Dr. Jeff Schwartz will speak on

"3D Facial Modeling
from Photographs and Paintings"

Digital Imagers Meeting

Sunday April 2, 2006 at 1:15, Pitt Scaife Hall, Room 1102

Talk:

Upon being invited to reconstruct George Washington at three different ages, and learning that I would have access to his skeleton, I resorted to three 3D representations of him (a life mask, bust, and statue), dentures, clothing, portraits, and descriptions. The 3D representations were scanned and digitally compared in order to determine consistent aspects of Washington's anatomy. Dimensions derived from the statue were compared to those from form fitting clothing. The dentures were also scanned and used digitally to reconstruct his oral cavity and attendant bone. These efforts eventually yielded the 57 year old Washington. The 45 year old face was achieved by scannibng portraits and comparing them digitally as well as by importing these 2D scans into the realm of the 3D digital bust and comparing facial features. The older face was then transformed to "fit" the younger face. The 19 year old resulted from transforming the posterior part of the jaw to reflect the youth's unmodified jaws. The digital Washington's then served as the basis for milling from dense foam the forms which were then cast and modeled first in clay and then in wax to produce the life-like replicas that will go on exhibit at Mount Vernon.

Biography:

Jeffrey H. Schwartz, a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, is Professor of Physical Anthropology and of History and Philosophy of Science as well as a Resident Fellow in the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is also a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History and in the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Anthropology, University of Vienna. His research spans topics in evolutionary biology (systematics, phylogeny, and paleontology of mammals, particularly primates), developmental and theoretical biology, and forensic anthropology and osteology. He has traveled extensively throughout the world on archeological and paleontological expeditions as well as to study of the remains of fossil and living primates (especially prosimians and hominoids).

For almost twenty years his services as forensic osteologist have been sought by coroners offices and police departments throughout western Pennsylvania, which led to his being asked to put together and direct a collaboration to reconstruct George Washington at three different ages for a new education center at Mount Vernon. He has published more then 150 articles, reviews, etc, in the areas outlined above, as well as 10 books, including most recently The Red Ape: orangutans and humans origins (second revised edition, Westview Press, 2005), Sudden Origins: fossils, genes, and the emergence of species (John Wiley, 1999), and with Ian Tattersall, the first study of virtually all human fossils as three volumes in the series, The Human Fossil Record (Wiley-Liss, 2002, 2003, 2005); the second, revised edition of his textbook, Skeleton Keys: an introduction to human skeletal morphology, development, and analysis (Oxford University Press), will be published in 2006.

See article in National Geographic