XR Day 2026 runs Friday, April 10, from 9:00 to 18:00 on the shared campus of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and Akademie für Darstellende Kunst Baden-Württemberg. The day focuses on eXtended Reality as non-linear, user-controlled technology across film, theater, media, art, and industry. The format mixes impulse talks with hands-on experiences for VR, AR, and MR, with an explicit focus on where new application fields emerge.

Morning talks

A welcome at 9:00 sets the day with Volker Helzle, Ludger Engels, and Ilja Mirsky.

At 9:10, WHAT THE FOX puts participants into a nighttime city from the perspective of a red fox. The talk features Gaussian Splatting, with Alex Herrmann and Alec Barth from jyotifilm as speakers, focusing on interdisciplinary teamwork across art, science, and technology.

At 9:30, MAIA presents a 3D avatar linked to CyberLÄND. Frank Dürr from acameo and CyberLÄND plus Max Schmierer from b.ReX present how AI supported figures connect immersive experiences, community interaction, and digital business models.

At 9:50, REVERSE TURING TEST sets five ticket holders in a train compartment, billed as a group ticket for artificial intelligences, with one human hidden among them. The twist is that AI systems identify the human.

At 10:10, Kameraarbeit für Virtual Production frames virtual production as a broadened form of cinematic thinking, where composition, lighting design, scenography, performance, and real time visualization merge. Matthias Bolliger is the speaker.

At 10:30, Breakfall focuses on capturing spontaneous moments. Frederik Stapf and Raphael Tonn explain how improvised movement becomes an animated dance film.

At 11:00, EGON SCHIELE. Eine persönliche Begegnung is a realistic VR experience by Gerda Leopold, framed as a journey through Vienna around 1900. The artist looks back on life, speaks with participants, and asks questions.

At 11:20, TREMENS combines live performance and virtual reality, inspired by Timon von Athen by William Shakespeare. The XR experience was developed at Residenztheater München. An excerpt is presented by the Belgian media art collective CREW. The piece places the audience in flowing architectures and interactive avatars, with the boundary between stage presence and virtual experience described as blurring.

At 11:40, AniTrailer and AniPlay cover student team production over four months, resulting in either an animated trailer or an interactive experience. The speakers listed are Diana Arellano, Clara Deitmar, Sam Matsa, and Lennart Haak, with insight into collaborative workflows, XR technologies, and virtual production approaches.

At 12:00, XR in Baden-Württemberg introduces the Carl Laemmle Institut and with two funded research projects named VISTA and IMRL, both focused on extended reality at the interface between the creative industries and other industrial sectors.

Hands on experiences

From 14:00 onward, the program switches to XR experiences on site.

TREMENS appears as a live performance and VR hybrid with continuously transforming spaces, interactive avatars, and architecture.

FATE OF THE MINOTAUR is a location based VR experience developed at Animationsinstitut. Players take the role of human sacrifices from Athens sent into the labyrinth by Minos, King of Crete, and face a choice: kill the Minotaur or spare the tormented creature. The story supports different immersive levels depending on technical and spatial conditions on site.

LICHTUNG invites visitors into a sleeping world that wakes up gradually through interaction.

LIMBO is an interactive installation where visitors explore their most beautiful memories through a conversation with an artificial intelligence, while reflecting on how memories shape personal convictions and influence society.

The takeaway for post, VFX, and realtime folks

This program stitches viewpoint experiments, realtime visualization language, stage driven XR, and interactive installations into one schedule, and it keeps practical constraints visible, like immersion levels adapting to venue and gear for FATE OF THE MINOTAUR.

https://www.filmakademie.de/de/news-aktuelles/article/xr-day-2026-immersion-kunst-performance

https://www.filmakademie.de/

https://www.adk-bw.de/

https://animationsinstitut.de/de/

The post XR Day 2026 brings XR to Ludwigsburg first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

The new trailer for FMX 2026, created by students at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg’s Animationsinstitut, pitches the upcoming milestone 30th-edition of the conference with a sense of optimism and transformation. The trailer’s standout visual? A bus growing legs.

Director Julian Mehn says the goal was to “create a sense of connection”, the core spirit of FMX, by showing something unexpected happen in an everyday moment. With the walking bus, hovering rocks, and raindrops alluding to previous films such as “Shape of Water” and “Avatar”, the team intended the trailer as a tribute to their creative inspirations. The final shot doubles as the “key visual” for FMX 2026. The filmmakers consciously steered away from visual darkness. Instead, they aimed for a sunrise-lit world that feels hopeful and inviting, capturing what they imagine as a “road ahead” toward future possibilities.

