RTX Remix Open Beta Begins Jan 22nd news

We've been following all of the RTX Remix modding news from NVIDIA since the beginning, excited by the premise of a new way to do mod creation across DirectX 8 and 9 games with fixed function pipelines (such as Call of Duty 2, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Garry's Mod, Need for Speed Underground 2, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines). The ability to remaster these games and many more we love, using modern graphics lighting and rendering techniques, paired with the ability to use AI to easily enhance assets, or replace those assets entirely is a tantalizing thought.

Of course you'll need a modern RTX enabled GPU to run these modern new age mods, but we feel that's a small price to pay to soon return to Ravenholm, in full HD, raytraced glory, when the in-development Half-Life 2 RTX project we just reported on releases. If you'd like to try something now, Portal: Prelude RTX is out, and from the 22nd of Jan when the RTX Remix Open Beta Begins, any modder will be able to remix a compatible, classic game with the release of the RTX Remix Application.

RTX Remix App

The RTX Remix app is a UI for creating RTX mods of classic games. Using it, you can import game captures, enhance assets, relight scenes with full ray traced lighting (also known as path-traced lighting), and review updates live in the viewport.

Features include:

• RTX Remix’s ingestion pipeline, which converts a variety of file formats to Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD), making it easy to open and edit them in your favorite Omniverse-connected app, including RTX Remix itself.
• Easy asset replacement. Upgrade models with new, high-poly replacements that rival the detail and fidelity of those found in modern games. RTX Remix features a free bank of high quality USD assets created by NVIDIA, ready to be used in your next mod. Import them into your mods as-is, or remix their properties using an Omniverse connected application of your choice, such as Blender or Adobe Substance.
• Support for a variety of PBR material maps, including albedo, metallic, roughness, emissive, normal, subsurface scattering and height maps, which can leverage Parallax Occlusion Mapping (POM) to make texture surfaces realistically bumpy, for improved interplay with fully ray traced light and shadow.
• Relighting with full ray tracing. Convert basic light sources into physically-accurate dynamic lights, capable of casting high-fidelity ray-traced shadows, illuminating scenery, and interacting with the Physically Based properties of enhanced textures. And insert new lights to transform the appearance of a scene even more.
• Multiple views to help with your remaster. For example, use wireframe mode to see the polygonal detail of every asset, or a “white mode” to view lighting in neutral conditions.

For example shots of each of the above features in action, head to the official NVIDIA blog post announcing the open beta.

ModDB RTX Hosting

Included in the announcement today from NVIDIA, was mention of our involvement in the project, which involves:

• Providing a home for all of the game conf files, USD captures and tutorials, which will make getting started modding a RTX Remix compatible game even faster.
• Welcoming all mod creators working on projects, to share their latest media, news and releases via ModDB, which we will be showcasing and promoting through a soon to launch RTX portal on the site.
• Tracking the compatibility of all games, so it easy to see what's what in one central, maintained location.
• Everything will be tagged, so RTX modders can easily add the RTX badge to their mod profiles for quick discovery.
• And finally support for mods up to 50gb large, since these are true HD beasts.

This will all be going live on the 22nd alongside the open beta launch, so look out for more details on it then.

Half-Life 2 RTX

And of course an update for the RTX Remix project wouldn't be complete without teasing how RTX is being used in the wild, so the post contains comparision screenshots and gameplay videos of the Half-Life 2 RTX community remaster project, which is being worked on by Orbifold Studios, who are now a 65 person strong modding team. We've reported on this separately here.

Download The RTX Remix Beta On January 22nd

If you want to make your own ray-traced mod for a classic game, the NVIDIA RTX Remix Open Beta begins January 22nd. Head here to sign up to be notified of its immediate release. And don't forget to check in at ModDB to find the latest RTX Remix mods when we launch the hub on this day as well!