SelfiEffects

Development Image
Blahaj Underwater
typeof(person@hackathon)
Java FTW?

Inspiration

The theme of the hackathon was Selfies so the first thing which came in my mind was building an AR filter for Instagram and it seemed super cool. I was excited to learn how to do so as I had no idea before.

What I made

I made two effects for Instagram and Facebook. The first one is "Blahaj Underwater" which is a super cool underwater effect with Blahaj tattoos on your cheeks which change with a tap! The other one is what I call "typeof(person@hackathon)", the name is pretty self-explanatory!

How I built it

I used Photoshop, Canva and Blender to make the images, graphics and normal maps, and used Spark AR by Facebook to build the AR effects. I scripted visually using SparkAR's patch editor. In the end I published the filters but it takes a few days for Facebook to review the filters and add them so I made testing links which are below. (valid for 50 uses in the next 24 hours)

Challenges I ran into

I had never used SparkAR before and had never made any filters earlier. I am also very new to creating normal maps in blender so it was super hard. Also it was hard understanding how the face meshes and blend modes worked so I had redo a lot of the work more than 5 times.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Well, the filters work super well and they look pretty good too. I achieved a super satisfying result in the end and I'm proud that I overcame all of my challenges.