Nvidia Release Sneak Peek of New Ray-Traced Minecraft Worlds

Today NVIDIA offered a sneak peek at what is possible when you combine the world’s most popular game with next-generation ray-tracing technology. Better still, if you can’t wait to try it out to see what Minecraft and Nvidia can make with your 20XX graphics card, they’ve also created a number of tutorials to help get you started!

Nvidia Release Ray-Traced Minecraft Screenshots

In announcing the news (and pretty amazing screenshots) Nvidia has said:

“As we gear up for the release of Minecraft with RTX, we’ve been working with some of the world’s most talented creators in the Minecraft community. The first results of that collaboration are displayed today in a series of screenshots that show off their amazing work. The screenshots feature worlds created by Razzleberries, BlockWorks and GeminiTay. [These are] just a few of the creators who were selected due to their imaginations and fantastic track record of making captivating contributions in the Minecraft community.

The worlds include:

Of Temples and Totems RTX by Razzleberries – An adventure world focusing players on exploring and completing challenges in mysterious temples. Each temple showcases per-pixel emissivity and real-time shadows, and leverages global illumination to create an immersive experience for players.

Imagination Island RTX by BlockWorks. A fully explorable theme park, filled with Easter eggs, that hosts four distinct lands, each dedicated to an element of real-time ray tracing. In this scene we see the visitor center of the park, highlighted by god rays cast in real- time through the windows, shining down onto the floor.

Crystal Palace RTX by GeminiTay – A survival map with a whimsical fantasy theme that features a masterfully built castle. Ray-traced shadows and beautiful atmospherics create realism in this world built on a 1:1 scale.”

Tools and Guides

NVIDIA also unveiled a series of tools and guides that Minecrafters can use to make immersive, life-like worlds. Originally scheduled for our GPU Technology Conference in Silicon Valley, these online tutorials are being released as part of GTC Digital and include:

• For creating physically based rendering textures. A presentation and how-to guide that dives into the particulars behind Minecraft with RTX’s path tracing and PBR textures. And how they work together to create incredible sights. It includes a step-by-step workflow for creating your own PBR textures and texture packs.
• For converting Java worlds to RTX worlds. Nvidia has partnered with Minecraft creators to craft a guide of the unofficial best-practices. These will allow you to convert your world to Bedrock Windows 10 Edition. The basis for the upcoming Minecraft with RTX.

NVIDIA teams have been hard at work, hand-in-hand with Microsoft, to bring worlds that are fully path-traced, with reflections, shadows, caustics, global illumination, and other realistic lighting effects that interact naturally with physically based textures applied to Minecraft’s blocks. These PBR textures enable per-pixel emissive, volumetric effects, and other never-before-seen sights. Together, they provide path-traced effects that usher in the next evolution of Minecraft.

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