Since the effect was integral to selling the concept of the show to viewers, Orloff says they all spent a lot of time getting it right. "It was a lot of back and forth about how much translucency," he explains. "As the disease took over his body he got more and more transparent so you could almost see through him to the other side. They flew me out to the set to supervise that sequence with Kevin. It was important to give it a real sense of volume and it was successful in that way. A big key to the success was that I took a lot of really detailed photo surveys. We have our own 360 camera rig and I took multiple exposures of 360 pano of every environment that the 'invisi-Johns' took place in, so what I had what a huge, high-dynamic range sphere that we were able to us as a reflection for all the lighting. The key to get the organs right were the highlights and moisture. We used the detailed photo survey as a basis for the reflections and lighting rigs. All the CG was rendered in LightWave and the compositing was done in After Effects. All in all, it was a great thing to work on because J.J.'s intention was to do something you haven't seen before. And it was a great creative process with us, Bad Robot, the director Alex Graves and Kevin."

Agent Olivia Dunham goes beyond traditional FBI investigation on Fringe, in which Zoic developed new techniques for integrating 2D with 3D.

Orloff says the success of that sequence added more Fringe work to their schedule. "Everybody liked it so the shot count grew," he offers. "We started out with a lot -- maybe 20 shots. Then it went down to 10 and then they saw it and brought it back to the original. Then we did a couple of other big sequences like the exterior plane stuff."

In the opening teaser of the pilot, a flight from Germany is shown in a lightning storm. Orloff details, "We have a long pedigree of working on shows like Serenityand BSG [Battlestar Galactica], so we used that talent base. We also had some innovative use of combining 3D renders from LightWave and 2D workspace in AfterEffects to get the volumetric clouds. It's an interesting combination of 3D and 2D using lighting. Everything was broken into passes so individual details and highlights can be dialed in element by element.

"The other big sequence was the 'jaw drop,'" Orloff continues. "In the teaser there is panic on this airliner where everybody's skin starts to disintegrate and most of that was done with makeup. They went to a big shot of the co-pilot in the cockpit and there's goop all over his face. It looked pretty scary but J.J. took one look at that shot and said, 'It doesn't look scary enough. You know what would be scary? If the guy's face disintegrates and his jaw fell off onto the floor.' So it was never really planned as a visual effects shot. We looked at the plate going, 'Um… OK,'" Orloff laughs.

He continues, "We used Maya and mental ray. First thing we had to do was get a scan of the actor's face. We had to match angle and camera and the soft deformations on his mouth. It all had to be tracked in 3D. We painted the textures of his jaw back on and did a 3D mouth interior. We then did detailed modeling and dynamics to make the jaw stretch and fall off. Also, once the jaw was gone you could see behind the mouth as to where the neck was so there was a lot of intricate tracking and rotoscoping. That shot had a high degree of difficulty. Kevin spent a lot of time at Zoic working with me and the artists on it which was really great. We would sit in dailies twice a week and then everyday. We also really got a good system with J.J., who is very computer savvy with Maya, so he was able to see the animatic stages and the timing without going into the texture and rendering of it."

Zoic is now the vendor on the episodic production of Fringe, with Orloff staying as the point supervisor on the series working with the new Production Supervisor Jay Worth. He says the transition was a natural evolution as "the pilot turned into episode one, there were a ton of changes from the other sequences we didn't do on the pilot. There was a lot of work, like the dream sequence, from other vendors that we re-opened up. There was a robotic arm we re-rendered and retouched. We also were able to bring some virtual set expertise into it with a Toronto for Iraq shot.