What tools were used in the production of the VFX for Serenity?  How was each used?
We used a lot of different tools in this show. The primary animation and rendering package was LightWave. We rendered the majority of the shots and FX in it, utilizing the dynamics system for the explosions, the particle system and HyperVoxels™ for missile trails and firefly FX, radiosity rendering, etc. We used Maya and mental ray as well: the Mule/Skiff chase was rendered in mental ray and we used the fluid dynamics system in Maya for the skiff smoke.  The modeling was a good split between LightWave and Maya, utilizing the best tools from each package at what they were suited for, such as the great UV tools in Maya, the great modeling tools in LightWave. For texturing it was Photoshop and BodyPaint. For compositing we used Combustion as our primary package with a lot of the artists’ “slop comps” set up in After Effects. We broke all the rendering down to a base level, rendering out a “beauty” pass for each element as reference, then the Raw RGB, diffuse, specular, reflection, luminosity, etc, all as their own elements so we would have complete control over the images in comp.

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Was the team able to reuse the assets from the series for the film?  What were the issues involved in doing so/not being able to do so?
We were able to use few assets from the TV show. The Serenity herself was one of the biggest challenges. The model looked good and Joss did not want to really change it, but we needed to add some serious detail to it compared to the TV show. We had one of our texture artists, Peter Pace, paint on top of the old Serenity all the detail we needed in the new one. We had the same modeler who built the TV show model, Pierre Drolet, build this new movie version as well. He started with the old one as the template, and then began adding details such as rivets, handholds, vents, etc. This applied to every aspect of every model in the show. The only ship we used from the TV show that made it through was the Reaver ship from the pilot, which we used as a background ship.

How many effects shots in the film?  How many from Zoic?
Zoic did 220 shots for the show. Illusion Arts and Rhythm + Hues each did about 40 shots each for us, PNP FX did about 100 wire removals and green screens, and Grant McCune Design did the crash sequence with a practical model.