T H E H I T
////////\\\\\\\\
RealTime
"Innocence is charming, refreshing... and transitory."
> History
^^^^^^^
The Hit was originally a 3'28" short by Jordi Moragues, done as the final
project for the Master in Image Synthesis and Computer Animation of the
Balearic Islands University. The short showed a colourful and happy mallet
giving up to the monotonous rhythm of its cold and metallic neighbours. The
idea was so simple and universal, that he concentrated in showing it in an
energetic and appealing way, by the use of the music and the atmosphere of
the images.
He received a Pixel-INA award at Imagina'94 (Monaco) among other awards and
exhibitions (see the complete list at www.iua.upf.es/~jordi/prods/hit.html).
Not being too much complex for today's computers and also the first spanish
short to receive an Imagina award, we decided to do the real time version as
a tribute to its author, so we asked him for permission, and he sent us the
soundtrack and a videotape. It was not possible to get the original 3D data,
so we had to rebuild it all nearly from scratch.
> Technical details
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The original short was done with no post-production. After completing the
storyboard, the whole soundtrack was composed and executed. The recording was
the basis that established the timing of the animation and the duration of
each shot. This way, no more frames than strictly necessary were generated,
and each completed shot was recorded directly on its final position on the
master. It took about four months to complete. Half of that time consisted in
rendering hammers.
The real time version was done in a similar way. After rebuilding all the
scene, it was shot according to the video, using the soundtrack as the main
basis. A considerable effort was done matching the appearance to the original
frames, this included simulating volumetric lights and shadows, and
approximating some other lightning with simpler light models. It also took
about four months to complete and half of that time was spent coding the
engine that renders a pretty same scene with about 450 hammers of 1000
polygons each one in less than 1/30th second.
> Minimum requirements
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
nVidia GeForce series with the latest drivers
Athlon/P3 750
64MB RAM
Windows 98/me/2K/XP
> Known issues
^^^^^^^^^^^^
On MultiMonitor systems, OpenGL acceleration is usually disabled, so the
software driver is used instead. Please disable all the secondary screens
before running The Hit RealTime.
The HitRT should run on any OpenGL card, we can't possibly test all cards out
there so we can't guarantee it will work properly in all configurations.
Choose a 16bit color buffer to achieve faster frame rates, or 32bit to avoid
color bleedings/artifacts. Some drivers let you use 32bit textures while in
16bit video mode, try to enable this option if possible because it gives you
more speed with reasonable quality.
> Full credits
^^^^^^^^^^^^
> RealTime version
Programming, Modelling & Animation
Óscar Fernández
Supervision & Textures
Tony Cabello
Hardware
nVidia GeForce
Software
Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0
discreet 3D Studio MAX R3.1
Adobe Photoshop 5.5
Ian Luck's BASS 1.3
Xiphophorus Ogg Vorbis
Denton Wood's DevIL
nVidia OpenGL SDK 5.5
Thanks to
Jordi Moragues
Berta Grau
Sixis Guys
Oscar Garcia
Pedro Díaz
David Notario
Mikko Mononen
our parents
'The Hit' RT (c) 2001 Óscar Fernández & Tony Cabello
> Original version
Story, Design & Production
Jordi Moragues
Hardware
Silicon Graphics IRIS
Software
TDI Explore 3.0.1
Additional Software
Adobe Photoshop 2.5.1
ChromaScan
Sound & Music
Jordi Moragues
Sound Equipment
Roland W-30 and SoundCanvas
Sony Digital Audio Tape
Digidesign ProTools 2.02
Thanks to
Juan Montes de Oca
Ricardo Galli
Antonio Coca
Julián Proenza
Carlos Yániz
Toni Bibiloni
Miquel Mascaró
Tomeu Estrany
Bel Perelló
Ignasi Furió
Special thanks to
Beatriz Japón
Xavier Casadesús
Juan Pablo Buscarini
Daniel Ruiz
Natalia Nieto
Almudena Arístegui
to my mother.
'The Hit' (c) 1994 Jordi Moragues
> Contacting the authors
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Jordi Moragues http://www.iua.upf.es/~jordi jordi@iua.upf.es
Óscar Fernández http://www.bscener.org oscarfbg@terra.es
Tony Cabello http://www.bscener.org drkaminumbaone@hotmail.com