Steve Perlman

I may be joining the discussion thread a little late, but I just got back from Siggraph. We designed Contour.

You've brought up some good issues in this discussion thread about the Uncanny Valley and the future of gaming once photoreal faces are readily available. Also, there are some questions about Contour and what it can and can't do. If people are interested in carrying the conversation further, please post questions and I'll try to answer them.

Contour captures a scene volumetrically (i.e. in voxels) at roughly the same resolution as a conventional camera captures a scene as a flat image from a single viewpoint (i.e. in pixels). It is, effetively, a volumetric camera system.

The output of Contour is pretty cool to look at, but bear in mind that Contour is just another tool in the creative toolbox. It was designed to give video game or motion picture production teams the ability to START with capture data that is photoreal, but then it is up to that team how they choose to use that capture data. Of course, one obvious use is for characters that look just like the performer. But an equally important use is to for non-real characters driven by very subtle performances (e.g. lip motion or crinkles around the eyes).

Anyway, if anyone is still following this thread and has questions or comments, I'll be checking in on it.

-- Steve Perlman, president, Mova