"Do the Macarena!" someone else yells.

Red lights flood the stage and a scintillating, futuristic backdrop sets off her every move, but Nadja Burns of Houston isn't in a club.

She swings her arms and trailing flames appear on the maquette projected on a pull-down screen at the far side of the room. It's 9 a.m. in the simulation lab at the Digital Media Arts building on the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus.

College administration and staff cluster inside a room that looks like some magician's trick ― the unassuming door tucked into a corner of a wall gives no indication of the lab's cavernous size. Freshly minted monitors line rows of desks, so new they're still loosely wrapped in the lightweight, protective dust covers from shipping; shallow white cardboard boxes conceal keyboards that haven't been hooked up yet.

Thanks to a $2.5 million Federal Title-V STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) grant covering a comprehensive technology and science makeover throughout campus, the campus just received a revolutionary motion-capture animation suite, the Open Stage Markerless Capture System. Dominick Murphy of Organic Motion, Inc was there to demonstrate it.

The next volunteer, Chad Perry, senior public affairs representative for UNM-VC, walks into the aluminum frame and white cloth cube, left open on one side. He's wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt, khakis...and socks, so as not to damage the special reflective-fabric floor. Perry jumps around playfully and nothing happens for a minute.

"Strike the pose," Murphy offers.

Once Perry holds his arms out in a rigid cross shape, the video stream begins. On cue, a spiky, blue-haired woman in a sci-fi bikini-covered body suit jumps around and shoot fireballs.

Earlier motion-capture technologies (used to animate characters such as Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" movies) relied on painstaking measurements of tracking markers dotting an actor's spandex suit, meticulously calibrated to a computer system.

The setup process for each actor took several hours before shooting could begin. Whenever a hand or limb overlapped another part of an actor's body in a pose, the rendering system became confused as to which body part went where.

Now, programming innovations and a higher hardware processing speed allow actors to enter the motion-capture studio without a constricting suit. A battery of 14 cameras shooting red beams tracks basic motions in real-time, creating a 3-D mesh skeleton linked to the movement of 21 bones ― even following foreshortened poses, such as an actor holding his or her arms crossed at the chest.

The system can't yet track hand and foot gestures or facial expression, but Murphy said Organic Motion's software engineers are working on it ― with the capability to track 28 bones projected by next year.

A super-reflective backdrop of cloth tarps coated in tiny glass beads (a similar kind is used for reflective strips in high performance sports gear) reflect light directly back towards cameras, allowing the software to completely isolate figures from the background.

Actors wear dark-colored clothing to heighten the difference between figure and ground. At present, two actors can't directly interact in the room ― the system is geared to track only one person, regardless of how many enter. Only bipedal figures (modeled on human actors standing upright), not quadrupeds (animals such as cats or horses) can currently be tracked.

The closest other setup of this type is in Houston, Texas. Prominent animation effects firm Sony Image Works, which has an office in Albuquerque, still advertises marker-based motion capture services performed in its Culver City, California studio. An advertising reel on its main site shows several actors on set wearing suits dotted with dayglo yellow marking dots.

Although the most common applications for this technology are in animation for film and video games, medical and military uses are being explored. UNM-VC has plans for using the technology in medical imaging, architectural rendering with animated figures, and a developing green science curriculum.

The $2.5 million STEM grant also covers a new CAD lab, lecture-capturing video systems for Internet learners set for 30 classrooms, math and science tutors and several new faculty members, with a goal of increasing enrollment for science, technology, engineering and math majors ― particularly from female and minority students.

According to Perry, the grants have done their trick, attracting more students to science and medical courses. Perry also stated that due to an agreement with Organic Motion, he is unable to reveal how much the motion-capture graphics system cost UNM-VC for several weeks until the company completes negotiations with several other clients in higher education.

Alexa Wheeler, UNM-VC professor of Digital Media Arts, says that about 50 students are currently enrolled in the program.

Starting this spring, the system will be used for animation courses as part of a future Game Art and Animation concentration in the Digital Media Arts associate degree.

The new concentration will require traditional studio art courses and creative writing as well as 3-D animation using programs such as Maya, 3-D Studio Max and Motion Builder. New classes in game development and design are in the works, with plans on guiding students through game creation from start to finish, including basic computer programming.

The UNM-VC degree and course offerings will allow students to train locally for animation careers in the film, game and science industries at a fraction of the cost of similar course offerings at national art and trade schools.