Rogerio E. da Silva

University Rd, Leicester, United Kingdom - LE1 7RH - +44 0116 252 3905 E-mail

I am responsible for teaching several courses on CS and Gaming curricula, mostly involving concepts of programming and computer graphics. In terms of research, I'm interested in studying virtual and augmented reality, synthetic characters and affective computing.


Experience

Lecturer of Creative Computing

University of Leicester, Leicester (England)

Teaching Games and Gamification, Digital Arts Lab, and Entertainment Technology for the Creative Computing program. My duties also include researching in the domain of VR/AR/XR, games, and animations, and also supervising student's work at undergraduate and graduate levels.

January 2022 - present

Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Gaming

University of Houston-Victoria - Victoria, TX (USA)

As the director of Digital Games and Simulations program, I teach several courses related to this field, such as Art for Gaming, Advanced Leveling, Senior Project, and Advanced Modeling wit DirectX. I also teach for the Computer Science (undergraduate and graduate) programs in courses like Data Structures, Programming Fundamentals, and Databases.
My duties also include supervising undergraduate and graduate students in their capstone projects.

February 2019 - December 2021

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Trinity College Dublin - Dublin (Ireland)

As a researcher for the V-SENSE – Extending Visual Sensation through Image-Based Visual Computing group (Link), my duties were inserted under the SAUCE - Smart Assets for re-Use in Creative Environments project (Link) where I was involved with studying ways to autonomously classify motion capture data to facilitate the create and edition of crowd simuations.

January 2018 - January 2019

Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina - Joinville, SC (Brazil)

Undergraduate teaching duties include: Programming Fundamentals, Mathematical Logic, Computer Graphics, Image Processing, Data Structures, Compilers, Automata and Formal Languages, Advanced Programming, and Computer Animations.
I also supervised more than a dozen capstone projects, and coordinated several research project, being the most sucessful one called D.R.A.M.A. - Developing Rational Agents to Mimic Actors

July 2003 - February 2021

Lecturer of Computer Science

Universidade do Vale do Itajai - Itajai, SC (Brazil)

Teaching courses: Compilers and Object-oriented Programming

March 2003 - June 2003

Lecturer of Computer Science

Faculdades Integradas de Rondonópolis - Rondonópolis, MT (Brazil)

Teaching courses: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Graphics, Programming Fundamentals

July 2001 - February 2003

Adjunct Lecturer of Computer Science

Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso - Cuiabá, MT (Brazil)

Teaching courses: Computer Graphics and Programming Fundamentals

August 1997 - March 1999

Education

Universidade do Minho - Guimarães (Portugal)

Doctorate of Technologies and Information Systems
Thesis title: "Creating Partly Autonomous Expressive Virtual Actors for Computer Animation" [DOWNLOAD]
September 2008 - July 2014

Universidade de São Paulo/ICMC - São Carlos, SP (Brazil)

Masters of Computer Science and Mathematical Computing
March 1999 - April 2001

Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso - Cuiabá, MT (Brazil)

