Bus Buddy - FMX 2026 Trailer

Bus Buddy reimagines an everyday bus ride as a gateway to the future. The story follows a young woman traveling on a legged, mechanical bus that carries her into a city of limitless opportunity. The production blends practical filming on a 1979 Magirus-Deutz bus named “Anna” with digital extensions to create a seamless, futuristic environment. The trailer was selected as the official FMX 2026 preview, presented online, on social media, and on-site with large banners.

As Technical Director, I structured the entire production pipeline. Our core DCCs where Houdini, Maya, Blender, and Nuke. I designed the folder hierarchy, defined dataflow, and established onboarding protocols to ensure consistent USD-based workflows. Every aspect of scene assembly, asset referencing, and versioning was managed through AYON. My responsibilities included guiding the team in production standards and debugging and extending the pipeline to handle complex tasks efficiently.

The production relied on USD for scene management, enabling flexible referencing and modular scene construction. Using the USD-based workflow, the team could work efficiently on animation, lighting, and compositing simultaneously while maintaining consistency across iterations.

A key technical challenge was integrating Royal Render (our render farm software) into AYON. I developed a custom extension to enable seamless submission, automated rendering, and direct publishing to ftrack. This solution streamlined the render workflow, reduced manual errors, and contributed back to the AYON community via GitHub fixes and enhancements. The extension was critical for meeting the tight production schedule while maintaining high-quality output.

I created a 3D scan of the bus using my custom scanning rig. With a Godox AR 400 and cross-polarization, I controlled overlighting to neutralize sunlight, ensuring consistent illumination across all surfaces. This allowed to capture highly precise textures and geometry, providing a solid foundation for integrating the physical bus seamlessly into the digital environment and aligning it perfectly with CG.

Bus Buddy was selected as the official FMX 2026 trailer, gaining visibility across online platforms, social media, and on-site with large banners. The FMX Conference is one of the world’s leading events for animation, visual effects, and interactive media, attracting top professionals, studios, and students from across the industry. I’m proud that being chosen as the official trailer not only showcased the film to an international audience but also highlighted the technical sophistication and production quality of the project.

To showcase the trailer, I developed a dedicated website using static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The site provided a professional platform to showcase the film, complementing FMX presentation and online distribution, reinforcing the project’s visibility and technical credibility.