t just for simulating a robot arm on a BMW assembly line. It’s being pitched as a full-blown content creation platform for 3D product visualization.
Now, whether or not Omniverse is the best toolset for this workflow is debatable, but that’s not what’s important here. It doesn’t matter what was said in this particuluar story. What matters is that NVIDIA felt this was important enough to invest time, enengy, and to connect its brand with this workflow.
NVIDIA doesn’t chase trends. They chase profits.
For one of the most valuable companies on earth to pivot toward CPG workflows means this space isn’t just interesting…it’s big enough to move the needle.
Omniverse’s early reputation was built around high-profile industrial projects. BMW’s “digital factory” is the best-known example: a real-time, interactive replica of their entire production line. Engineers could test new layouts, simulate robots, and identify problems before they happened in the real world.
That was a perfect showcase for Omniverse’s strengths: real-time collaboration, high-fidelity simulation, and GPU-accelerated rendering at industrial scale. But it was also niche. These projects were expensive, complex, and limited to engineering teams in highly technical industries.
Fast forward to today, and those same ideas are being applied to shampoo bottles and deodorant sticks. With Unilever, Omniverse is now being used to create a library of digital twins for every single product SKU across all sizes, shapes, regions, languages, and even seasonal packaging variants. Each digital twin becomes a reusable master asset that can generate visuals for every market without scheduling another photoshoot.