SuperHi has collaborated with some of the world's best creatives to produce 13 different filters which we'll show you not only exactly how they were made but how to add many different variations to them.
In this course, you'll learn everything you need to create your own augmented reality filters for Instagram and Facebook Camera using Spark AR from scratch.
From working with textures and materials, to adding your own interactions to trackers within the Patch Editor, to testing and launch, we'll give you everything you need to create your own filters.
What you’ll learn
How to work with Spark AR to make filters for Instagram and Facebook Camera.
Working with textures, materials and animation sequences to create your own augmented reality experiences.
Using the Patch Editor to add interactive elements and triggers to face and plane trackers.
Working within a 3D environment and how to add 3D-rendered models to your project.
How to extract and draw textures to create your own samplers and color shaders.
How to test, submit and launch your own filters to Instagram and Facebook
Requirements
A computer (Windows, Mac or Linux) with the latest version of Chrome installed and a broadband internet connection. You’ll also want to set up a Notion and Figma account (they're free and we'll walk you through setup in the course). That’s it!
Target Audience
This course is aimed at creative people who are interested in learning how to make augmented reality filters for Instagram or Facebook Camera.
While there are a few concepts that may be familiar to designers or coders during this course, this is a beginner course so you don't need any previous experience of AR (augmented reality), 3D, design or coding to join this. All you need is a creative mind!
In the first project, we explore Spark AR and Figma, the two programs we'll be using together to make filter effects!
We discover the Patch Editor for the first time to make our 2d text change from Happy to Chill whenever we smile!
In Popout, we layer up several masks with alpha textures and an extracted face texture, then hook them all up to the Patch Editor to pop out when we're surprised!
In this lesson, we talk about metal materials and how we make them reflective. We also add a loop animation so we can spin our lighting to show off our 3d metal mask.
Ever wanted to look like a cutie with a cone on their head? Now's your chance. In Cone Head, we add an ice cream cone to our heads, add facial distortion and pitch-shift our input audio.
In our effects, we may want to cut out our users from the camera, and add them to an eggy background. In this project, we'll talk about camera segmentation, animation sequence and how to change backgrounds on tap.
The SuperHi spin on a popular filter... find out exactly how the What X Are You filters are actually made using a combination of pulses and switches!
We don't always want to look at our face. We may want to look into the real world. In this project, we'll talk about the alternative trackers, plane and fixed target, and add particle systems to them both!
How do we play with color when it comes to our camera? In this lesson, we'll take our camera texture, take every pixel and change its color to something brand new!
A common technique in filter effects is to use a reference texture when it comes to changing our color schemes. In this project, we'll add a gradient texture so as to sample colors based on their real-world lightness.
Time for soup! Just like Andy, we dig repetition so in the Warhol filter we repeat ourselves over and over and over again by taking our camera texture and multiplying it!
Who needs VSCO? Look Up Tables are the perfect way to add our own color grading and tones to our filters. In this project, we'll talk about how to use a 3D look up table (or LUT) to map our camera pixels to a reference texture.
In the final project, we will take everything we've learned to make our own reusable patch assets to split out the red, green and blue color channels to remix them into a new color effect.
Rik (he/him) is a Mancunian coder, teacher and CEO of SuperHi. He was the co-founder of Steer (a code school in London) and has taught several thousand people to code. He is a bit too old to be posting memes on our social media and recently featured as a Sour Patch Kid in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.