With the advent of new consoles, new graphics hardware and an astonishing amount of incredible technology at game developers' fingertips, the market can often be engulfed by many potential solutions to a problem.

The quality of animation in video games has improved dramatically throughout recent years, with the transition from 2D to 3D, now to hyper-real game worlds fully realised. The next step is approaching photo-realism, which is what the folks at Mova have been developing for the past two years, specifically for the film industry.

Mova, a company which has dealt with motion capture for film and video games, has recently demoed a new technology called the Contour Reality Capture System displaying extremely lifelike characters within the Unreal 3 engine, running in real time on an SLi system with two nVidia 8800GTX graphics cards.

Traditionally, motion capture technology has been used extensively in CGI and video games to capture skeletal animations like kicking a ball, toting a gun, or running. This is done through an array of metal balls which are captured in real-time and then translated into kinetic data which can then be applied to 3D models.

The traditional method of motion capture doesn't however work all that great in terms of facial animations though, which compared to the simplicity seen in skeletal systems are far more difficult to recreate convincingly, requiring hours of 'hand-tweaking' motion capture data.

The Contour Reality Capture System works through live capture of a model under an array of monochrome and colour cameras, shot under strobing fluorescent lights. The model has phosphorescent make-up applied, which matches their skin tone, and glows in the dark.

Colour cameras capture the model acting under normal lighting, and monochrome cameras during 'no lighting' which captures the glow of the make-up. The monochrome views are then processed by a computer which creates an animated 3D surface which is accurate to a tenth of a millimeter, capturing imperfections such as wrinkles and subtle movements in tendons and muscles.

Mova Contour: Steve Perlman Contour Briefing Video
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The system is also able to capture cloth realistically, with phosphorescent dye used in the place of make up.

What this means for gamers is dramatically improved facial animations and deeper immersion in upcoming titles. Steve Perlman, president of Mova stated that the first games utilising Contour would be released later this year, with hopes of the system being in wider use by the gaming industry by next year.

We've got some more videos of the tech in action on the mirror here, and some photographs of the process and results attained here.