Building Blocks

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  Building Blocks Cover

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  Building Blocks Castle

Inspiration

For this lens we really wanted to push ourselves technically and create something that allows people to engage in creative and innovative ways. Building blocks have endless opportunities for creative expression and can be entertaining for all ages. Just think about Minecraft and how the simple concept of a game based on blocks became one fo the most popular games worldwide. We have always been fans of lenses that are interactable and allow input from the users that offer the next level of engagement.

What it does

In this lens users can tap to place blocks to build whatever they can come up with from a variety of block selections.

How we built it

We first modeled various block types that we thought would be fun to incorporate and then

Challenges we ran into

We started with the cake decorating template but ran into the issue of it only loading a black screen. This led us to have to combine a functional lens with elements from this filters and basically deconstruct them both and combine them until it finally worked. Another issue we ran into was the UI being invisible yet still functional. Finally, something we didn't initially consider was that 1x1 blocks are the only viable choices and that 2x1 or 1x2 blocks do not align properly. We also had to problem solve to correctly offset the positions and rotations of various blocks as they do not always appear in the center or facing the direction expected since the origins are not at the base of the blocks, but at the center.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of creating a filter with a more advanced interaction since we have limited experience in lens studio. We are also excited about the variety of textures and the realism of the blocks.

What we learned

We learned a lot about how creating lenses works in lens studio and even a bit more about the scripting as opposed to just using nodes. This was a great experience for us to branch our and stretch what we know.

What's next for Building Blocks

We hope for Building Blocks to reach a large audience and that people will share their creative creations with their friends to encourage more innovation and fun.

Built With

• blender
• snapchat