To streamline the large volume of greenscreen work required for ABC’s new sci-fi series V (which reimagines the popular 1983 miniseries of the same name), artists and technicians at Zoic Studios combined off-the-shelf technologies with proprietary coding techniques to create Zeus, the Zoic Environmental Unification System. The system, which V director of photography Stephen Jackson describes as “brilliant, really,” provides a clear picture of how the greenscreen footage, shot onstage in Vancouver, will integrate with Zoic’s virtual sets.

Two days of each episode’s eight-day schedule are spent on a greenscreen stage. Lightcraft Technology’s Previzion and Airtrack solutions capture 3-D camera-tracking data, and Zeus transfers the data from Lightcraft’s 3-D engine into Zoic’s database, where it can be pulled up as a 3-D file in Maya. The filmmakers can see the greenscreen elements composited in real time on set, no matter how the shot was captured. “The beauty of it is that everybody can be on the same page,” says Jackson. “You can stand on a greenscreen set, look at a 24-inch monitor and say, ‘Okay, the actors will walk down this hallway, turn left and go into that door,’ just like you’re on a real set. To do that quickly and efficiently is one of Zeus’ major selling points.”

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