GDC08 exclusive: Mova brings lifelike motion capture to Unreal Engine 3

Traditional, point-based motion capture (the kind brought to you by guys in black suits with reflective balls) has been great for developers that want to capture basic skeletal motion for their in-game characters. But for realistic facial work, even setups with hundreds of reflective dots leave developers with rough, blocky data that requires a lot of post-production work to even start approaching the uncanny valley.

Enter motion capture company Mova, whose Contour Reality Capture system uses an array of cameras to create 100,000 polygon facial models that are accurate to within a tenth of a millimeter - no special reflective balls required. At this year's GDC, the company is trying to attract the game industry's attention by unveiling examples of their facial modeling running in real-time on the popular Unreal Engine 3. Continue reading for exclusive, real-time video of the technology and excerpts from an interview with the Mova founder Steve Perlman.