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Abstract

Facial reconstruction for postmortem identification of humans from
their skeletal remains is a challenging and fascinating part of
forensic art. The former look of a face can be approximated by
predicting and modeling the layers of tissue on the skull.
This work is as of today carried out solely by physical sculpting
with clay, where experienced artists invest up to hundreds of hours
to craft a reconstructed face model. Remarkably, one of the most
popular tissue reconstruction methods bears many resemblances with
surface fitting techniques used in computer graphics, thus
suggesting the possibility of a transfer of the manual approach to
the computer. In this paper, we present a facial reconstruction
approach that fits an anatomy-based virtual head model,
incorporating skin and muscles, to a scanned skull using
statistical data on skull / tissue relationships. The approach has
many advantages over the traditional process: a reconstruction can
be completed in about an hour from acquired skull data; also,
variations such as a slender or a more obese build of the modeled
individual are easily created. Last not least, by matching not only
skin geometry but also virtual muscle layers, an animatable head
model is generated that can be used to form facial expressions
beyond the neutral face typically used in physical
reconstructions.