Because of time constraints, the team kept production pragmatic: they parked an actual bus in the Filmakademie yard for a week, shot its interior, and scanned the vehicle to rebuild it digitally for the animated transformation. According to Mehn, even unexpected weather, a surprise snowfall , stood in contrast to their intended summer night setting. The trailer’s audio was recorded live with an orchestra in Sofia, described by the team as a labour of love from many contributors. Mehn and crew hope the trailer will put the industry and community “in the mood” for FMX’s conference sessions.

FMX 2026 in context

FMX (short for Film & Media Exchange) is widely and rightfully regarded as Europe’s most important conference for animation, VFX, games, interactive and immersive media. Each spring, international professionals and students gather for FMX’s mix of presentations, panel talks, workshops, master classes, and company showcases. The “FMX Forum” complements the main conference with a marketplace, a recruiting hub for studios looking for talent, and a “School Campus” where media schools present their programmes and student projects, making FMX a major industry crossroads.

For 2026, FMX marks its 30th edition. According to what the Animationsinstitut announced with the trailer, part of the event’s spirit will involve a nod back to its roots and perhaps a forward-looking “road ahead.”

The post New Trailer walks FMX 2026 home first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

When I opened the TD Meetup 21, I asked a simple question: “Why talk about virtual reality again?”

A few years ago VR was everywhere – headsets, conferences, demos, hype – but it quietly faded into the background when projects stalled and the novelty wore off. At the same time, I’ve seen steady progress: VR now serves as a practical, cost-saving tool for architecture, design, visualisation and increasingly for our industry of VFX and animation.

I recall first meeting Dan Franke (Instagram) at the FMX 2025, where his VR artworks reignited my interest. His work in Quill VR showed that virtual reality can be more than a viewing device; it can be a creative environment. For previsualisation, VR allows directors and supervisors to plan set extensions and camera movement directly inside a 3D world. For artists, it allows sculpting and painting in a space that feels natural, intuitive, and immediate and for audiences, it redefines immersion, especially in documentary or experiential content such as the Fukushima 360° recordings. My goal for the evening was to let Dan demonstrate that potential in action and to remind our technical community that VR is not gone – it has simply grown up.

Who Is Dan Franke – From Student to VR Pioneer

Dan traced his path from his days as a CG generalist sculpting aliens in ZBrush, to discovering his passion for direction and storytelling. During his studies at the Animationsinstitut, he created a 2D short film that confirmed his interest in animation. Later, as a co-director on the children’s series Petzi at Studio Soi, he learned the realities of production management and communication. Dan described that time with a laugh: “I was a student with imposter syndrome, surrounded by world-class animators, suddenly telling them what to do.”

That experience taught him not only humility but also efficiency. Big projects require coordination, teams, and budgets – luxuries students rarely have. So he began searching for tools that could give him independence, something that let a small team or even a single artist, produce complex animation on their own terms.

The Moment Dan Discovered Quill

Dan’s turning point came when he discovered Quill, then being developed at Oculus Story Studio by Goro Fujita and Inigo Quilez. The tool allowed painting and animating directly in 3D space inside VR. When he saw early demos of artists sketching in volumetric space, he realised he needed to try it.

By coincidence, only a week later Goro came to Dan’s university for the first public Quill workshop. Within two days Dan had learned the basics. One day later he produced his first 3D painting entirely in Quill. He described the revelation: Quill is essentially Photoshop in three dimensions, where you can paint brush strokes that exist in space and then animate them in real time.

Because the Quill community was small at the time, Dan’s early experiments quickly gained attention on Facebook groups and later on Discord. That visibility led to collaborations on major VR projects, connecting him to studios and other artists pushing the same frontier.

Early Projects: Namoo, Tales from Soda Island and Studio Syro

One of Dan’s first significant productions was Namoo, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Eric O. The piece, both a VR experience and a 2D short, was built by a small team that included former Pixar and Disney artists. Dan’s contribution was painting and animating the environments entirely in Quill. Every tree, branch, and memory sequence in Namoo was handcrafted in volumetric brush strokes rather than traditional geometry.

After Namoo, Dan and a collective of Quill artists pitched an experimental concept to Meta: a world built of music, colour, and tiny creatures, inspired by the label Soda Island. Meta funded the idea, and Tales from Soda Island became the first full VR series created entirely in VR. The group formed Studio Syro (Instagram), a distributed studio that operated remotely during the pandemic and didn’t meet physically until years later.

