Category: Works

Elumina Platform

As early as 2003, a friend of mine started researching the process of online video publishing. Later at Elumina we wrote a business plan, and we introduced it to some entrepreneurs and incubators in Brazil. We kept getting the same response over and over: “It is impossible to publish videos on the Web. It will take a long time until something like this happens.”

Even with the constraints, we continued the research. It wasn’t until November 2006 that Google bought Youtube, but right after that, we started getting calls from potential investors. In February 2007, we received the first investment, hired four Web developers and began to develop the project.

At the beginning of 2008, we had the product in our hands. Our first buyer was Hospital das Clínicas – SP, which is the largest public hospital in Latin America and employs 20.000 professionals. We created the project: HCTV.

Finally, in 2012, after implementing the platform for four more clients, we closed a deal to sell it to a Brazilian advertisement holding. We then shut the activities of Elumina as a group, so each one of us could focus on long-due solo projects.

 

The Team

 

  • Dino Tudor (Web Developer)
  • Fabian Rossetti (Web Developer)
  • Fernanda Picablotto (Producer)
  • Fernando Jacinto (Web Developer)
  • Frederico Morbach (Motion Designer)
  • Humberto Ribeiro (Web Developer)
  • Joás Ferreira (Social Media Manager)
  • Jean Dias (Motion Designer)
  • Marcelo Blanc (Sound Designer)
  • Paulo Barbeiro (Web Developer)
  • Roberto Barbeiro (Business Developer)
  • Roberto Perfeito (Media Planner)
  • Sérgio Kuwahara (Motion Designer and Editor)
  • Tatiana Bastos (Copywriter and Content Editor)

 

HCTV webTV

At the beginning of 2008, we had the first version of our Web TV Platform in our hands. We heard that the Hospital das Clínicas was interested in creating a WebTV. It was not difficult to persuade the HC staff to hire us: at that time, we were the only ones with this technology in Brazil. Besides that, we had partnered with an experienced video producer: Luz Criação.

Project Background

Hospital das Clínicas is the largest public hospital in Latin America. To optimize the relationship with their customers, it was proposed the HCTV project. The online TV created a space to discuss, educate and inform on various medical topics, based on cutting-edge research, academic studies, disease prevention, and health promotion.

My role

As full-stack developer my role consisted in maintain the Amazon Web Services servers, the videos encoding, storage and distribution, as well the front-end development.

The biggest challenge in this project was the video processing pipeline. One of the demands we had was to create an easy flow for the content producers to publish the videos. We came up with a solution based in WordPress where the journalists and video editors could work independently ans the system could create the bridges.

A short description:  The journalist could write the text and save it, later when the video editor finished the video, the rendering file could be pointed to the appropriate post, and then after the rendering and the upload of the high definition video file, the servers performed the encoding for different resolutions, and the appropriate storage in CDN servers, as well providing the final urls to the data base. And only then the content was available for the audience.

That short process involved a lot of C++, PHP, Shell Script, AppleScript, libmpeg2, XML.

How big it was?

Over 2 million subscribers in the first two years, making the project a commercial success.

The Team

  • Dino Tudor (Web Developer)
  • Fabian Rossetti (Web Developer)
  • Fabio Ferraz (Reporter)
  • Felipe Gushiken (Lawyer)
  • Fernando Jacinto (Web Developer)
  • Frederico Morbach (Motion Designer)
  • Gustavo Pimentel (Producer)
  • Hanne Giacini (Web Designer)
  • Humberto Ribeiro (Web Developer)
  • Ingrid dos Santos (Producer)
  • Joás Ferreira (Social Media)
  • Jean Dias (Motion Designer)
  • Mariana Armentano (Copywriter)
  • Mazinha Silva (Marketing)
  • Marcelo Blanc (Sound Designer)
  • Renato Schutz (TV Editor)
  • Roberto Barbeiro (Business Developer)
  • Roberto Perfeito (Media Planner)
  • Rose Castilho (Marketing)
  • Sérgio Kuwahara (TV Editor)
  • Thays Scavacini (Reporter)
  • Walace Nascimento (Camera)

TicTaskDo

TicTaskDo is an iOS App that combines different productivity techniques such as Scrum, Pomodoro Technique, and GTD.

My role: iOS Developer

The app was first developed in Objective-C, later in other version, was totally updated to Swift language.

The main challenge was to implement time calculations, till that project I never realizes how time calculations are tricky.

The team:

  • Hans Schneider (Project Manager)
  • Tatiana Bastos (Copywriter)
  • Roberto Simões (Lead Designer)

The App: link

Tasks List in TicTaskDo app
Tasks List in TicTaskDo app.

App Español Único

Educational application as a complement to the book Español Único. An initiative of Moderna Publisher, São Paulo – Brazil. Partnership with Elumina Comunicação.

The biggest challenge in this project was to developed an automat interface builder system, where corrections and extensions could be easily accomplished. At the end, the interfaces could be built by an XML file data, where information like the kind of exercise, the questions, possible and right answers, was inserted.

Developed with Kivy, and Python
My role: Python development and interface elements.

 

 

Projeto Flow

This game was part of a group of educational activities about classic music that took place at SESC Carmo – SP. The challenge was to create some multimedia piece, which could present particular authors.

The final result was an adaptation of the game Auditorium, transported to an installation size. Then we had a puzzle game, developed with Processing/ReactVision, and projections.

 

Anim-and-play

This video is demonstrates the Anim-and-play software in action. The software were developed by the instructor Paulo, for vacations activities (July/2010) at SESC Carmo, São Paulo/Brasil.

The software aims to help teaching young kids and children to understand some basic concepts in animation techniques.

The idea behind this software, is to teach children how simple animations works by they creating their own creatures. These creatures will be used in a very simple game based on computer vision techniques.

This project is been developed on Linux (Ubuntu 9.04), using Processing (processing.org) as framework. It was also successfully tested on Mac OSX, and Windows(but hard to configured on Win).

It is still a work in progress, so there are some bugs, crashes, and not mature game-play.
The software is available under GPL license, for common usage and development contribution. Check the project web-page: http://code.google.com/p/anim-and-play/
You must read the wiki page for details.

G.R.E.S. Unidos da Escandinávia (2006-2008)

This project was meant to take place during Carnival season, as an entertainment activity for families visiting SESC Santana facilities. All the three versions were games where people should play Samba loops according to the rhythm. The sound was created by participants in an earlier workshop about Samba percussion instruments.

2006:
Software with a very simple mouseover interactivity to play Samba loops.
Environment: Flash.

2007:
Software with keyboard interaction, while playing the Samba loops, the player also edit a video clip.
Environment: Blender.

2008:
Software with Computer Vision based interactions. The player motion was captured by webcam streaming, the image was analyzed, and according to the player’s motions, the Samba loops were executed.
Environment: Python.

Published: Panda3D GE book

Panda3D game engine book coverI just received my copy of the book 1.6 Panda3D game engine, by David Brian Mathews (published by Packt Publishing), which I was a technical reviewer.

The book is suited for anyone who’s starting to learn Panda3D.

The Panda3D engine is very simple to use and flexible. I started studying the Panda3D during my specialization studies, and its simplicity leads us to choose Panda3D in our final project.

The book written by David, is excellent, and easy to understand, although it requires a minimum understanding of programming and logic. But readers, newbies at the game development will easily understand the Panda3D’s tools described in this book, which I think, is the only publication about this game engine, apart from and some blog posts, and the official Panda3D’s guide, and docs.

Soon, I expect to write some posts about this book: some specifics topics for Mac and Linux; some ways to solve the problems posed in the book; and a tutorial on programming using Panda3D.