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.

[decapitator]

Damn... The future of gaming looks really bright. Wow, and all of that is real time ?!?! Amazing stuff right there.

[f7ss1]

yeah thats pretty good stuff, but i wanna punch that guy hes really annoying

[Altis1]

is so damn creepy.

[decapitator]

lol Yeah and it was funny as well, I was expecting some guy to be screaming. But nonetheless, it looked very impressive.

[ichimaru]

THAT IS CREEPY

[SRuN4]

A bald man in a UE3 demo? Who would of thought?! lol

Seriously, it looks good though.

[2Negativecool]

I remember them stating a little while back that they had made some major improvements and that the uncanney valley had pretty much vanished...That can only mean they are utilizing this, lest they be lying liars.

[fenderputty]

or their own engine. Did heavy rain ever state using Unreal Engine as the motor that drives the game?

[spandexxking]

groundbreaking

[Salvadore]

Heavy Rain?

[godoftime]

asubmit thei story!

[Blabbermouth]

That Heavenly sword and Uncharted are using a similar technology, those two games are completely underrated for their facial animation tech.