Dan directed the first three of seven episodes, each more technically ambitious than the last. In the beginning, he still thought in 2D, using storyboards and fixed “cameras.” By the second episode, moving through full 360° space, he realised that traditional storyboarding didn’t fit VR storytelling. He had to adapt.

He recalled following Einstein’s quote: “Everyone knew it was impossible until a fool who didn’t know came along and just did it.” Dan chose to ignore established VR conventions and invented his own film language by borrowing timing and rhythm from 2D cinema but applying them in a 3D world.

As production evolved, Studio Syro discovered that Quill could replace much of the previsualisation pipeline. They began creating layouts, camera moves, and storyboards directly in VR. The approach combined storyboarding, animatic, and previs in a single tool, accelerating iteration and improving communication across the team.

Quill Techniques in Practice

When Dan switched to live demonstration mode during the meetup, the chat went silent. We all watched a butterfly appear in front of him – a cloud of brush strokes grouped into parts. He grabbed one wing by its pivot, moved it in real time and Quill recorded the motion. There was no rig, no keyframes, no constraints. Just his hand and the headset tracking every nuance.

He explained that the technique relies on simple grouping and pivot placement: Once you define the hinge point, you can record your hand motions as animation data. The result looks organic because it is organic. Human motion captured directly as a brush movement.

“I animate the wing by grabbing it and rotating it in real time. No rig involved – just grouping and recording my hand motion.”

In another scene, he built a stylised water effect: Creating an empty layer, looping frames, painting fluid motion stroke by stroke and using the grab tool to distort the surface. He described how easy it was to “make it rain” in Quill by simply painting downward strokes and looping them.

Later, he opened visuals from a project for music artist Bad Bunny, showing psychedelic stage graphics created entirely with painted animations in Quill. Clouds, waves, and surreal textures moved fluidly, achieved by layering and distorting rotating spheres and painted strokes. Watching him deform shapes live felt closer to sculpting clay than editing polygons.

Dan emphasised that Quill rewards improvisation. You paint one small detail, duplicate it, rearrange it and soon the space fills into a world. It’s procedural, but handmade. An artist’s version of Houdini logic.

Quill as Previsualisation Tool

To show how Quill functions as a previs system, Dan built a miniature tunnel scene from scratch. He painted simple grey strokes to form walls and ceiling, duplicated them for depth, then added colour and placed a camera. A rough character shape followed; a black silhouette with a stick weapon.

He then activated record mode, grabbed the character, and moved it through the space while looking through the camera view. The animation was recorded instantly. Within seconds, he had a readable scene: The character walks forward, pauses, then reacts to falling rocks that he painted in next. The result looked crude yet expressive enough to read the motion, staging and timing.

Dan pointed out that such iterations would normally require drawing, editing, compositing, and re-timing across several programs. In Quill, it happens in one continuous creative act. That immediacy, he argued, shortens iteration loops and encourages experimentation.

Integrating Quill into the Pipeline

After the demos, Dan addressed a question many TDs were waiting for: How does this fit into existing pipelines? Quill, he explained, can export geometry and animation as FBX, OBJ, or Alembic files. Those can be imported into Maya, Blender or Houdini. Because Quill’s geometry is built from individual brush strokes, the surfaces are not watertight meshes; lighting them directly reveals visible edges. For that reason, Quill output is best used for stylised effects, abstract backgrounds, or reference geometry rather than production models.

Nevertheless, it can serve as an excellent art-direction tool. Effects departments can import Quill volumes as timing and motion references or even as collision shapes for simulations. Dan also mentioned upcoming work on integrating Quill-like tools into Blender via the new Grease Pencil VR prototype. Such integration could make these workflows accessible to more artists and, importantly, open to scripting and extensions.

I added that this is precisely where technical directors come in. New tools often lack the surrounding infrastructure: exporters, optimisers, render bridges. A TD’s role is to evaluate these technologies, write the missing connectors, and make them usable for the rest of the team.

Audience Q&A Highlights

When the Q&A opened, the questions came quickly. One attendee asked how long he can work in VR before fatigue sets in. Dan said it varies widely between people. During his workshops, newcomers sometimes need a day to adjust, but he personally can work ten to twelve hours in Quill without issue. Early in his career he trained himself by playing VR flight games, performing barrel rolls to eliminate motion sickness. Then he laughed and admitted he once fell asleep wearing the headset and woke up still inside the virtual space – a surreal experience he does not recommend.

