Augmented Reality – Do’s and Dont’s? – Part III

We are one final step in the process of what to do and what not to do, when creating an Augmented Reality filter, this article is a little more technical, but thanks to these tips, we continue to assure you will save valuable time.

In principle we confirm that Spark AR is dynamic and easy to use, however, the effects must meet the following characteristics:

• Filters are exported from Spark AR platform to Spark AR Hub. It is dynamic and we recommend you have everything at hand when mounting the filter.
• The files must be in “.arexport”, they must not be modified and they must not have other external files, it should be noted that they must not exceed 40MB.
• The ideal size of the video is 10MB if it will be published on Facebook, in the case of Instagram it should be 4MB.

On the other hand, the subject of names is also taken into account when approving the AR filter, these must comply with 20 characters or less, this will also allow the name of the effect to be easy to remember. If you will publish several effects, these must have different and super important names, you should not use the Instagram username, trade names or people.

The filter must have an icon that will represent the effect, with Instagram, it should not contain names or users, we recommend in this case not to place text. As for other technical characteristics for Instagram, the following is true:

• The format to be saved is PNG or JPG and the dimensions are 200 x 200 pixels.
• The corners must be square.
• They must not have transparencies, and at least one space must be sRGB.

With Facebook, what makes the difference is that:

• If the image is saved in PNG, it must comply with transparency.
• The icon should not exceed 1 MB.

When loading the filter, a demonstration video is made that shows the characteristics and how to use or show off the filter, this point is one of the most fun because you can already play with the effect. But, this step must also comply with certain policies, for example: Videos must show all the characteristics of the effect, these are recorded live and direct from the Instagram camera, must not have screen casts, other images or videos and for no reason can be edited; the video is 15 seconds and must not exceed 32 MB and last, the file format is MOV or MP4.

Now, last but not least, you need to have a category. The video should fit the selected category, but in Spark AR you can choose another category if you think it works better with the AR filter.