MaMoCa
Location: 1300 S Bristol St., Santa Ana, California 92704, United States United States
Founded in: 2005
Stage: Alpha (prototype)
Number of employees: 1-5
Profitable year: 2009
Short URL: vator.co/MaMoCa-capturing-reality
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Followers (6)

MaMoCa

capturing reality
Startup/business
California, United States United States United States
http://www.mamoca.com
About
Video/documents
Company description
MaMoCa helps movie, TV, and video game companies produce their products better, faster, and cheaper.  Our Markerless Motion Capture technology is used to directly generate 3D content, producing editable, dynamic human models suitable for content generation across a wide spectrum of media. We acquire 1000 times more data, producing 100 times better human models, resulting in a factor of 10 improvement in production time over legacy systems.  This in turn leads to a 90% cost reduction over current methodologies. MaMoCa technology can be used for a wide range of applications including:  video games, movies, and TV; surgical planning, medical research, and ergonomic analysis; military and industrial training.
Team
 Gene Alexander, PhD, CEO, has 20 years of industry and academic experience in motion capture engineering, most recently as a Lecturer and Senior Research Engineer at Stanford University.  Dr. Alexander has co-founded two companies, acting as CTO.  The most recent company, Imaging Therapeutics, was acquired by Conformis in 2004 and has five FDA approved products on the market.

The company advisors include Alan McCann, previously SVP & GM, Digital Media, Ravisent Technologies Ltd., and Sr. Director, Visual Products Group, ATI; Chris Bregler, Associate Professor  NYU (on sabbatical at Industrial Light and Magic) and formerly with Disney Feature Animation;  and John MacMahon, former CEO of Kerberos Proximal Solutions and CEO Mitralign. 

The company board of directors include Michael Wasson, currently a Principal with Confetti Films (Warner Bros), and formerly an investment banker with Fiduciary Trust (acquired by Franklin Templeton); Robert Botch, Senior VP MicroProse, VP Marketing Epyx, and Director of Marketing for Sega of America; John Harbison, Tech Coast Angels (TCA) and formerly of Raytheon Ventures and Booz Allen; and Howard Lewis, TCA and former founder and CEO of Elms, Archive, and Orbis.

Business model

MaMoCa plans to generate revenues from four channels: system sales, software sales and subscriptions, maintenance and consulting services, and studio services.  By our fifth year of operation, revenues generated from software sales and consulting services are 65% of gross revenues. Additionally, and excluded from our financial projections, MaMoCa is seeking co-production agreements with a number of smaller, independent game and TV studios.  We are in final negotiations with an established entertainment company, Days End Productions, for our first animated TV program.  The approach is to generate immediate revenues with our larger customers, and to offer our smaller customers inexpensive (or even free) production services, in exchange for an ownership interest in the resulting content.

Competitive advantage
With current motion capture technology, 10-100 small round balls are glued to the actor and must be kept on during the performance, producing 10-100 points of data and leading to a model of a human as a set of rigid links. 

This data is recorded with 10-50 custom cameras. The MaMoCa technology does not use any markers or make-up or special clothing; rather, we project a light grid onto the performer, leaving the actor completely unencumbered, to emote and perform very naturally. MaMoCa technology produces hundreds of thousands of data points from 8 to 10 imaging pods.  This dynamic scan data then drives a biologically realistic human model, resulting in smooth, natural movement that doesn't need to be improved by expensive hand animation.