Frankie at Bungie.net posted an extremely insightful interview Bungie held with a few of the Digital Domain folks. The interview contains excellent information on the nature of how Digital Domain performs their critically acclaimed work, what they encountered, and some of the decisions they made when creating the latest and greatest commercial spot for Halo 3.

Though Digital Domain declined to give very much specific information on the trailer itself, Frankie actually confirms that the kids and the grass are all completely real prior to the interview. What follows are some interesting portions from the interview.

Bungie: What software and processes do you use to turn those assets into a CG movie?

Ed: We began with modeling Master Chief and all of the other assets you see in the spot in Maya and Lightwave. We then textured them in Deep Paint and Photoshop. After that, matte paintings of all the skies, mountains, and select terrain were done in Photoshop. We then started the animation process. For the effect we wanted, we started with motion capture that Joseph Kosinski directed. Then, based on our needs, we key framed on top of it in Maya. All of that was then pushed into lighting. We split this duty between Max/Vray and Lightwave for the characters and terrain. We used Houdini to create fx elements like the sand explosions and blue mortars, and Lightwave for the flowing grass. When all of these things were ready, we composited it into a final image using our in-house compositing software, Nuke and Autodesk’s Flame.

Bungie: How did you feel about working with someone else’s models and IP, and the Halo franchise generally?

Ed: Sometimes it can be difficult working with someone else’s IP, but in this instance that wasn’t the case. Bungie had everything together, allowing us access to really top quality models, textures and footage, and worked very, very closely with us. One of the great experiences of this project was that everyone pulled together with the common vision of creating an end product that is truly spectacular.

Bungie: What kind of similarities do you see between game production and movie-style CG creation?

Ed: For us, there’s really no difference in creating visuals for games, feature films or commercials – we’re in the business of making a vision real, whether it belongs to a developer or director. At Digital Domain, we’re very much focused on convergence – it’s something that we have been talking about for some time and we’re now beginning to see it come together. Our belief is that as we create digital assets, there is an ability to easily repurpose those assets for features from games or games from features – allowing games and features to each have extremely high production values and an extremely realistic look and feel.

We’ve begun using in-game engines and assets to render gaming commercials – with this approach, we can provide an accurate depiction of actual game visuals and game play, because we’re using actual game assets in our commercial development. And we feel that this technique may open up a new genre of feature and/or game-related films that are built in realtime engines. This kind of digital asset sharing and convergence in production really is the wave of the future, and cross development will begin to blur the lines of effects being created for features or games.

Bungie: What was the most challenging aspect of creating Starry Night?

Ed: Basically, it was time. Bungie, Microsoft, McCann Worldgroup, and Digital Domain wanted to create an unforgettable “bridge