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Spark AR is Facebook’s free AR creation platform that enables users to create interactive AR experiences for Facebook and Instagram. More than 400,000 creators in 190 countries have used Spark AR to create their own AR creations

Since the software requires no coding knowledge to use, anyone can now lead the world by creating the next crazy viral Instagram AR effects with little experience in the AR world.

Specialized AR filter designers can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $30,000.

UV mapping

A UV map is a 2D representation of a 3D surface. UV mapping must be successful in order to achieve the best texture results. Optimization process:

  • Generate UV maps manually instead of automatically.
  • Keep UV shells to a minimum and do not overlap them or you will get blemishes.
  • Leave the fill between the UV shells. For example, a 1K texture should have 8 pixels of fill between shells.
  • Use only one UV map for each 3D object.

The image on the left shows a UV overlay map. The image on the right is a well-organized UV map.

The material

When creating a material:

  • Use physics-based materials (PBR) and ambient textures.
  • Use as few materials as possible.
  • Incorporate as many materials as possible to improve performance.

texture

For fun and effective texturing:

  • Use textures in sRGB space at a maximum resolution of 1024 x 1024 pixels.
  • If you use Adobe®Substance Painter® texture software to create textures, use Spark AR templates to make textures compatible.
  • Incorporate as many materials as possible to improve performance.
  • For textures with repeating patterns, import low resolution images and use Spark AR Studio’s visual shader and texture tiling capabilities instead of using larger resolution images.

In AR effects, textures using real lighting are difficult to implement and require a lot of processing power.

To reduce the impact on performance, you can take advantage of the following:

  • Bake light directly into a 3D object to decorate the face effect, in order to prompt highlights and shadows.
  • Bake lights onto static (non-moving) objects, such as furniture and accessories, for a more realistic effect. Use soft lighting Settings, not bright lights or shadows. Baking lighting works best in environments where light, intensity, color, etc., do not change in the overall effect.
  • Reflect ambient textures with flat shaders using MatCap(Material Capture).

Bone creation and skin (Bone binding)

Listen to the breakdown next time

animation

Listen to the breakdown next time