Illumity AB Taps zactrack SMART and grandMA3 for Swedish band Avatar’s World Tour
Swedish heavy metal band Avatar followed the release of its tenth studio album, “Don’t Go in the Forest,” last fall with a world tour in which zactrack SMART, the Ultra-Wide-Band (UWB) real time automated tracking system, plays a major role. grandMA3 is also deployed for lighting control and zactrack integration. ACT Entertainment is the exclusive North American distributor for zactrack and MA Lighting products.
The tour kicked off in October 2025 in Phoenix with Illumity AB in Gothenburg, Sweden supporting. Company owner Jimmy Olausson has been working with the band for nearly 13 years handling production management, lighting and stage design, and creative direction.
The tour marks Olausson’s first experience with zactrack. “I had heard a lot of things about it from colleagues of mine,” he says. “I think I was introduced to it first by Daniel who works at GOBO in Sweden. We had pretty close contact during the initial parts of this design since we have so many moving parts. One of the problems with having lights on automated carts is that the moving lights keep changing position and my grandMA3 position presets would be all messed up. zactrack was the solution that fixed this problem.”
Olausson explains that “we figured out how to use PSN to track all the automation on stage and then feed that into the zactrack system so that, in non-technical terms, the lights ‘know where they are’ at all times in 3D space.”
In addition to this application, zactrack is also used for tracking the artists with the hanging rig and front lights “just like a followspot system so we can always have key lights where the tracked band member is.”
Legacy Production Group in Minneapolis is supporting the tour with backend infrastructure, including rehearsal space, pre-vis and a grandMA3 light and grandMA3 onPC command wing acting as a backup. The 10-year-old company has been working with ACT for almost a decade, carrying ACT-distributed MA Lighting, Ayrton and Robert Juliat brands. Legacy General Manager Tony Mahmood has partnered with Avatar since 2019; on this tour he assisted Olausson in networking zactrack so it communicates with grandMA3.
“It’s a very theatrical show and narrative,” says Mahmood. “There are eight to 12 carts stage left and right with light fixtures which move to the middle of the stage plus a drum riser that splits in half. Then a motorized deck for the king’s throne comes from the upstage center curtain and the drum riser moves back together and locks. A drape with light poles on carts goes in and out stage left and right too. As the carts move zactrack enables the lights to stay focused on the band members.”
Olausson explains that “zactrack was a necessity for our design to work as intended. The band has always been a fan of followspots, but I haven’t because there is always so much human error in terms of turning on and off lights. But with zactrack, the guys can be tracked and I can still be in control over the dimmers, which means we get rid of all human error!”
He notes that there are some key marks in the set where the artists should stand on a certain spot. “Avatar is very good at this usually, but when they mess it up, they are just standing in complete darkness next to the spot that is lit up. But with zactrack tracking their every move, they can’t mess that up anymore.”
Mahmood says Olausson is “a very talented” lighting programmer who had been using grandMA2 consoles until he migrated to grandMA3 at its launch. “For the tour grandMA3 controls lighting and automation and is interfaced with zactrack and special effects. Everything has performed very solidly with no issues.”
Olausson admits that initially he was “a bit worried about the setup time [for zactrack] since we are currently only on tour with the floor package, and we always use whatever house lighting is in each venue. But zactrack calibration and setup time is actually very quick and intuitive. Since our networking and everything on stage never changes, we pretty much slap up eight anchors around the stage, run the system to measure each anchor point, and then do the calibration.”
According to Olausson, as the tour continues zactrack “is working very well – I absolutely love this system. It has definitely made my design work come to life.
“I will suggest zactrack to all my future clients because I do feel there is much yet to explore; I am sure there are a ton of things that I can do with it that I haven’t tried out yet.”