[June '21]

Carlos makes FOSS and takes our Twitter mic from June 2 to 9. Thank you, Carlos!

Please tell us about yourself

I’m from Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, I love 3d since very young when I started using Truespace3d. I have tested lots of 3d software and after becoming adult, ended up trying to learn Blender 3d. I work as IT Analyst, but on my spare time, I try to learn new stuff and develop new things.

What are you working on right now?

I’m working on a Blender addon that aims to make it easier to create animations. I started learning animation on Blender sometime ago, and after 6 months, I saw that doing all by hand, would take me ages to make my animation project. At that time I saw some works on pose estimation (Vibe and Frankmocap), and I saw that using that technology, I could make my animation project possible. So I started to test those solutions that were made available via github.

After testing it I saw that I could do the last step, bring them all inside Blender in a easy way. And thats when my most difficult journey on development began.

I also knew about a project called Easymocap, that blew my mind. With some cameras I could get a incredible animation data and bring it inside of Blender.

It took me months to make easymocap work on my computer, and with the help of easymocap dev I was able to do it.

So now I finished to creat some tutorials to help people install all these packages inside windows (vibe, frankmocap and easymocap) and finished the basis of the mocap import data in blender. Now its possible to import from all of these 3 solutions right inside of Blender.

At the moment I’m working on a way to make an easy face mocap inside of Blender too.

What is most interesting about that?

The possibility to be able to create complete animations with just one person. To have good animation quality without spending weeks or months to create something.

How did you first discover FOSS?

I think it was the linux project a long time ago, I always wanted to make it my primarily OS, but actualy never done it.

What prompted you to start contributing to FOSS?

I wanted to give people the same opportunity to create amazing things as I had when started using Blender. Where we have a professional tool totally for free. If someone could make the effort to give me the chance to work with that great tool for free. I think I can also try to create good things and give it for free, and share the code I’m creating.

Why should others get involved with FOSS?

I think it´s the mindset of giving back to the community, if you are able to use any software that is free, like, Blender, Krita, Inkscape, Linux and so on. Because lots of people gave their time and sweat to make it availble for us, and I think the least we can do, is giving at least something back, by contributing to some project, be it, financialy or with our time. This way our community will keep growing each day.

How should they get started?

I think the easiest way to do it is searching for something that interest the person on github, and then start contributing over there. Or create some tool and share it on github. Everyday lots of people get in contact with our code, and also help us, or our help can make a difference on the project we are helping … there are so many possibilities. I guess most important is the genuine intention to make better things for everyone with some of our time and effort.

What difficulties and limitations do you see with FOSS?

Sometimes the problem is … we live in a world that most of things depends on money. And I dont see how to make a living only contributing to FOSS. What I see most people doing is having some sort of 2 jobs, one to pay the bills, and other one is the FOSS contribution. But the sad part is that it limits us, because if we work on 2 shifts (our daily job and FOSS contribuitions) we have sometimes almost no time left for our family and other interesting things. If there is a way to make a living contributing to FOSS for most people … It would be much more easy to have more people dedicating their time to these projects.

How can they be solved?

To solve this financial problem … I guess it could be solved having more partners from government, or private companies to support FOSS. But even that, I guess it would not be enough. To be honest, that is something I’m not sure how to solve.

Where do you see difficulties in contributing?

The lack of time, because the need to pay the bills, so we have to keep a daily job on a private company, and on the spare time (that is not that much) to work on those FOSS projects.

What does a perfect day off look like?

When no unhappy surprises show up. Lately I’m havin lots of unhappy surprises, slowing down my contribution. But I keep on going, each day at a time. Never stop. We should never give up on something that is good for us and can be also good for others.

Do you want to tell us something else we didn’t ask?

Yes, I would like to add one thing. Contributing to FOSS can be a tough thing to do, maybe we dont receive recognition for our effort, we may not get financial gain for our effort, but we must keep in mind that, even if we dont receive feedback, it doens’t mean that we are not affecting others life. Maybe we are helping others a lot and we dont even know about it. So we should think, not on what we would receive from the work we are doing, but on what our work can help others, and keep on working on that, if we see a real use, real benefit on the project we are working. Sometimes we get unhappy, we get down … That´s life, but our mind should be on the benefit of the tool we are helping to develop, the impact on other peoples life we could, and can be affecting. Thats something that drives me to keep posting the progress of my work almost every day. I post on twitter my progress on the tool I’m developing, and what I love is when I see somebody talking, asking, or giving some information or feedback. I dont look for likes, because that doens’t show how people are interacting with your creation, but what people say … that´s gold!!! I love to talk to people.