Brigade Electronics - Backeye360 VR Experience

Brigade Electronics wanted to show their Backeye360 camera system at conventions in a way that went beyond a standard product demo. The goal was to put visitors inside the experience: show how the cameras are installed on a truck, how they connect to the in-cab screen, and what the driver actually sees: proximity warnings, dead corner views, and automatic camera switches when turning or reversing. The video would run on Oculus Quest headsets at Brigade's marketing stands. Brigade branding had to be present in the environment as posters and billboards.

I built a full town environment in Blender using a mix of commercial asset packs and custom geometry node setups. The layout was planned so every sightline is naturally blocked by buildings, vegetation, and props. No matter where the viewer looks, they stay inside the world. Brigade provided the product models (cameras, cables, in-cab computer, and monitor screen). The truck and everything else in the scene I sourced or built myself.

The video is split into two scenes.

In the first, the viewer stands in a trucking yard watching the truck from the outside. An xray overlay reveals the cameras, cables, and central computer connecting the system. I rendered the product hardware as a separate pass, and my colleague used that layer in post to composite the xray effect over the main footage.

In the second scene, the viewer rides in the cabin as the truck drives through town and reverses into a drop-off zone. The Backeye360 monitor is visible the whole time, showing live feeds from each camera, switching views automatically when turning, highlighting dead corners, and triggering proximity warnings when objects get close.

Getting the monitor to look right took a dedicated pipeline. I attached a camera to each product camera on the truck, then used Blender's multiview rendering to capture all feeds simultaneously into EXR files. A Blender script exported the monitor's 3D position as JSX data, which I brought into After Effects to place each feed on the screen. I then edited in the proximity warnings, dead corner indicators, view switches on turns, and alarm states for each moment in the scene.

Rendering 2.5 minutes at 30fps and 6K equirectangular across two scenes meant very long render times. I optimized buildings and asset pack geometry throughout, then distributed the workload across office PCs as a local render farm.

A 2.5-minute 360 VR video in two chapters: an exterior scene showing the product installation and xray view, followed by an in-cabin drive-through ending with a reverse into a drop-off area. Delivered as equirectangular video with an intro and end card, ready for playback on Oculus Quest headsets. The stills and clips below focus on the in-cabin drive-through and the AI detection follow-up rather than breaking out the exterior xray scene separately.

Brigade still uses the video actively: publicly on YouTube and at live events on their convention stands. They were happy enough with the result to come back and commission a follow-up, extending the experience to cover multiple vehicle types beyond the truck. On my end, I came away with a solid grip on multiview rendering, EXR workflows, and using 3D data to drive compositing in After Effects.