The Pipeline Conference to promote, elevate and evolve VFX/CG pipelines
Tuesday 20 October

Headlining the 20th

A keynote to open the morning, and the kickoff of the DPPA Online Speaker Series in the afternoon. Stay for both: they are one day of TPC 2026.

Hanno Basse
Keynote · The Agentic Pipeline · 20 October, morning

Hanno Basse

CTO, SPVCE.ai

  • Former CTO of Digital Domain, Stability AI, Microsoft Azure Media & Entertainment and 20th Century Fox
  • Fellow of SMPTE and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  • 30 patents

Move control out of the prompt, and back into the pipeline.

Hanno deconstructs how generative models actually work, exposes their built-in limitations, and shows why they require us to take control back into our own pipelines. For pipeline engineers, TDs and heads of technology grappling with the realities of integrating AI into production, this is the session to be in.

Register for the morning See the full line-up
Alex Hughes
Speaker Series kickoff · 20 October, 14:00 Pacific

Alex Hughes

Senior Software Engineer, Miris

  • Founding engineer at Arch Platform Technologies, bringing VFX and M&E studios into the cloud
  • Former Head of Pipeline at Vitality VFX; Digital Domain and Zoic Studios before that
  • Creator of SEPT, an open-source file-naming toolkit for VFX

Large Scale Cloud Native Radiance Field Training for Streamable Assets

Stay on after the morning sessions. Alex shows how Miris trains radiance fields at cloud scale and turns them into 3D assets that stream to any device: the training infrastructure, the cost model, and the pipeline work in between. The first talk of the DPPA Online Speaker Series, and part of the TPC 2026 programme on the 20th.

Register for the afternoon See the full line-up
TPC 2026 · Online · Free

Two days of talks and an awards show

We moved TPC 2026 online from Vancouver, and the room just got a whole lot bigger. Tuesday 20 October runs morning and afternoon: The Agentic Pipeline, then the kickoff of the DPPA Online Speaker Series with Alex Hughes of Miris. Core Pipeline Services follows on the 27th, and the tenth Pipeline Awards close out the year. Every session is free: see the full run of show, or subscribe to our newsletter to hear about the Awards Show first.

Tuesday 20 October · Morning

The Agentic Pipeline

AI and agentic workflows in digital media pipelines

When Tuesday 20 October 2026

Format 09:00 – 12:00 Pacific · Online · Recorded

Cost Free

Speakers

  • Hanno Basse Keynote

    CTO, SPVCE.ai

    Former CTO of Digital Domain, Stability AI, Microsoft Azure Media & Entertainment and 20th Century Fox

    SMPTE Fellow · Motion Picture Academy member · 30 patents

  • Bert Van Brande

    Co-Founder, Stellar Creative Lab

    Designed pipelines at Sony Pictures Imageworks for The Polar Express, Surf's Up and Alice in Wonderland

    Helped launch the original Maya · 35+ years in CG and VFX

  • Fermi Perumal

    Head of Production Technology, Stellar Creative Lab

    Credits include Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Sea Beast and Marvel Zombies

  • Cyrus Rahgoshay

    Senior Software Development Manager, Autodesk

    Previously Technical Lead at Ubisoft, building its cross-studio USD pipeline

    DigiPro 2022 speaker

Three talks converging on one argument: generative AI only behaves once the pipeline is holding the reins. Why control cannot live in the prompt; what governance and rights management look like inside a working studio pipeline; and what changes when agents run inside standard 3D software rather than alongside it.

Register free on Luma

Tuesday 20 October · Afternoon

Speaker Series Kickoff

Large Scale Cloud Native Radiance Field Training for Streamable Assets

When Tuesday 20 October 2026

Format 14:00 – 15:00 Pacific · Online · Recorded

Cost Free

Speaker

  • Alex Hughes

    Senior Software Engineer, Miris

    Previously founding engineer at Arch Platform Technologies and Head of Pipeline at Vitality VFX; Digital Domain and Zoic Studios before that

    Creator of SEPT, open-source file naming for VFX

Stay on after the morning programme: Alex Hughes of Miris on training radiance fields at cloud scale and turning them into 3D assets that stream to any device. The training infrastructure, the cost model, and the pipeline work in between. It is the first talk of the DPPA Online Speaker Series, and part of TPC 2026 on the 20th.

