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Late last July, one of the biggest breakthroughs in motion-capture technology debuted at the annual Siggraph conference: a system that gathers intricate facial animation data without using any dot markers. The news from Steve Perlman's company Mova was so huge, it stole the front page of The New York Times' Technology section the day it was announced. And what wasn't to love? Perlman, a former Apple Computer engineer who previously co-founded WebTV Networks, brought forth an innovative solution for a pain point that had been weighing down 3D art and animation for years. The system, called Contour Reality Capture, uses glow-in-the-dark face paint, which can be applied not only to skin but also to cloth, and made for great press photos. And not even one full year into the launch, the company has announced a Contour version 2.0.
Meanwhile, as Perlman was stealing the spotlight, a small company in New York was in the last stages of developing its own marker-less motion-capture technology. Andrew Tschesnok and Jonathan Rand, CEO and president, respectively, of Organic Motion announced their system by the same name at the Game Developers Conference in March. Like the Contour system, Organic Motion...