10AM – Plan, Track, Review! Production tracking updates in AYON

Presented by Milan Kolar, CEO & Founder at Ynput

The day opens with a look at the latest production tracking and studio management updates in AYON.

This session will cover new functionality designed to help Producers and Production Managers plan with more confidence, from broad-strokes blocking for fast scenario planning to more detailed scheduling and resource booking across artists, workstations, rooms, and licences. It will also look at how AYON is expanding review for animation-friendly workflows, including synced Review Sessions built to keep teams aligned and feedback clear.

The focus is simple. Give studios one place to plan, track, review, and deliver work without splitting production data across disconnected systems.

11:15AM – Orchestrating automated pipeline workflows using nodes in AYON

Presented by Roy Nieterau, Head of Pipeline at Ynput

This session introduces Workflows, a new AYON add-on for defining runnable, node-based workflows inside the platform.

Workflows is designed to help studios automate the operational steps that often sit between departments. That could mean distributing dependent slapcomp tasks across the farm, generating AI previs models from asset sheets, triggering bulk deliveries, or responding automatically to events in AYON such as status changes, client handoffs, reviewable creation, or email confirmations.

Rather than focusing on low-level visual programming, Workflows is built for higher-level orchestration. It gives teams a structured way to coordinate production tasks at scale, and it is already being used in feature film production. It will be included at no extra cost with an AYON Studio subscription.

12:30PM – Re-Imagining a Studio, the JFX comeback story

Presented by Pete Seager, Head of CG, JFX, and Paul Baaske, Head of Technology, JFX

In March 2025, Jellyfish Pictures went into administration. Six weeks later, JFX was delivering final frames.

This talk will look at what it meant to rebuild a studio from scratch, without legacy infrastructure or technical debt, and with a clear view of what was worth carrying forward and what was not. Pete Seager and Paul Baaske will share lessons from scaling one of the industry’s fastest-growing studios, seeing it fail, and rebuilding with a different mindset.

For anyone thinking about pipeline philosophy, cloud-first infrastructure, or what it really takes to restart fast in 2026, this session promises a rare and practical perspective.

2:30PM – How Sunrise Animation scaled pipeline, USD and sync with AYON

Presented by Christiaan Botha, Head of Technology, Timothy Keller, Producer, and Kevin van den Oever, CG Supervisor at Sunrise Animation

Sunrise Animation will share how it is modernising its pipeline to support larger-scale production.

The session will focus on four connected themes, scalable pipeline management, deeper USD integration, improved production workflows, and more flexible infrastructure. It will show how Sunrise has used AYON to meet complex studio requirements while contributing those developments back to the wider ecosystem instead of building isolated studio-specific workarounds.

It should be especially relevant for teams thinking about how to scale pipeline capability without losing flexibility.

3:45PM – Powering pipelines with integrations, ComfyUI, Deadline Cloud, OpenRV and more

Presented by Ondrej Samohel, Senior Pipeline Architect, and Roy Nieterau, Head of Pipeline

AYON’s value does not stop at tracking work in a browser. It also depends on how well it connects into the tools artists use every day.

This session will highlight a selection of newer AYON integrations, including support for generative AI workflows with ComfyUI, scaling render farms for burst capacity by tapping into AWS Deadline Cloud,  an overhauled OpenRV integration with the AYON side panel built in, and Marvelous Designer integration for garment design, simulation, and animation tracked through the AYON pipeline.

The session will also show how AYON helps launch tasks directly into DCCs, load scenes with the right dependencies, and handle naming conventions and publish locations in the background so artists can stay focused on the work itself.

5PM – Birds of a Feather: The State of Pipelines

Presented by Milan Kolar, CEO & Founder at Ynput

The final session of the day opens the room for a wider discussion.

Inspired by the Global CG Pipeline Birds of a Feather at SIGGRAPH, this informal FMX session brings a European focus to the pipeline challenges shaping animation and VFX studios in 2026.

We’ll compare notes on four key areas: generative AI in production pipelines, cloud and hybrid render farm strategies, vendor and client data exchange, and how studios preserve valuable on-set metadata through post.

For anyone building, maintaining, or depending on production pipelines, it’s a chance to share lessons, ask questions, and close the day with an open conversation grounded in real production experience.

We look forward to welcoming visitors to the AYON Suite in Raum Heilbronn on Wednesday 6 May. Whether you already use AYON or simply want to see where modern animation and VFX pipelines are heading, join us for the sessions and meet the team at FMX.