Bachelor of Computer Science
October 1992 - July 1997

Online Training

School Course Duration
CGCookie.com Blender Animation Bootcamp 5 h 6 m
Total 5 h 6 m
Udemy.com Writing a Script for Animation in Adobe Story 39 m
Total 39 m
LinkedIn Learning Intro to Virtual Reality (VR) Filmmaking 42 m
Virtual Reality Foundations 35 m
Total 1 h 17 m
ai2-3D.com Photogrammetry - Fundamentals & Applications* 1 h 28 m
Photogrammetry Process: equipment, settings & software* 1 h 40 m
Photogrammetry Software workflow* 1 h 30 m
Total 4 h 38 m
VICON Vicon Industry Panel Webinar Series - Pushing Game Development to the Next Level* 1 h 8 m
Total 1 h 8 m
Rokoko.com Real-time Mocap for Animation and VFX - Easy Body, Fingers and Face Capture* 1 h
Creating Pro Characters with Mocap* 1 h
Total 2 h
Circuit Stream Build Your VR Escape Room in Unity* 1 h 35 m
Build Your Own VR Driving Simulator in Unity* 1 h 41 m
Introduction to HoloLens 2 Development* 2 h 9 m
Total 5 h 25 m
BloopAnimation.com Animation for Beginners 47 m
Animation Foundations 1 h 50 m
Maya Animation 4 h 6 m
Stick Figure Animation 4 h 32 m
Blender Animation 2 h 42 m
Making an Animated Movie 1 h 44 m
Total 15 h 41 m
MrPaulXavier.com Day 1 - Gear 1 h 18 m
Day 2 - Focal Length 16 m
Day 3 - Composition 18 m
Day 4 - Movement 19 m
Total 2 h 11 m
TheArchitectureAcademy.com Architecture: Fundamentals 4 h 21 m
Module 1 - Lounge Room 2 h 23 m
Module 2 - Modern House 4 h 51 m
Total 11 h 35 m
GameInstitute.com C++ Programming 1 h 38 m
Introduction to Unity 15 h 52 m
Mobile Development 4 h 14 m
Total 21 h 44 m
DigitalTutors.com Pushing Your C# Skills Beyond the Basics in Unity 1 h 37 m
Creating a Mobile Puzzle Game in Unity 1 h 41 m
Creating Run Cycles in Maya 2 h
Creating Interior Walk-Throughs in Unity 2 h 1 m
Creating UI Elements in Unreal Engine 1 h 44 m
Creating Gameplay Systems using Blueprint Features in Unreal Engine 4 h 32 m
Introduction to Particle Systems in Unreal Engine 2 h 1 m
Introduction to Matinee in Unreal Engine 4 1 h 20 m
Unreal Engine 4 Material Reference Node Library 1 h 19 m
Introduction to Blueprint in Unreal Engine 1 h 5 m
Introduction to Materials in Unreal Engine 1 h 59 m
Introduction to Lighting in Unreal Engine 4 57 m
Introduction to Unreal Engine 4 4 h 1 m
Quick Start to Unreal Engine 4: Volume 1 1 h 9 m
Quick Start to Unreal Engine 4: Volume 2 1 h 3 m
Quick Start to Unreal Engine 4: Volume 3 57 m
Your First Day in Unreal Engine 4 1 h 39 m
Indie Game Development Pipeline Volume 1: Visual Development 2 h 17 m
Total 33 h 22 m
Total hours: 104 h 46 m
* Webinar format

Skills

Programming Languages & Tools
  • C/C++
  • Python
  • PROLOG/Picat
  • HTML/CSS/JS
  • PHP
  • C#
Game & Graphical Tools
  • Unity
  • Blender 3D
  • Unreal Engine
  • Autodesk Maya
  • OpenGL

Interests

Virtual Reality (VR) is a simulated experience that can (or not) be similar to the real world. It uses special devices for a 3D user interface (3DUI), sometimes known as human-centered interface.

Augmented Reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory.

Synthetic characters means incorporating Psychology-inspired computational models to autonomous (embodied or not) characters decision-processes. Some possible applications of this are: non-player characters, virtual humans, and robotics.

Affective computing means to study computing that relates to, arises from, or influences emotions. It aims at developing better human-computer interaction systems in a more natural user-friendly manner.

Other than that, I am interested in working with several extra curricular initiatives to deepen students' engagement with computer science and gaming. Some examples are the international collegiate programming contest (ICPC/ACM) and the global game jam (GGJ).


