Love Matti <333

What it does

The Instagram (back camera) world effect "Love Matti <333" is a little digital dancing buddy that can imitate facial expressions if a face has been found in the back camera.

Love Matti brightens up moments, spreads love and good vibes into the world — especially in times like these. Love Matti can send heart kisses to your loved ones when you pucker your lips. <333

** Matti's can do following things: Matti can imitate smiling, opening the mouth and kissing as well as blinking with the left or right eye. Tap anywhere on a plane in the world view or tap and drag to place Matti, pinch to scale and drag with two fingers to rotate.

Optionally, in the front camera Love Matti floats besides your head. When puckering your lips you can send heart kisses to the Instagram front camera.

In addition to the facial expressions mentioned above, tap or open your mouth to change Love Matti's default position from the left to the right side of your head.

How I built it

• Character sketch on paper
• 3D character modelling in Blender 2.82
• Character Rigging in Blender 2.82
• Character Animation in Spark AR
• Spark AR

Challenges I ran into

• Doing accurate weight painting in Blender 2.82 to remove character glitches and smoothen movements
• Fixing the weights to be able to use them correctly for the character animation

What's next for Love Matti

The effect is still in review. Here is the final effect sharing link that will work as soon as it has been approved: https://www.instagram.com/a/r/?effect_id=832772793909834

• Maybe add a collection of audio tracks (electronic, funk, disco, …) in the background.
• Add support for more facial expressions.
• Maybe sync with body movement if there is body tracking support for Spark AR in the future.
• React to expressions with different animations.
• Maybe add floating messages in the world to emphasize a mood.

Built With

• ar
• augmented-reality
• blender
• particle
• sparkar