Another participant asked whether Quill supports painting over live video. Dan explained that you can import footage as layers, remove alpha channels, and paint directly over them. His Arcane reel used this method: He filmed his hands on green screen, composited the footage inside Quill and drew the environment around it.

A third question concerned hardware. Dan recommended Meta Quest headsets, specifically the Quest 2, 3, or lightweight 3S, as ideal for Quill. Even older Oculus Rifts still function, though with poorer optics. He added that Quill runs smoothly on mid-range PCs or even laptops; high-end GPUs are not mandatory.

Finally, someone asked how technical Quill is to operate. Dan described it as “the least technical software I’ve ever used.” With only a few controller buttons to memorise, the barrier to entry is low. Within two days of workshops, most students forget the buttons entirely and focus on creation. But integrating Quill into a production pipeline is another story: Depending on project complexity, a studio may need an import/export script, shaders or performance tools. He recommended that TDs interested in supporting Quill learn basic Python scripting to build these bridges.

Quill in Production Contexts

At that point I asked Dan to imagine returning to Petzi and directing a new season. Would he use Quill purely for previs or even for final output? He replied that for Petsy, Quill would excel in the early stages like storyboarding, layout, animatic, and camera blocking. The advantage lies in speed: Directors can test ideas directly without waiting for new drawings.

For final production, Quill could contribute stylised effects like smoke, rain, splashes, painterly transitions but likely not main characters. The stroke-based meshes show seams under realistic lighting. However, he added that exporting animated Quill volumes as Alembic can serve as perfect guides for effects artists, giving them a timed and shaped reference for further simulation.

I agreed. Productions often struggle to communicate tone and feeling from 2D concept to 3D execution. VR sketching bridges that gap by letting everyone see and feel scale, movement and atmosphere directly. A line drawing leaves room for interpretation; a spatial sketch shows intent.

Reflections and Takeaways

After nearly two hours of live painting, animation, and discussion, I took a step back. Watching Dan work made it clear that Quill sits at a fascinating intersection of art and technology. It reintroduces immediacy to digital production: The artist’s gesture becomes motion, not data entry.

The implications for production are tangible. In early design and previs, VR tools can compress the time between idea and validation. A director or TD can sketch in space, test pacing, iterate on blocking and hand off to layout or animation without traditional bottlenecks.

Equally important, these tools demand new types of collaboration. Technical artists need to connect them to render pipelines, while creatives need to understand what they can ask from them. Quill proves that the two roles of artist and technologist are no longer separate worlds but overlapping disciplines.

What’s Next and How to Join

TD Meetup continues monthly. The next session will tackle Python Challenges, focusing on automation and problem-solving for real production pipelines. If you would like to join future events, visit td-meetup and register. Recordings of previous sessions, including Dan’s full Quill demo, are available on the TD Meetup YouTube playlist.

Dan’s VR Painting Foundations Course is available at vrpaintingcourse.com, where he teaches Quill basics and advanced VR animation techniques. For those wanting to experiment, Quill itself can be found at quill.art, and Meta Quest (Facebook-Login Required?) hardware details are listed at meta.com.

Final Thoughts

The TD Meetup 21 reminded us that VR is far from dead. Tools like Quill demonstrate that immersive creation is not a gimmick but a workflow accelerator. Dan Franke’s live session showed how real-time painting and animation can merge art, direction, and technical design into one fluid process.

As we move into an era dominated by AI tools, his closing comment resonated: VR remains the most human form of digital creation. It captures not the machine’s interpretation, but the artist’s hand. Watching him animate by literally waving his hand in the air, I thought: This is where technology feels alive again.

See you at the next Meetup,
Alex

The post TD Meetup 21: VR, Quill & the Renaissance of Real-Time Storytelling first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Alexander Richter.

In nuce: In a study worth reading, the Animation Institute of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg reports on virtual production – and how it can be used to realise sustainable film projects. The title of the paper is “Green Screens, Green Pixels and Green Shooting”, outlining in four informative pages how modern film productions can focus on sustainability.

Research question of the study: Can VFXs be produced more sustainably thanks to new technologies? To answer this question, the authors of the study contrasted two comparable productions: A traditional offline post-production and a virtual production with an LED wall.

