Urban populations are expected to double by 2050, which means around 2.5 billion people could be added to urban areas by the middle of the century, driving the need for more sustainable urban planning and public services. Cities across the globe are turning to digital twins and AI agents for urban planning scenario analysis and data-driven operational decisions. Building a digital twin of a city and testing smart city AI agents within it, however, is a complex and resource-intensive endeavor, fraught with technical and operational challenges. To address those challenges, NVIDIA today announced the NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for smart city AI, a reference framework that combines the NVIDIA Omniverse, Cosmos, NeMo and Metropolis platforms to bring the benefits of physical AI to entire cities and their critical infrastructure. Using the blueprint, developers can build simulation-ready, or SimReady, photorealistic digital twins of cities to build and test AI agents that can help monitor and optimize city operations. Leading companies including XXII, AVES Reality, Akila, Blyncsy, Bentley, Cesium, K2K, Linker Vision, Milestone Systems, Nebius, SNCF Gares&Connexions, Trimble and Younite AI are among the first to use the new blueprint. NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for Smart City AI  The NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for smart city AI provides the complete software stack needed to accelerate the development and testing of AI agents in physically accurate digital twins of cities. It includes: NVIDIA Omniverse to build physically accurate digital twins and run simulations at city scale. NVIDIA Cosmos to generate synthetic data at scale for post-training AI models. NVIDIA NeMo to curate high-quality data and use that data to train and fine-tune vision language models (VLMs) and large language models. NVIDIA Metropolis to build and deploy video analytics AI agents based on the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for video search and summarization (VSS), helping process vast amounts of video data and provide critical insights to optimize business processes. The blueprint workflow comprises three key steps. First, developers create a SimReady digital twin of locations and facilities using aerial, satellite or map data with Omniverse and Cosmos. Second, they can train and fine-tune AI models, like computer vision models and VLMs, using NVIDIA TAO and NeMo Curator to improve accuracy for vision AI use cases​. Finally, real-time AI agents powered by these customized models are deployed to alert, summarize and query camera and sensor data using the Metropolis VSS blueprint. NVIDIA Partner Ecosystem Powers Smart Cities Worldwide The blueprint for smart city AI enables a large ecosystem of partners to use a single workflow to build and activate digital twins for smart city use cases, tapping into a combination of NVIDIA’s technologies and their own. SNCF Gares&Connexions, which operates a network of 3,000 train stations across France and Monaco, has deployed a digital twin and AI agents to enable real-time operational monitoring, emergency response simulations and infrastructure upgrade planning. This helps each station analyze operational data such as energy and water use, and enables predictive maintenance capabilities, automated reporting and GDPR-compliant video analytics for incident detection and crowd management. Powered by Omniverse, Metropolis and solutions from ecosystem partners Akila and XXII, SNCF Gares&Connexions’ physical AI deployment at the Monaco-Monte-Carlo and Marseille stations has helped SNCF Gares&Connexions achieve a 100% on-time preventive maintenance completion rate, a 50% reduction in downtime and issue response time, and a 20% reduction in energy consumption. https://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/01-Monaco-Akila.mp4 The city of Palermo in Sicily is using AI agents and digital twins from its partner K2K to improve public health and safety by helping city operators process and analyze footage from over 1,000 public video streams at a rate of nearly 50 billion pixels per second. Tapped by Sicily, K2K’s AI agents — built with the NVIDIA AI Blueprint for VSS and cloud solutions from Nebius — can interpret and act on video data to provide real-time alerts on public events. To accurately predict and resolve traffic incidents, K2K is generating synthetic data with Cosmos world foundation models to simulate different driving conditions. Then, K2K uses the data to fine-tune the VLMs powering the AI agents with NeMo Curator. These simulations enable K2K’s AI agents to create over 100,000 predictions per second. https://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/02-K2K-Polermo-1600x900-1.mp4 Milestone Systems — in collaboration with NVIDIA and European cities — has launched Project Hafnia, an initiative to build an anonymized, ethically sourced video data platform for cities to develop and train AI models and applications while maintaining regulatory compliance. Using a combination of Cosmos and NeMo Curator on NVIDIA DGX Cloud and Nebius’ sovereign European cloud infrastructure, Project Hafnia scales up and enables European-compliant training and fine-tuning of video-centric AI models, including VLMs, for a variety of smart city use cases. The project’s initial rollout, taking place in Genoa, Italy, features