At Expo Dubai, visitors meet prehistoric man thanks to 3D – EXPO 2020

(ANSA) – DUBAI, December 19 – At Expo 2020 Dubai, a prehistoric man who lived nearly 10,000 years ago has come back to life and today interacts with visitors to the Serbian Pavilion thanks to the synergy between science and 3D graphics coming from the video game industry. The project was revealed at its world premiere on December 17 and sees the protagonist as an individual from the Mesolithic era, whose face has been digitally reconstructed to allow real-time human interactions and respond to visitors’ emotional states, replaying smiles or expressing anger. Sadness and other feelings.

The project is the result of the union between knowledge gained from osteology, DNA science and forensic processes, and the technology of the MetaHuman Project, developed by Epic Games, the video game house behind Unreal Engine and the highly successful video games. like Fortnite. The process thus created a digital “biokinetic” model of the face of a prehistoric human, whose skull is preserved in the Laboratory of Bioarchaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade.

Speaking to the Information Service, Anna Ilek, Deputy Commissioner-General of the Serbian Pavilion, said Serbia’s participation in the Dubai Expo was “entirely focused on creativity and innovation”, with the idea of ​​being “inspired by the past to shape the future”. exhibition. Prehistoric Metahuman “is a fascinating and unique scientific project that brings together the efforts of science and the video game development industry,” he asserted, explaining how an individual who lived thousands of years ago was “recreated in 3D with their own authentic characteristics” such as the color of their eyes and hair. and facial expressions. “This is a beautiful example of innovation that will be used not only in this specific field of anthropology, but also in the creative industry, education and museology. This is just the beginning,” he added.

“As scientists, we are analyzing ancient human bones from which we can get a lot of information about men in the past, but we can’t see what they looked like,” said Sofia Stefanovic, who led the team of scientists on the project. “We’ve used a new technology called Digital Ancient Human (Dah), which combines a number of different approaches to produce an ancient human bone biota.” With this data, it was possible to perform a “physical reconstruction of the face, based on the bones of the skull.”

“The world premiere of this global innovation, which comes from Serbia, has the potential to completely change the way museums present the past. Often, static objects are presented to people from a certain period of time, but now for the first time we are able to represent real people with feelings. and emotions,” Stefanovic explained. The prehistoric MetaHuman installation is open to visitors to the Serbian Pavilion until the end of the exhibition on March 31, 2022. (ANSA).