Forensic Science International

113 (2000) 277–280 www.elsevier.com / locate / forsciint

Use of the software ‘Poser4’ in reconstruction of accident and

crime scenes
P. Neis*, T. Fink, M. Dilger, Ch. Rittner
Institute of Legal Medicine, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Am Pulverturm 3, 55131 Mainz, Germany

Abstract

The reconstruction of accident and crime scenes demands the full attention of the forensic working physician. Description
by words is often difficult and liable to be misunderstood. Reconstruction in the original places of events are expensive and
in some cases impossible. Computer graphics and animations give the possibility to construct the original course of events.
Poser4 is a software package to perform these reconstructions in an easy and vivid way. We investigated the possibilities of
reconstructing an accident with this software.  2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Accident reconstruction; Crime reconstruction; Computer aided visualization

1. Introduction dimensional character animation. With this software

it is also possible to reconstruct difficult scenes and
Accident and crime scene reconstructions are to visualize these scenes by picture sequences or
some of the most difficult and ambitious tasks in computer animation.
forensic medicine [1–7]. Once the results of autopsy
and biomechanical investigations are known, the
forensic specialists try to reconstruct the original
2. Materials and method
course of events. Often, the explanation in words is
very difficult and incomprehensible and sometimes it
Poser4 is a three dimensional character animation
is very difficult for the lawyer to understand these
software, running under Windows 9x, NT and
explanations. In some cases a real reconstruction
Macintosh operating systems. Hardware require-
could help in understanding the details of the past.
ments are a Pentium PC, 32 Mbytes RAM, Color
These real reconstructions are often difficult to
Display, CD-ROM drive and 240 Mbytes of free
perform, expensive and sometimes (e.g. in cases of
hard disk space. The requirements for Apple Macin-
explosions) never possible. A visual description with
tosh computers are System8, otherwise the same as
pictures is in most cases a good way to explain the
on windows PCs.
occurrences at the scene. The progress of computer
Our environment is a 266 MHz PentiumII PC with
software and hardware now allows applications to
96 Mbytes RAM, a 3 Gbytes hard disk and a Matrox
perform reconstructions on the computer desktop.
Millenium graphics board with 4 Mbytes of video
Poser4 is a computer program that performs three
RAM.
Poser4 allows use of different characters of both
*Corresponding author. sexes (Fig. 1). It is also possible to modify the

0379-0738 / 00 / $ – see front matter  2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0379-0738( 00 )00235-8
278 P. Neis et al. / Forensic Science International 113 (2000) 277 – 280
Fig. 1. Working screen of Poser4.
characters’ weights and heights, even for single parts
of the body. Moreover, one can add different clothes
and head hair to the character. Environment objects
can be imported from other commercial 3D software.
The body can be set freely in the three dimensional
environment, in every pose. All body parts can be
moved separately, either in physiologic or in
pathologic motions. Even every single finger can be
modified. Poser allows the construction of a set of
different poses for still image reproduction. Poser
knows the center of gravity of a body and it is
possible to move a character only round this center
of gravity. Even the possibility to set movements
against anatomical order is important for accident
scene reconstruction. Otherwise it is possible to
move characters only in anatomic boundaries. Poser4
pursued a special way to allow normal movements of
the actors. This way of animation is called ‘reverse
kinematics’. These reverse kinematics allow to per-
form movements of the extremities by taking a hand
or a foot and moving it in a desired pose. The rest of
the extremity automatically follows the movement of
the hand or foot. So the scene builders do not have to
take care about the movements of the different parts
of an extremity. Another way to reconstruct the
accident or crime scene is to perform an animation of
the character set, which allows building computer
animation of the scene. The animation can be
constructed by key frame definition and also by path
definition. The movements can be smoothened, so
they look very natural. These pictures and anima-
tions can be combined with digitized pictures taken
at the original crime or accident scene. As a result of
this, the character could be set to the original place
of crime. The entire animation can be copied to a
VCR for viewing on a TV screen. A walk designer
makes it easy to make characters walk in different
manners along defined paths.
3. Results
We have tested the software in two cases of
accident investigations. One investigation was the
reconstruction of a working accident (Fig. 2). The
man fell down from a box, backwards. Falling down,
he had a chimney stone with a weight of 20 kg in his
hand. He had injuries at the sacral bone. The
question was whether he fell backward in a recti-
linear manner or with a static attitudinal reflex,
which is the only way to produce injuries around the
 P. Neis et al. / Forensic Science International 113 (2000) 277 – 280
Fig. 2. Reconstruction of a fall accident.
sacral bone. In this case, only pictures and no video
were constructed using Poser. The pictures show
different stages of the accident. As a conclusion of
the reconstruction, the worker can fall only with the
righting reflex to cause the trauma in the sacral
region.
The second case investigates a scale accident (Fig.
3). A man went down a scale and slipped due to a
wet scale surface. He had injuries in the left forehead
and left chest and both hands. No unconsciousness
was reported. He complained about headache for
about 3 months. As he said, he slipped forward with
his feet and backwards with the upper part of his
body, sliding down the scale. A consequence of the
reconstruction is that the man cannot get any injuries
in the region of the forehead. Only injuries in the
occipital area seem to be possible. In this case
Poser4 demonstrates the true accident course in a
realistic video animation.
4. Discussion
Often the course of events in crime or accident
279
scenes is hard to describe by words. In the past only
drawings of the scene could help to explain the
course of events. Poser is the first commercial
software that allows a reconstruction of crime or
accident scenes with realistic posing of the actors in
a virtual environment. The possibility of setting, if
wanted, in anatomic correct positions and motions,
the definition of the normal center of gravity and the
principle of reverse kinematics enables an easy and
fast reconstruction even of complex scenes.
Everyone working in forensic crime or accident
scene reconstruction can take a picture of the sus-
pected course of events.
Our two case reconstructions point out that the
reconstruction using Poser makes easily understand-
able picture series or movies from the crime or
accident scenes. A disadvantage of the software is
the lack of the possibility to construct broken arms or
legs. Perhaps this option is given in one of the next
software versions. The software can be combined
with other 3-dimensional software from Metacrea-
tions, such as Canoma, a tool to transform a 2-
dimensional image into a 3-dimensional virtual
environment and Ray Dream software to build 3-
dimensional environments.
280 P. Neis et al. / Forensic Science International 113 (2000) 277 – 280

Fig. 3. Reconstruction of a scale accident.

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