one of the world’s first VLM models for intelligent transportation systems. https://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/03-Milestone.mp4 Linker Vision was among the first to partner with NVIDIA to deploy smart city digital twins and AI agents for Kaohsiung City, Taiwan — powered by Omniverse, Cosmos and Metropolis. Linker Vision worked with AVES Reality, a digital twin company, to bring aerial imagery of cities and infrastructure into 3D geometry and ultimately into SimReady Omniverse digital twins. Linker Vision’s AI-powered application then built, trained and tested visual AI agents in a digital twin before deployment in the physical city. Now, it’s scaling to analyze 50,000 video streams in real time with generative AI to understand and narrate complex urban events like floods and traffic accidents. Linker Vision delivers timely insights to a dozen city departments through a single integrated AI-powered platform, breaking silos and reducing incident response times by up to 80%. https://blogs.nvidia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/02-Linker-Vision-1280x680-1.mp4 Bentley Systems is joining the effort to bring physical AI to cities with the NVIDIA blueprint. Cesium, the open 3D geospatial platform, provides the foundation for visualizing, analyzing and managing infrastructure projects and ports digital twins to Omniverse. The company’s AI platform Blyncsy uses synthetic data generation and Metropolis to analyze road conditions and improve maintenance. Trimble, a global technology company that enables essential industries including construction, geospatial and transportation, is exploring ways to integrate components of the Omniverse blueprint into its reality capture workflows and Trimble Connect digital twin platform for surveying and mapping applications for smart cities. Younite AI, a developer of AI and 3D digital twin solutions, is adopting the blueprint to accelerate its development pipeline, enabling the company to quickly move from operational digital twins to large-scale urban simulations, improve synthetic data generation, integrate real-time IoT sensor data and deploy AI agents. Learn more about the NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for smart city AI by attending this GTC Paris session or watching the on-demand video after the event. Sign up to be notified when the blueprint is available. Watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at VivaTech, and explore GTC Paris sessions.

By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Rather than a world constructed around photorealistic pixels, a video game created by Markus Persson has taken the boxier 3D voxel route, which has become its signature aesthetic, and sparked an international phenomenon that finally gets adapted into a feature with the release of A Minecraft Movie. Brought onboard to help filmmaker Jared Hess in creating the environments that the cast of Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers and Danielle Brooks find themselves inhabiting was Disguise under the direction of Production VFX Supervisor Dan Lemmon. “[A]s the Senior Unreal Artist within the Virtual Art Department (VAD) on Minecraft, I experienced the full creative workflow. What stood out most was how deeply the VAD was embedded across every stage of production. We weren’t working in isolation. From the production designer and director to the VFX supervisor and DP, the VAD became a hub for collaboration.” —Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist, Disguise Interior and exterior environments had to be created, such as the shop owned by Steve (Jack Black). “Prior to working on A Minecraft Movie, I held more technical roles, like serving as the Virtual Production LED Volume Operator on a project for Apple TV+ and Paramount Pictures,” notes Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist for Disguise. “But as the Senior Unreal Artist within the Virtual Art Department (VAD) on Minecraft, I experienced the full creative workflow. What stood out most was how deeply the VAD was embedded across every stage of production. We weren’t working in isolation. From the production designer and director to the VFX supervisor and DP, the VAD became a hub for collaboration.” The project provided new opportunities. “I’ve always loved the physicality of working with an LED volume, both for the immersion it provides and the way that seeing the environment helps shape an actor’s performance,” notes Laura Bell, Creative Technologist for Disguise. “But for A Minecraft Movie, we used Simulcam instead, and it was an incredible experience to live-composite an entire Minecraft world in real-time, especially with nothing on set but blue curtains.” Set designs originally created by the art department in Rhinoceros 3D were transformed into fully navigable 3D environments within Unreal Engine. “These scenes were far more than visualizations,” Finlayson remarks. “They were interactive tools used throughout the production pipeline. We would ingest 3D models and concept art, clean and optimize geometry using tools like Blender, Cinema 4D or Maya, then build out the world in Unreal Engine. This included applying materials, lighting and extending environments. These Unreal scenes we created were vital tools across the production and were used for a variety of purposes such as enabling the director to explore shot compositions, block