Nvidia announced that part of its free RTX Remix open source modding platform is available for download starting today. RTX Remix runtime will let modders quickly dive into their favorite classic DirectX 8 and DirectX 9 PC games and easily add modern lighting and textures to existing game assets in a way that saves a lot of time and effort.
The RTX Remix runtime lets a modder capture a game scene and then replace assets in real-time while "injecting RTX technology," like path tracing, DLSS 3, Nvidia Reflex, and AI-enhanced textures into a game. The remastered assets can then be exported to various developer apps like Unreal Engine, Blender, and Nvidia's Omniverse apps.
The complete capabilities of the Remix runtime feature are listed here. Some other things you'll be able to do: add VR support, change camera positions to make a first-person game into an isometric game, or "modernize the fluid simulation to render smoke and fire with realistic volumetrics." Which is dev speak for 'cooler fire and smoke effects.'
This open source release of the RTX Remix runtime isn't the full package, however, as the current release only allows for making tweaks to the existing assets within a gameworld. Soon, Nvidia will release the RTX Remix Creator Toolkit, and that's the part of the modding package that will allow you to bring whole new assets into a game and use AI to upscale any existing assets, too.
The RTX Remix Creator Toolkit, according to Nvidia, "allows modders to assign new assets and lights within their remastered scene and use AI tools to rebuild the look of any asset." The toolkit isn't out yet, but releasing soon.
The video above shows you how it works in a game like The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. The results are impressive and almost make it look like a new game. At the press of a button, RTX Remix could pull in all the assets from this dining room area, where pristine lighting and AI-enhanced textures were then added back in.
All of the enhancements in the recently released Portal With RTX were done using the full RTX Remix package, giving the 15-year-old game a fresh facelift. Nvidia said that these tools would make modding more accessible to the average gamer. But it's the RTX Remix runtime pulled from Portal that modders have been using to drop ray tracing into a host of other games, from Roblox to World of Warcraft.
Nvidia is now making that runtime more freely available to make it more easily added to other games, and more easily tweaked to make it play nicely with older titles.
The RTX Remix runtime source code can be downloaded on GitHub starting today, with Creator Toolkit following soon. For more information about getting your RTX Remix mod project started, Nvidia set up a Discord server where you can talk to Remix engineers for tips.
