Feel Future

Travel ahead in time and experience the weather conditions up to nine days. Use hand gestures to hear the wind speed and temperature. Go to the custom section to feel thirteen different conditions.

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The journey of creating Feel Future

Hi there, get ready to experience the journey of creating this lens. Hold your seatbelt and let's dive into it.

Inspiration

  • From the start, the idea was to create a lens that would provide some value to snapchatters and at the same time would be entertaining.
  • I went through the available resources and recommendations and got to know about the Weather API through which we could find out the weather conditions, wind speed, temperature and much more of that day and next nine days.
  • That was the value part, now in order to make it entertaining I could add some effects and VFX to make it look like we travelled ahead and are experiencing the conditions in the present moment. Yup, just like in time travel movies :)
  • I was inspired and now it was time to transform the imagination into a creation.

What it does

  • The lens allows a snapchatter to travel ahead up to nine days and know the weather condition, wind speed and temperature of each day and night.
  • The lens even shows effects as per the weather condition and displays how the sky would look on the hand of the snapchatter.
  • It has audio features as well provided in the form of Remote Assets, like on a rainy day we can hear the rain drops falling, on a sunny day we can hear the birds chirping and so on.
  • It utilizes Text to Speech and we can show different hand gestures to listen to the wind speed or temperature of a particular day or night.
  • It even has two special buttons, one for shifting between day and night, and the other one for switching audio on or off.
  • There is also a custom section through which we can experience any weather condition (total thirteen) as per our choice.

How I built it

  • Alright, so firstly I downloaded Lens Studio as this was my first time creating a lens.
  • I read the rules and criteria for the development process and watched the workshop videos.
  • Then I took a pen and paper and started listing down the functionalities that the lens would have.
  • After that I explored Lens Studio along with watching the tutorial videos on YouTube.
  • Then I thoroughly read the documentation related to the features I had planned to provide in the lens earlier.
  • The major features were: Remote Service Module, Weather API, Remote Assets of Lens Cloud, Hand Gestures, Hand Segmentation, Audio Component and Text to Speech.
  • Now I had a clear picture of how the lens would be and started with the creation process.
  • Step by step I kept on implementing the functionalities and tested the lens on my mobile device.
  • Finally after placing the final piece of the puzzle the lens was ready for publishing.
  • Mission Accomplished.

Challenges I ran into

  • The biggest challenge was entering the new zone as I had not worked on Lens Studio earlier. But I kept on grasping the information and learning from experiences to get familiar.
  • Another challenge was finding out how and the right way of implementing the features. There were may great resources to learn from including the Snap AR Workshops, YouTube Tutorials and the Documentation.
  • The size of the lens was going towards the 8 mb mark, but then I searched for the size increasing elements and compressed them to reduce thier size and used Remote Assets by storing the audio files in Lens Cloud to bring the lens size closer to 4 mb.

Accomplishments that I am proud of

  • Firstly I am proud of diving into an unknown world and pushing my limits to create something worthwhile.
  • Next, I got to know about the hackathon when only around two weeks were left. I am definitely proud of the way I managed my time to complete and successfully publish the lens.
  • I put forth my best to create the lens and paid attention to details so that anyone who would use the lens would have an amazing experience.

What I learned

  • If you can imagine it, you can create it. First I thought of the lens in my imagination and then learned the technologies and tools required to create it. All that was needed was faith and dedication.
  • Learned a lot about Lens Studio, JavaScript, using APIs, Remote Assets and time management.

What's next for Feel Future

  • I would like to add more 3D objects that would be displayed as per the weather conditions, like a jacket on a snowy day, coffee on a rainy day and so on.
  • Would be excited to use more services provided by Lens Cloud to make the lens more efficient and interactive.

Thank you for reading, best wishes for your journey ahead :)

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