scenes and experiment with camera movement in a virtual space, as well as passing along Unreal Engine scenes to the visual effects vendors so they could align their digital environments and set extensions with the approved production layouts.” A virtual exploration of Steve’s shop in Midport Village. Certain elements have to be kept in mind when constructing virtual environments. “When building virtual environments, you need to consider what can actually be built, how actors and cameras will move through the space, and what’s safe and practical on set,” Bell observes. “Outside the areas where strict accuracy is required, you want the environments to blend naturally with the original designs from the art department and support the story, creating a space that feels right for the scene, guides the audience’s eye and sets the right tone. Things like composition, lighting and small environmental details can be really fun to work on, but also serve as beautiful additions to help enrich a story.” “I’ve always loved the physicality of working with an LED volume, both for the immersion it provides and the way that seeing the environment helps shape an actor’s performance. But for A Minecraft Movie, we used Simulcam instead, and it was an incredible experience to live-composite an entire Minecraft world in real-time, especially with nothing on set but blue curtains.” —Laura Bell, Creative Technologist, Disguise Among the buildings that had to be created for Midport Village was Steve’s (Jack Black) Lava Chicken Shack. Concept art was provided that served as visual touchstones. “We received concept art provided by the amazing team of concept artists,” Finlayson states. “Not only did they send us 2D artwork, but they often shared the 3D models they used to create those visuals. These models were incredibly helpful as starting points when building out the virtual environments in Unreal Engine; they gave us a clear sense of composition and design intent. Storyboards were also a key part of the process and were constantly being updated as the project evolved. Having access to the latest versions allowed us to tailor the virtual environments to match camera angles, story beats and staging. Sometimes we would also help the storyboard artists by sending through images of the Unreal Engine worlds to help them geographically position themselves in the worlds and aid in their storyboarding.” At times, the video game assets came in handy. “Exteriors often involved large-scale landscapes and stylized architectural elements, which had to feel true to the Minecraft world,” Finlayson explains. “In some cases, we brought in geometry from the game itself to help quickly block out areas. For example, we did this for the Elytra Flight Chase sequence, which takes place through a large canyon.” Flexibility was critical. “A key technical challenge we faced was ensuring that the Unreal levels were built in a way that allowed for fast and flexible iteration,” Finlayson remarks. “Since our environments were constantly being reviewed by the director, production designer, DP and VFX supervisor, we needed to be able to respond quickly to feedback, sometimes live during a review session. To support this, we had to keep our scenes modular and well-organized; that meant breaking environments down into manageable components and maintaining clean naming conventions. By setting up the levels this way, we could make layout changes, swap assets or adjust lighting on the fly without breaking the scene or slowing down the process.” Production schedules influence the workflows, pipelines and techniques. “No two projects will ever feel exactly the same,” Bell notes. “For example, Pat Younis [VAD Art Director] adapted his typical VR setup to allow scene reviews using a PS5 controller, which made it much more comfortable and accessible for the director. On a more technical side, because everything was cubes and voxels, my Blender workflow ended up being way heavier on the re-mesh modifier than usual, definitely not something I’ll run into again anytime soon!” A virtual study and final still of the cast members standing outside of the Lava Chicken Shack. “We received concept art provided by the amazing team of concept artists. Not only did they send us 2D artwork, but they often shared the 3D models they used to create those visuals. These models were incredibly helpful as starting points when building out the virtual environments in Unreal Engine; they gave us a clear sense of composition and design intent. Storyboards were also a key part of the process and were constantly being updated as the project evolved. Having access to the latest versions allowed us to tailor the virtual environments to match camera angles, story beats and staging.” —Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist, Disguise The design and composition of virtual environments tended to remain consistent throughout principal photography. “The only major design change I can recall was the removal of a second story from a building in Midport Village to allow the camera crane to get a clear shot of the chicken perched above Steve’s lava chicken shack,” Finlayson remarks. “I would agree that Midport Village likely went through the most iterations,” Bell responds. “The archway, in particular, became a visual anchor across different levels. We often placed it off in the distance to help orient both