Announcing the return of the Black Light
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
Cheers,
Curtis
* It's the small things in life that bring me happiness, and a morning latté fits the bill every time.
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Posted by Brad Clark on 09/28 at 05:26 AMAny chance Motionbuilder will support their data like Softimage is claiming with face robot?
Posted by gabbs on 09/24 at 08:22 AMI wondered what on earth ‘black light’ was, but for all the europeans the translation is ‘ultraviolet light’ 
Posted by blakestudios on 08/24 at 07:07 AMI had the same question.......I can’t find those buttons on my keyboard. Do I need a mel script for this?
Posted by mogkc on 08/24 at 06:12 AMHow do you get that fancy text in there?
Posted by blakestudios on 08/24 at 04:24 AMINSANE DUDE!!! Just looked at the Mova site!! Ouch!!!!!!
Holodeck here we come!!!!
Amazing realizm!!!
Thanks for posting about this......
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