Exploring Realities
Make one thing daily for 30 days | Creating Augmented reality filters for instagram
Photo by James Yarema via unsplash
Enough said and read about augmented and virtual reality, i wanted to just start creating something, and just starting was so important, so for the month of November 2021, i decided create design assets for AR or VR space and explore more of it.. Here’s what, where, when, why and how of the experiment performed.
What and how did I make one thing daily?
As an experiment to explore AR and VR and make one thing daily i used tools like Adobe XD and Spark AR to create design assets daily. Majorly i used Spark AR for creating AR filters. Various illustration needed for the filters were created on adobe illustrator and prototyped on the spark AR tool using featured like material masking, face mesh, and patch editor. The final filters could be tested using the camera or the mobile application Spark AR player that can be downloaded from the play store on the android phone.
Where and when did I make them?
I created these filters any time of the day in not more than an hour each day which included deciding on a template and creating them on the tool that took lesser time the following days. I used my personal laptop MacBook Pro 16 GB to create them using tools like Spark AR and adobe illustrator.
Why AR filters?
I wanted to explore AR and VR spaces and learn to create for those spaces, while exploring and trying my hands on unity tool, and also adobe XD along with plugins like draft XR, I did find it interesting and fun to design but the constraint was creating 30 different pieces by the end of the month and the Spark AR tool helped me do that, also it was fun trying out these filters.
A template for tattoos, another template for face masks, helped me create multiple filters without putting hours and hours into it.
This can be used in various spaces like e-commerce shopping using AR space and camera, and also can be installed in applications for various applications that require users to experience something in augmented space before in reality.
Findings
My findings while doing this experiment of exploring ideas to make something for a VR or AR space had challenges and since i wanted to make one thing daily, i knew that there was only a limited time i could give it.
I started learning and exploring the VR space by trying to learn the unity tool but it turned out to be a failure for me for some reason because of the constraints I had and also it took me a lot of time just to learn the basics of the tool.
And then I moved to the adobe XD, a tool that I was much familiar with and created UI designs that took almost a whole week for two ideas of UI designs for VR headsets. I however learned to create UI designs for VR headsets and prototyped them using the plugin Draft XR.
UI design 1: Screens for verifying different icons from Draft XR plugin
UI design 2: A home hunting application that shows 360 degree view of the house you want to buy:
Here’s a prototype video of the same:
Second week onto the experiment and i finally found the tool that was fun to learn and work on and also helped me create interesting Face filters called Spark AR. It has amazing features that allow you to create face mesh and apply your illustrations in form of makeup or tattoos and even there’s a library of many 3d tools to choose from. The videos of people provided for prototyping are also a very diverse set of skin tones, people with turbans and beards. This helps us learn that the filter created can be used by a diverse set of people. Additionally one can also publish these filters on Instagram and Facebook.
Some filters that I created, tried using the Spark AR tool and clicked pictures using the andriod application Spark AR player on my phone.
Most of it was like a tattoo on the face. I could see that a lot of improvements could be made to these filters.
Conclusion
It was so much fun creating these filters and learning that there’s so much possible in the Augmented reality and Virtual Reality space, One can integrate these with various other technologies existing now, and create amazing solutions to problems in society. It can also act as one great tool in this remote world to create spaces for collaboration with colleagues, friends, and even fellow students.
Experimenting with the AR Instagram filter idea helped me understand the spark AR tool better. I believe that the filters that came out can be refined even more to be released on Instagram.