ourselves and the audience and show how far the characters had traveled. I remember rebuilding the stairs leading up to the rampart five or six times, using different configurations based on the physically constructed stairs. This was because there were storyboarded sequences of the film’s characters, Henry, Steve and Garrett, being chased by piglins, and the action needed to match what could be achieved practically on set.” Virtually conceptualizing the layout of Midport Village. Complex virtual environments were constructed for the final battle and the various forest scenes throughout the movie. “What made these particularly challenging was the way physical set pieces were repurposed and repositioned to serve multiple scenes and locations within the story,” Finlayson reveals. “The same built elements had to appear in different parts of the world, so we had to carefully adjust the virtual environments to accommodate those different positions.” Bell is in agreement with her colleague. “The forest scenes were some of the more complex environments to manage. It could get tricky, particularly when the filming schedule shifted. There was one day on set where the order of shots changed unexpectedly, and because the physical sets looked so similar, I initially loaded a different perspective than planned. Fortunately, thanks to our workflow, Lindsay George [VP Tech] and I were able to quickly open the recorded sequence in Unreal Engine and swap out the correct virtual environment for the live composite without any disruption to the shoot.” An example of the virtual and final version of the Woodland Mansion. “Midport Village likely went through the most iterations. The archway, in particular, became a visual anchor across different levels. We often placed it off in the distance to help orient both ourselves and the audience and show how far the characters had traveled.” —Laura Bell, Creative Technologist, Disguise Extensive detail was given to the center of the sets where the main action unfolds. “For these areas, we received prop layouts from the prop department to ensure accurate placement and alignment with the physical builds,” Finlayson explains. “These central environments were used heavily for storyboarding, blocking and department reviews, so precision was essential. As we moved further out from the practical set, the environments became more about blocking and spatial context rather than fine detail. We worked closely with Production Designer Grant Major to get approval on these extended environments, making sure they aligned with the overall visual direction. We also used creatures and crowd stand-ins provided by the visual effects team. These gave a great sense of scale and placement during early planning stages and allowed other departments to better understand how these elements would be integrated into the scenes.” Cast members Sebastian Hansen, Danielle Brooks and Emma Myers stand in front of the Earth Portal Plateau environment. Doing a virtual scale study of the Mountainside. Practical requirements like camera moves, stunt choreography and crane setups had an impact on the creation of virtual environments. “Sometimes we would adjust layouts slightly to open up areas for tracking shots or rework spaces to accommodate key action beats, all while keeping the environment feeling cohesive and true to the Minecraft world,” Bell states. “Simulcam bridged the physical and virtual worlds on set, overlaying Unreal Engine environments onto live-action scenes in real-time, giving the director, DP and other department heads a fully-realized preview of shots and enabling precise, informed decisions during production. It also recorded critical production data like camera movement paths, which was handed over to the post-production team to give them the exact tracks they needed, streamlining the visual effects pipeline.” Piglots cause mayhem during the Wingsuit Chase. Virtual versions of the exterior and interior of the Safe House located in the Enchanted Woods. “One of the biggest challenges for me was managing constant iteration while keeping our environments clean, organized and easy to update,” Finlayson notes. “Because the virtual sets were reviewed regularly by the director and other heads of departments, feedback was often implemented live in the room. This meant the environments had to be flexible. But overall, this was an amazing project to work on, and I am so grateful for the incredible VAD team I was a part of – Heide Nichols [VAD Supervisor], Pat Younis, Jake Tuck [Unreal Artist] and Laura. Everyone on this team worked so collaboratively, seamlessly and in such a supportive way that I never felt like I was out of my depth.” There was another challenge that is more to do with familiarity. “Having a VAD on a film is still a relatively new process in production,” Bell states. “There were moments where other departments were still learning what we did and how to best work with us. That said, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I remember being on set at the Simulcam station and seeing how excited people were to look at the virtual environments as they walked by, often stopping for a chat and a virtual tour. Instead of seeing just a huge blue curtain, they were stoked to see something Minecraft and could get a better sense of what they were actually shooting.”

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