The Complete Spark AR Course: Build 10 Instagram AR Effects

This lecture goes over the process of downloading and installing Spark. Then, we explore the Spark interface to get familiar with the controls, menus, and navigation.

This lesson assumes zero knowledge of Spark AR Studio. If you are already familiar with the software, feel free to skip this section.

This lecture covers the face tracker capability and the facemesh object. The facetracker allows content to be tracked to a user's face. The facemesh is a built-in 3D asset that can be used as an overlay for a tracked face.

Learn about how we use Materials in Spark. Create, adjust, and compare the different types of Materials available.

Learn how to import and use .png or .jpg images as Textures in your Spark project.

A quick look at programming with the Patch Editor - Spark's visual programming interface. We'll be creating the ability for user's to tap the screen to change the Material that's currently visible on their face.

Introduction to 3D objects/meshes and programs for downloading, creating, editing, and exporting them for use in Spark.

In this lecture, we import a 3D object from Sketchfab, Spark's integrated 3rd party 3D library. We then position our model to fit our scene and give it a new Material

Learn about 2D elements and how to organize them into Layers to create backgrounds or overlays

In this lecture, we explore occlusion and how to use it to selectively hide/reveal elements of our scene.

This video continues our exploration of the Patch Editor through animating our occluder plane. We also look at Null Objects, which are invisible containers that allow us to group multiple objects together for use in animation.

In this lecture, we learn how to selectively prevent movement of certain scene objects by counteracting some of our FaceTracking transforms.

To wrap up our effect, we use the Patch Editor to link the rotation of one of our scene objects to the Mouth Open Face Gesture, which tracks our user's mouth openness.

This lecture examines the Project Settings menu, including our Effect Destination (Facebook vs Instagram) and our Effect Capabilities.

Combining our knowledge of Materials with some new Lighting techniques, we create a cartoonish aesthetic for a 3D object.

In this lecture, we learn how to use Planes to add more cartoon content to our scene.

We add a HandTracker object to our scene, and use it to anchor elements to our user's hand.

Learn how to use Face Gesture Patches to tie Positions, Rotations, or Scales to Blinking or Eye Openness.

Learn how to use Facial Landmark Patches to tie Positions, Rotations, or Scales to your user's eyebrows.

Here, we discuss Blocks, which are sections of a project that we can group and export for use in the same or other projects.

In this lecture, we convert a gif to an Image Sequence and Sprite Sheet to compare the two methods for adding dynamic textures to our scene.

Here, we learn how to control our Image Sequences using the Patch Editor, including how to reverse a gif.

In this video, we add a Particle System to our scene and look at how to adjust its settings to achieve the effect we want.

Use Patches to control the Particle Emitter.

Add Custom Instructions to an effect to prompt users to interact with the scene in specific ways.

In this lecture, we'll look at importing Patch Groups created by other people. We'll use two shaders (covered in detail in the next section) to create a glitch effect.

Spark AR allows for the ability to manipulate user audio. We'll be quickly looking at the Audio Delay Patch as an example of how this can be accomplished.

How do Shaders work? What do they even do? The answers to these questions, and more, next.

In this video, we apply some of our new color manipulation theory to create a Black&White filter.

Continuing our color manipulation examples, we invert our camera feed's color profile.

The Spark AR Community Facebook page is a great resource for novice and experienced AR Creators, alike.

In this lecture, we create a Chromatic Aberration filter.

Here, we export our Chromatic Aberration Patch Group for use in other projects.

The Reduce Channels Patch Group is provided in your effect resources.

We'll go over the second half of Shader Theory, which involves reassigning pixel colors based on the pixel's position in an image.

We take a quick look at the Pixelate and VCR Glitch Patch Groups used in the Error Effect Tutorial.

This marks the halfway point. Get yourself a glass of water and/or a snack and get ready to continue grinding through this section.

We'll finish our UV Manipulation examples by creating the Solarize Patch Group.

A Look-Up Table, or LUT, is a special Shader that applies the colors from one texture to the UV coordinates of another. In this video, we use a LUT Patch Group with a simple 2-colored Gradient we create.

Continuing our LUT filters, we'll use a texture to recolor our camera feed.

Finishing up our LUT filters, we'll create an animated Gradient using HSV Color Space to recolor our camera feed.

In this lecture, we'll explore the NativeUI Picker, which allows the user to select from our 10 filters. I've included some NativeUI example code in case you're unable to get it from Spark's website.

We'll quickly look at the Mix Patch Group to add a grain to our VCR Glitch.

In this lecture, we learn how to separate our user from their background.

Create background and overlay layers for our effect. We'll also be adding to our segmentation effect to create an outline around our user.

We'll see how we can use Null Objects to make objects orbit around our user's head. We'll then use Occlusion to hide those objects as they pass behind our user.

This video will show how to properly export animated 3D models for use in Spark.

Once we have our animated 3D model imported, we'll need to use the Patch Editor to control the animation.

Here, we'll use the PlaneTracker to add a 3D scene to our back-facing camera.

Add a glow effect to a 3D object using a textured plane.

To view some effects, you'll need to use Spark's Send to Device ability, which we'll discuss in this lecture.

Shadows can go a long way in making an effect seem more real, especially when using the PlaneTracker. We'll look at different techniques for creating shadows, including dynamic shadows for animated 3D content.

In this lecture, we look at creating Touch Gestures with Patches. This is a temporary substitute for video content that will be uploaded soon.

To allow our user to manipulate our PlaneTracker scene, we'll need to set up a script for creating Touch Gestures.

In this video, we'll begin with the least complicated of the 3 Touch Gestures - the Two-Finger Rotate Gesture.

Continuing our Touch Gesture script, we'll add Pinch-to-Scale. We'll also look at ways to limit the amount our user can scale our scene.

In this lecture, we'll create a simple Pan gesture, which allows our user to move around our PlaneTracker scene. Then, we'll look at a method for improving this Gesture using a sensitivity value and the DeviceMotion Module.

Similar to our 3D object glow effect, we'll look at ways to create a glowing material for a FaceMesh.

We'll finish this effect with some particles triggered by our user opening their mouth.

In this section, we're walking through a mostly finished project file. So, to start, we'll be walking through the Scene Hierarchy and the general setup of our scene.

We covered Bridging in the Shaders effect, but we'll go into more detail of how to use it to pass data between the Patch Editor and Script.

Spark requires audio to be formatted as a .m4a file. We'll go through methods for converting audio formats so they import into Spark successfully.

Once we have our audio imported, we'll need to set up Patches to be able to play each sound effect when needed.

Now that our scene is fully set up, we can begin going through the Script. Here, we'll be importing the necessary modules and organizing our scripting assets.

In this video, we'll look at the variables being passed between our Script and Patch Editor.

The main part of our Script is the game logic, which handles creating and displaying prompts to our user, keeping score, and determining if the user has won or lost. This is Part 1.

This is Part 2.

We'll learn about the Persistence Module, which lets us save data on our user's device. In this effect, we'll use it to save and load high score data for our game. We'll also look at other potential uses for this capability.

In addition to our normal outro information, we'll also take a look at the Persistence Module in the Capabilities section to see how to whitelist data keys.