The initial situation: According to the study, several recent reports show how conventional film productions affect the environment. The average CO₂ requirement of current feature film productions is estimated at 2840 tonnes. However, according to the study, visual effects and their impact were not taken into account. The Animationsinstitut study is primarily based on the Screen New Deal.

Comparing two approaches: As knowledge about the sustainability of virtual productions is currently thin on the ground, the authors of the study decided to compare two different approaches to film production: A production with commercially available offline rendering and industry-standard post-production, contrasted with a production with LED walls and in-camera visual effects (ICVFX).

Object of the comparison: In order to investigate the environmental impact of a film production, two Filmakademie productions were compared with each other: the offline production “Sprout” (2019) and the virtual production “Awakening” (2021). “Awakening” was part of a set extension workshop for Film Academy students, in which students get to know the different film departments.

Turning the focus – and the wheel of time? Will blue and green screen soon be a thing of the past in terms of production technology?

Production No. 1 – offline production “Sprout”: In this production, most of the energy consumption was used for offline rendering and post-production. Here, the traditional green screen was used in post-production. The study states: “The studio shots were realised in two days. The production comprised eight shots with a total of 3233 frames, including VFX.” It goes on to say: “The average render time was between 40 minutes and up to two hours.”

How much (wo)manpower was required for “Sprout”? The study says that the pre-production of “Sprout” took 100 man-days (eight hours per day), while the subsequent post-production was completed within 300 man-days. A person-day is made up of eight person-hours. The so-called person-hour measures the average performance of a person within one hour. A total of five students were involved in pre- and post-production.

How much electricity was consumed during offline production? All in all, “Sprout” consumed a total of 5073 kilowatt hours of electricity, 4% of which came from pre-production, 13% from post-production, 79% from offline rendering and 4% from the electricity required for the displays.

Sprout (2020) | VFX Breakdown

Production No. 2 – LED wall production “Awakening”: Instead of the frequently encountered green screens, “Awakening” used curved LED walls as part of a virtual production. The authors of the study measured “Awakening” with eight shots, which totalled 8898 individual images. In terms of workload, seven students were involved in the pre-production for five weeks, and six students were responsible for the post-production for a period of five weeks.

How big was the (wo)manpower of “Awakening”? Six people were involved in post-production for five weeks, resulting in a consumption of 504 kWh. The authors point out that one might have expected a lower figure for ICVFX, as it is generally understood that in-camera visual effects are those that are recorded on set and do not subsequently require post-production.

How high was the power consumption of the LED wall production? The authors of the study estimate the total power consumption for the LED wall production at 1594 kilowatt hours, of which 37 % was used for pre-production, 31 % for post-production, 10 % for the displays, 19 % for the LED wall, 1 % for LED wall rendering and 2 % for offline rendering.

In their conclusion, the authors of the study came to the conclusion that a virtual production can consume around three times less energy than an offline rendered production. The authors therefore consider virtual production to be a sustainable and environmentally conscious production technique. However, the authors emphasise that they are not giving a clear vote in favour of virtual production, as it is “not a solution for all aspects of film production”. At the same time, however, it should be seen as a valuable option that presents environmentally friendly and sustainable solutions.

Click further: You can read the entire study in either German or English. Click on the links to find out more about the Film Academy, its animation institute and its research activities. Prospective students can find out everything they need to know about the Ludwigsburg university’s training programme in our article “Filmakademie: Auf zum Studenten-Oscar?”, printed in the print edition DP 03 : 2021.

The post The Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg researches sustainable filmmaking first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

In addition to our own animago “Jury’s Prize” 2019, the diploma film The Beauty , created at the Animation Institute of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, is going on a trophy dive: The short film was recently honoured in Los Angeles with a VES Award in the category “Outstanding Visual Effects in a Student Project”. The team directed by Pascal Schelbli(VFX Supervisor: Marc Angele, Animation: Noel Winzen, Producers: Tina Vest, Aleksandra Todorovic) beat three other nominated student productions. You can findall the winners of this year’s VES Awards here.

The Beauty Making-Of in the DP 19 : 06

In The Beauty, the Animationsinstitut team takes us on a ‘deep dive’ into a rather uncomfortable part of the world. However, beautiful images and sounds from the depths of the oceans can be seen and heard – consisting of shoals of flip-flops, coral reefs made of plastic cutlery and straws, plastic jellyfish and bottled whales. You can read all the details about the realisation in our article from DP 19 : 06 here for free.

Further information: To the website of the animation institute

The post The Beauty wins VES Award first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.