Expression Facial Animation Project

I'm at NUSA, and was trying to find a link for Brian to Synfig, an "industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package", when I came across the Expression Facial Animation Project!

The image at left is from the home page of this. Looks sort of creepy (and also like it was Drawn by Richard Corben) but... ...gasp! The home page says that the purpose of the project is a " [r]eal time facial animation package based on muscle model of the face. Includes basic scripting language, full API, animation compositing, tools for creating and exporting muscles in 3D studio max."

Don't have 3D studio max but I do have a converter program. Apparently you can also use it to read text out (asuming you have one of those text to speech engines) though I'm not sure I'd want to watch a moving head like this on on my PC.

Whatever will they think of next?

Doctor's Visit

Saw the GP at the health service here at uni. She couldn't help much, but now I have a referral to the Ear Nose and Throat section of John Hunter Hospital. better start organising that.

Feeling Ill

 At the risk of sounding like all I'm doing on my Journal is "whining", I have to say that I felt really ill today.

It was mostly after bus travel. I regularly get sick travelling on the bus (worst ever was the night-rider from Central to Casula - articulated bus and a driver who though he was in Bathurst), but lately, by sitting in the middle of the bus, I've been able to reduce that. Just today however, every bus I was on seemed to stop-start-stop-start the maximum amount. Maybe it's because I'm wearing canvas shoes with rubber souls, and elasticised slacks, that it's exacerbated. Anyway I felt really bad after travelling from the uni to Wallsend.

Normally a bit of a walk will get id of the feeling, I kept on feeling like I was going to throw up, and it was like (on top of the constant ringing) I was dizzy and very very short of breath, while I was at the Plaza. Earlier in the day I'd got into what I was doing at NUSA (working on Querelle) that, for one thing or another, I didn't have any lunch until 2:30pm. I was feeling very very extreme at that point.

I had plans on going down to Casula this weekend and joining in a friend's Solstice ritual, but I phoned and cancelled that. No point in going down if I'm going to feel ill - I'd just be a liability.

Urk - hate feeling ill, but lately that's been more the rule than the exception.