Paranthropus boisei - forensic facial reconstruction

In the first works I made involving forensic facial reconstruction, It was important to me modeling all from scratch. More than to model, I created all textures and illumination in each new work.

With the time, and with the experience, I noticed that some properties of that works repeated constantly.

Because this, I developed a methodology to make the reconstruction faster, both with humans as hominids.

In this post I'll show you how was the reconstruction of a Paranthropus boisei. The work, how ever, it have the help of the archaeologist Dr. Moacir Elias Santos. He took some excellent photos that was the base of the 3D scanning with PPT-GUI.

Using CT-Scans of a Pongo pygmaeus and a Pan troglodytes (chimp) how references, the muscles was modeled.

Because of the morphology, we decided to use a CT-Scan of a chimp how reference to be deformed and match it with the mesh of the P. boisei. We used InVesalius to reconstruct the CT-Scan in a 3D mesh.

While I deformed the skull, the skin got the appearance of a new hominid.

The resulting mesh was the reference of the final model.

Instead of modeling the P. boisei from scratch, I imported the mesh of an Australopithecus afarensis to be deformed and match it with the skin base deformed from a CT-Scan.

By editing the mesh was possible conform it with the skull and the muscles of the P. boisei.

The edition of the mesh in Blender Sculpt Mode was done with a digital tablet Bamboo by Wacom (CTL-470). Surprisingly it was not necessary install anyone driver on Ubuntu Linux.

To finish the work, I made the texturing and put the hair. The render was done with Cycles.

I hope you enjoyed.

A big hug!

Forensic facial reconstruction of an aboriginal child from Brazil

Since I started to study forensic facial reconstruction, rarely I saw the real skull in front of my eyes.

Some days ago, when I went to Curitiba city, to make some talks and start the exhibition Faces of Evolution I saw the replicas of the hominids that we reconstructed the faces here in ATOR. Including, a replica of the Taung Child.

During this visit, the archaeologist Dr. Moacir Elias Santos and Dr. Liliane Cristina Coelho invited me to know the Paranaense Museum, where we took some fotos and I saw the real bones of a Brazilian aboriginal child.

Taking advantage of his know-how of 3D scanning by photos, Dr. Moacir Elias Santos took some photos of the aboriginal child with a good simple camera without flash, and without move the object.

Even with a low-illuminated scene, the photos had a good quality to be scanned.

Even though the scanning technique works well, it lacks an automated scaling system.  To solve this problem I used an folder that Paranaense Museum offer to the visitants. I made the measure folding it with the dimensions of the legend of the bones. After, I used it to get the dimensions with a measuring tape.

The scanning worked well on PPT-GUI. The points cloud had a good quality to be converted in a mesh.

Although the quality was good, the side of the skull that pointing to the wall wasn't reconstructed completely.

To solve this problem I mirrored the mesh on Blender.

And I erased the overlapping vertices.

The following step was put the tissue depth markers second Manheim et al. (2000). We choose the column of 8 years because the researchers said that the child was 7 or 9 years old.

With the tissue depth markers placed, It was possible trace the lateral shape of the face.

To make the facial muscles I used a pre-modeled muscles from other reconstruction and I deformed it to match with the skull.

The same process was used with the skin. It started with a pre-modeled mesh.

And it was deformed until match with the tissue depth and the muscles.

The following step consisted to sculpt the details on the face surface. The eyes was setted with asiatic characteristics second the observations of Dr. Paulo Miamoto, a doctoral student of forensic sciences.

Because we didn't have the information about the sex of the child I made a neutral reconstruction. In the final, the image illustrate a child with asiatic characteristics.


I hope you enjoyed.

A big hug!

Smilodon, the 3D reconstruction of the saber-toothed cat

According to Wikipedia:

Smilodon, often called a saber-toothed cat or incorrectly a saber-toothed tiger, is an extinct genus of machairodonts. This saber-toothed cat was endemic to North and South America, living during the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 mya—10,000 years ago).

To reconstruct this beautiful and famous feline, I had the help of two people. I wanna to thank Mr. Renoaldo Kaczmarech, the owner of the replica and the Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos, that took the photos with great quality, perfect to be scanned in 3D.

The video show the skull reconstructed in 3D with Python Photogrammetry Toolkit GUI.

If you wanna see the step-by-step of the modeling, please look this link:

https://plus.google.com/photos/115430171389306289690/albums/5858580236800053057

I hope you enjoy.

A big hug and I see you in the next!

Homo habilis - forensic facial reconstruction step-by-step (screenshots)

Last but not least, I finished the reconstruction of a Homo habilis to be exposed at an event about human evolution in May 2013.

I chose to close with this model because I saw an opportunity to test a new methodology.

Upon receiving the skull reconstructed by Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos, it was evident that besides not being very symmetrical parts were missing.

To harmonize the view without losing data, was enough to mirror the object in the X axis But there was still part of the zygomatic arches, and jaw.

Through deformation via Edit Mode (Blender 3D) with Connected activated, it was possible to deform the skull of a chimpanzee until it to conform with the model scanned and imaged.

The details of the reconstruction can be seen in an album I created in Picasaweb:

http://plus.google.com/photos/115430171389306289690/albums/5853134067479146481

Follow the step-by-step via screenshot and see how the work was produced, starting in the import of the skull and ending in the final render.

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These hominids reconstructions are "sons" of Taung Project.

It is a group work by internet in Italy and Brazil.

So, I have to thank some people to make this project possible:

Alesandro and Luca Bezzi (IT)

Giuseppe Naponiello (IT)

Arc-Team (IT)

Moreno Tiziani, Antrocom (IT)

Dr. Nicola Carrara (IT)

Antropological Museum of Padua (IT)

Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos (BR)

Vivian Noitel Valim Tedardi (BR)

Thank you very much!

Cro-Magnon - yet another forensic facial reconstruction

Second Wikipedia:

"Cro-Magnon  is an informal name for the first early modern humans (early Homo sapiens sapiens) of the European Upper Paleolithic".

Thanks to Prof. Dr. Moacir Elias Santos from Brazil that sent an 3D scanned skull (by PPT) the reconstruction was possible.

A tissue depth table used for this work was De Greef et Al (tip of Heritage Malta). The reference was modern europeans.

The sequence of the works have not special. It was the same of past articles.

I hope you enjoy.

A big hug!

Australopithecus afarensis - forensic facial reconstruction

The Australopithecus afarensis was an hominid that lived between 4 and 2 millions of years past.

They had biped behavior and the appearence of apes.

 

In this post I'll talk about my little adventure to reconstruct the face of this specie. 

This work is a type of continuation of Taung Project, because the knowledge used there was tapped here, with some increase of the technic.

I have to thank to Moacir Elias Santos, a Brazilian archaeologist that took a serie of pictures of a cast skull on Museu Egipcio e Rosacruz.

 The skull used was reconstructed with PPT GUI (scanning by picture).

 

 

To increase the quality of the reconstruction, I used a CT-Scan of a chimpanzee.

 

 

 The skull of chimp was deformed using Lattice modifier on Blender 3D, until match with the Australopithecus skull. Obviously, the skin was deformed too.

 

After this, I used the reference of the deformed skin to modeling the final face.

 

  The following steps were the same explained in other posts.

I hope you enjoyed.

A big hug!