Publications

Full papers:
  1. SMYTH, D.L., YOUNG, G.W., ONDREJ, J., SILVA, R.E, CUMMINS, A., NATH, S., ARSLANN, A.Z., WISESSING, P., and SMOLIC, A., Semantic Crowd Re-targeting: Implementation for Real-time Applications and User Evaluations, 2021 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), Lisbon, Portugal.
  2. NUSAYR, A., SILVA, R.E. The use of Educational Robots to Engage the Youth in Computer Science: a Case Study, 10th Workshop on Robotics in Education (WRE) as part of the 16th IEEE Latin America Robotics Symposium (LARS), Rio Grande-RS, Brazil, 2019
  3. SILVA, R.E. D.R.A.M.A. - Developing Rational Agents to Mimic Actors, In: Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGAMES), Brasilia-DF, Brazil, 2012
  4. SILVA, R.E., SANTOS, M.F., IURGEL, I.A. Developing Virtual Actors Inspired by Real Actors' Practice, In: Proceedings of the 2011 Workshop on Digital Media and Digital Content Management Proceeding DMDCM '11: IEEE Computer Society, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, 2011
  5. IURGEL, I.A., SILVA, R.E., SANTOS, M.F. Towards Virtual Actors for Acting out Stories, In: 5th International Conference on E-Learning and Games (Edutainment) Edutainment, Springer, Changchun, China, 2010
  6. SILVA, R.E., IURGEL, I.A., SANTOS, M.F., ZAGALO, N., BRANCO, P. Understanding Virtual Actors, In: Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGAMES) Florianópolis-SC, Brazil, 2010

Short papers:
  1. SILVA, R.E. and DHARAS, M. and LANDRY, J.P.C. and FINNEY, J. A Mobile VR Tool for Vestibular Therapy, In: 25th Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality (SVR), D.O.I.: 10.1145/3625008.3625012, Rio Grande-RS, Brazil, 2023.
  2. SILVA, R.E. and RITO, P.N. A Prototype of a 3D Shooter Game for the Visually Impaired Player, In: Joint Conference on Serious Games (JCSG), D.O.I.: 10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_34, Dublin, Ireland, 2023.
  3. SILVA, R.E. and HENDRICKER, E. The Role of Autonomous Agents in Training School Psychology Graduate Students, In: 18th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning (CELDA 2021), Online event at https://www.celda-conf.org/, 2021.
  4. ZOLANVARI, I.; RUANO, S.; RANA, A.; CUMMINS, A,; SILVA; R.E.; RAHBAR, M.; SMOLIC, A. DublinCity: Annotated LiDAR Point Cloud and its Applications, In: 30th British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC), Cardiff, United Kingdom, 2019.
  5. SILVA, R.E., ONDREJ, J., SMOLIC, A. Using LSTM for Automatic Classification of Human Motion Capture Data, In: 14th International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Application (GRAPP), Prague, Czech Republic, 2019.
  6. RAMOS, R. P., SILVA, R.E., REIS, J. C. K. A Personality Model based on Reiss Motivational Profile for Autonomous Digital Actors, In: Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGAMES), Brasilia-DF, Brazil, 2012
  7. THUME, G. S., SILVA, R.E. An Extended EBDI Model Applied to Autonomous Digital Actors, In: Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGAMES), Brasilia-DF, Brazil, 2012 (Awarded best short paper of the event)
  8. IURGEL, I.A., SILVA, R.E., RIBEIRO, P.R., SOARES, A.B., SANTOS, M.F. CREACTOR - An Authoring Framework for Virtual Actors, In: Proceedings of the Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), LNAI Intelligent Virtual Agents, 5773, pp. 562-563, Springer, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2009
  9. SILVA, R.E., IURGEL, I.A., SANTOS, M.F. Towards Virtual Actors - The Next Step for the Entertainment Industry, In: Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGAMES), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009

Awards & Certifications

  • Best short paper of the Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment (SBGAMES), 2012

Work Samples

3D Game: PONG

2D Game: UFO

2D Game: SPACE INVADERS

2D Game: ASTEROID

3D Game: CHEESE RUNNER

Classroom material: Walk Cycle animation
Classroom material: Run Cycle animation
Classroom material: Lip Sync animation

Classroom material: Principles of Animation #1 Pose-to-Pose Animation
Classroom material: Principles of Animation #2 Timing, Spacing, Slow In/Out
Classroom material: Principles of Animation #3 Squash/Stretch

Classroom material: Principles of Animation #4 Overlapping Actions
Classroom material: Smoke and Fire
Classroom material: Grass

Classroom material: Cel fracture
Project: Christmas Tree
Project: Rocky Mountains

Project: Donuts

These are just for exercising and learning. They are not my creations. All projects are based on tutorials from YouTube.
Project: Bridging the Blue [LINK]
Project: Crowd simulation at TCD campus