Walking around the crowded show floor at Siggraph this year, morning latté* clenched firmly in hand, I come across a mass of attendees buzzing around a large orange and metal exhibitors' booth. The company is called Mova, a new player at the show and I was eager to know more. I wedge through a couple of chattering showgoers, trying not to spill my coffee, and run into a friendly face that I have known since my Kaydara days. Greg LaSalle, who I later discover is the motion capture supervisor with Mova, shakes my hand and fills me in on his latest adventure with Rearden Studios founder Steve Perlman.

The company has developed a capture technique -- which I personally think is truly innovative in its simplicity -- that allows for high resolution, photo-real capture of real-world, deforming objects. The beauty of their technique is in its approach: black lights! Those mysterious, somewhat retro, "dark" light bulbs that cause every white surface to glow vibrantly are being used by the Mova team to illuminate glow-in-the-dark paint. Simple, off-the-shelf, glow-in-the-dark paint.

What makes this technique so promising? In theory, you are capturing the true surface of your subject along with its visible color (read: texture).Thus, you are getting a true 3-D representation, including highly detailed deformation over time. The samples and demonstrations I saw looked very promising, and I can only hope this technique becomes a mainstream mainstay for the universal capture of real-world subjects and movement.

Cheers,

Curtis

* It's the small things in life that bring me happiness, and a morning latté fits the bill every time.