Taung Project: 3D Forensic Facial Reconstruction

This article will show the overall process with a timelapse and we'll offer you the file from Blender at the end.

The whole process of 3D modeling took 332 minutes, totaling 5 and a half hour of work and more than 12GB of captured video!

We plan to share the raw video in the future.

Step 1: Muscle Modeling

In this step, the skull structure receives the muscles, we use a new way to make this work, with the automatic fill feature of Blender; this after converting the complex mesh in a 4-sided polygon object.

See the timelapse video above.


Step 2: Skin Modeling

In this step we use the same technique of the Alberto's reconstruction. Since the object of reconstruction is an extinct a animal, it is impossible to use tissue depth marks, therefore the reconstruction was based only on the muscles only.

See the timelapse video above.


Step 3: Material & Rendering

This is the last step, when we finished the modeling and did the texturing and we rendering process.

You  can download the Blender file here. (Fixed!)

Screenshot source .blend file

Different of the last articles about facial forensic reconstruction, this article have all the timelapse videos of the modeling phases.

The videos may be fast, but certainly they should prove useful for the comprehension of the process of modeling and rendering, for those that already have some knowledge and want to study further - or event for those that never seen these techniques before.

We hope this post has been useful to you.

A big hug, and see you in the next!