Register free on Eventbrite

Tuesday 27 October · Morning

Core Pipeline Services

Pipeline engineering and operations at production scale

When Tuesday 27 October 2026

Format 09:00 – 12:00 Pacific · Online · Recorded

Cost Free

Speakers

  • Dan Englesson

    Founder, Hugin Studios

    Previously Head of Pipeline at Goodbye Kansas, and Global TD at Pixar on The Good Dinosaur, Finding Dory and Coco

    Part of the team that moved Pixar onto OpenUSD

  • Alan McSeveney

    Field CTO for Media & Entertainment and AI, WEKA

    Previously co-founder and CTO of Preymaker, and Head of Technology at The Mill

  • Cole Pearsall

    Founder & CEO, Symbiote

    Building an AI orchestration layer for animation, VFX and games pipelines

    Forbes 30 Under 30 · Co-founder of Acid League and Proxies

The three layers everything else in a studio sits on: the format, the storage, the automation. Getting to OpenUSD without stalling halfway; taking I/O out of the critical path for rendering, playback and cloud bursting; and handing tedious QC checks to agents on the artist's own workstation, with no proprietary data leaving the building.

Register free on Luma

December 2026

The Pipeline Awards Show

Closing out the year on the TPC YouTube channel

When Date TBA

Format Streamed show · Free

Speakers Announced on the night

Cost Free

The tenth Pipeline Awards, now its own produced show. We present our awardees' work on screen, with each of them speaking to you directly, messages from the judges, and open rooms on Discord afterwards so you can talk to the people whose tools you depend on.

About the awards
Who it's for

Two deeply rewarding mornings of Pipeline content

TPC is for the people who build and run production pipelines: pipeline engineers and developers, technical directors and technical artists, and the R&D, infrastructure and production technology teams behind animation, VFX, games and real-time media. Students and people new to the industry are just as welcome. This is where you meet the people doing the work.

A full room of pipeline professionals at one of the DPPA's Birds of a Feather sessions at SIGGRAPH 2026.
A full house at one of our pipeline Birds of a Feather sessions, SIGGRAPH 2026.

Making the case to your manager

  1. No travel, no ticket Two three-hour mornings and an afternoon talk, online and free. The only cost is your time.
  2. Ideas you can use on Monday How to keep generative models under pipeline control, a staged roadmap to OpenUSD, radiance fields trained at cloud scale and streamed to any device, taking storage I/O off the critical path, and agentic QC that never sends studio data off the workstation.
  3. Direct access to thought leaders in the industry Every talk ends in live Q&A with speakers who built pipelines at Digital Domain, Stability AI, Pixar, Ubisoft, Sony Pictures Imageworks, The Mill and Miris.
  4. It reaches the whole team Talks are recorded for the TPC YouTube channel, and the discussion carries on in our Discord, so what you learn travels back to your studio.
Register · 20 Oct morning Register · 20 Oct afternoon Register · 27 Oct morning

The Pipeline Conference is the flagship event of the Digital Production Pipeline Association, a community that spans more than 50 studios and 40 countries across animation, VFX, games and immersive media. It keeps going year-round through our online speaker series, technical roundtables, Discord and the pipeline sessions we coordinate at SIGGRAPH and GDC.

Why come along

Pipeline engineers talking shop around a laptop at Beers of a Feather, the DPPA's SIGGRAPH 2026 meetup.

Engage with professionals in the industry

TPC is by engineers for engineers! The board, organisers and volunteers all work in pipeline engineering themselves, and our community spans pipeline developers, technical directors, R&D and infrastructure people from more than 50 studios across 40-plus countries. Online, the hallway track lives on our Discord, and the speakers stay on after their talks.

Join the Discord
A packed room at one of the pipeline Birds of a Feather sessions the DPPA coordinated at SIGGRAPH 2026.

Learn about the latest cutting edge techniques

This year: a former CTO of Digital Domain and Stability AI on why control cannot live in the prompt; Ubisoft's agentic asset production; one of the team who moved Pixar onto OpenUSD; storage lessons from The Mill and Preymaker; and, kicking off our Speaker Series, Miris on radiance fields that stream to any device. Active projects with real budgets and real deadlines, including the parts that broke.

See the schedule
The Pipeline Awards title card over a night-time photograph of the Vancouver skyline.

Celebrate the latest advances with the Pipeline Awards

The tenth Pipeline Awards close out the year in December. Nominations are closed and our independent panel has made its decisions, across two categories: Pipeline Project of the Year, for the tools that save studios months of work, and Pipeline Hero of the Year, for the people who build them.

About the awards