It is with great pleasure that we confirm that CDE Research Engineer Dhana Frerichs has successfully defended her thesis titled “Computer Graphics Simulation of Post-Mortem Optical and Morphological Appearance Changes”.

Creating realistic looking scenes is an important goal in computer graphics. In particular, in the real-time games industry, one can observe an increasing trend towards realism. Despite this, ageing effects, such as rusting and rotting, are often neglected. This is particularly noticeable in the way corpses are depicted in game worlds, which show no signs of decay and tend to simply disappear from the world after a while. We concentrate on simulating some of these post mortem appearance changes. In particular the skin colouration changes caused by blood pooling (livor mortis) and morphology changes due to dehydration (mummification). The aim of the research is to determine whether it is possible to simulate object morphology changes due to organic decomposition and reproduce the results in real-time.

Dhana joined CDE in 2012 and completed her three year placement at Ninja Theory in Cambridge.

Congratulations also go to her supervisory team Dr Christos Gatzidis of Bournemouth University and Andrew Vidler of Ninja Theory who have both worked closely with Dhana and have been a constant support for the past few years.

We wish Dhana all the very best for her future and look forward to hearing news as her career develops.