Newsletter #4

Published 2021-03-23

Big whoops

So apparently I have no idea what I'm talking about. The flame outline filters that last week I predicted would take off have for the most part fizzled out. And no witchcraft or sorcery is needed to create the flame effect; you can find the material in the Full Body Segmentation template.

Demon horn lenses appear to actually be what's trending. Not trending like the "What {blank} am I?" lenses did a year ago, but they seem to be pretty popular. If you want to jump on the bandwagon, you can create your own in literally three minutes.

On the Spark AR front, tattoo filters seem to be popular. Once you get past all the grain and color/lut filters of course. Not that there's anything wrong with those, but it's like using an iPhone just to make phone calls. Making phone calls is good, but your iPhone can do so much more than just make phone calls.

Screen Scanner Pro exposed!

I finished my tutorial on how the time warp/screen scanner/slit scan effect works. It is stupidly simple. As in, once you have a mask to control where the effect happens, you literally change a single option and the effect starts working. Now I didn't want to recreate the lens exactly, so all I do in the tutorial is explain how to set up the effect. I also don't explain how to create the UI nor do I attempt to recreate the iconic preview video for the original lens.

Awesome Resources

Spark AR Masterclass

If you are active in the Spark AR group on Facebook then you've probably already seen the Spark AR Masterclass advertised by Eddy Adams. I haven't taken it personally yet, but I plan on doing so at some point. The course looks to be pretty comprehensive and covers many aspects of filter creation. I really do need to learn Spark AR a lot better and Eddy is probably one of the top creators on the platform. You can get the course for free, or you can pay for it.

Max van Leeuwen