fwiw,
Dare I say this sort of real-time tracking technology is becoming close to common - with that I mean there are many universities and companies who have developed their own variation of it. But yeah, it is complex stuff because few of them actually work anywhere close to 'good' in most reasonable conditions. But since most companies aren't able to develop a valid business model around it, they sort of disappear back into the shadows again - unfortunately.
The Invizimals uses this star shape thingy for recognition and reference point, but I've seen systems that are able to create a more advanced 3D depth map behind it (working with 2D color footage only!) and enable a 3D character walking around your desk and even behind your own laptop for example - in real time :) It's super cool stuff to play around with.
I believe there are some crude working free and experimental libraries out there (sorry, I used to have links to them at work, but that's a few jobs ago). But I doubt these are up to the level of 'usable' in a commercial game.
But there's no reason why B3d or Max couldn't do this - if you don't do it inside B3D or max :) - Instead a driver can do 98% of the work such as performing the low-res (320x240) video capture, tracking and depth calculations. What it then outputs is a real-time camera and a surface reference - which are just a couple XYZ's that can easily be used by B3D or Max to offset your own scene to. And rendering a few characters with some effects is no biggie..
D.
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