MUMBAI: Petro Vlahos, who pioneered blue- and green-screen technology to Hollywood, has passed away. He was 96.

Paying his respects to Vlahos, senior visual effects supervisor at Look Effects, a post-production outlet, Everett Burrell said, "All visual effects professionals and movie fans owe him a debt of gratitude." "It‘s hard to even conceive of how we would do what we do without the amazing number of processes and techniques he pioneered," he added.

Although the technology was not new when Valhos started to use it-it had been seen before in The Thief of Baghdad and The Ten Commandments, his firm, Ultimatte, made the process much more realistic.

Vlahos was awarded many patents for the techniques he invented in his laboratory, including the one which won him an Oscar, teaming up live action with cartoons on Mary Poppins. He was also associated with the Charlton Heston-starrer Ben hur.