od[force]: Which are the main tools for the 3D department?
JBD: The Mill has always been a Softimage 3D facility but times have changed and it is now a blend of tools. Although we still keep the same render engine so we could say we are a Mental Ray facility. Our main tools are XSI and Maya, around 50%. On top of that we use all sorts of tools from Massive, Realflow, Houdini, Endorphin to anything that can really do the job.

od[force]: How did you became interested in Houdini, and why?

JBD: Houdini has been on the agenda for me for such a long time I can barely remember. But the fact is that the actual production needs are pushing the boundaries so much that neither Maya nor XSI can cope with the needs and you end up spending a lot of time writing code to do things rather than just doing them. So right now we are facing the fact that Houdini flexibility takes us there without the need of programming. Also exploring things is far easier and lets us carry on with multiple lines of thought rather than committing to a far too early decision from the very beginning due to time constraints or natural changes from production. I would say Houdini is extremely well positioned to be the backbone of any production which is something I am more than willing to test.

od[force]: Is the Guinness commercial the first production to use Houdini?
JBD: We have been using it in many occasions for auxiliary work to support, for example, the import limitations from other packages. So yes, this is officially the very first project to output frames for real shots.

od[force]: What were your responsibilities for the Guinness commercial?
JBD: When the job arrived we talked to the director in detail and one of our matte painters (Jimmy Kiddell) did some concept art to root the talks onto something so we could discuss all the possibilities and understand the nature of the job. After those first conversations it became clear to me this was a very special beast as we were talking about substituting the real pint of Guinness that appears on every single commercial with a CG version of it, clearly we needed to approach it in a way that all parties would be able to change anything as the case may be.
We did propose the mechanism and design the whole structure, although later on set, the art department did a working prototype that basically locked the original concept and they were keen that we could work based on something physical.
My responsibility was to supervise the shoot and lead the team to put the director's vision on the screen, so I decided to get the help from a Houdini expert to build the pint based on my specs and he did improve my original design due to his understanding of Houdini. From then it was a huge learning curve for me as the concept kept moving forward and we started to add extra things and layers of controls. The animation changed dramatically and we even added dust and bookmarks falling from the book so I had to learn to use Houdini better and basically jump onto it.

od[force]: ...and was that process harder than you expected, or easier?
JBD: The process was much easier than I though in terms of workflow but setting it up would have been an impossible task without the help from Cezar Niculescu who did almost all the TD work.