After making our first augmented reality (AR) Facebook Camera Effect with Torch, the hard part was naming it. FlowAR, MothAR’s Day, Mother’s DAyR–there were just too many augmented reality puns to make. We called the app something simple, Mother’s Day Flowers, so we could share it with you and quickly get to testing this awesome new Torch feature–export to social media.
Soon, we’ll share plenty of details about the powerful new sharing and export features coming to Torch Publish plans. You can sign up for Torch Publish early access below, so for now...
Download Torch, if you haven't already–it's free in the iTunes Store.
We made you these augmented reality flowers
Using only the power of Torch’s visual design environment, we built an interactive, customizable augmented reality Mother’s Day app for the Facebook Camera–then exported the full app to Spark AR format. Over the last week, we gave our AR design team (aka. Kami Karras) 2 hours and a load of functional requirements to design, build, and share an interactive Facebook Camera Effect.
Not only did she deliver an app that hits all of her technical specs, but she also shipped a topical, shareable Effect in time to test over the Mother’s Day weekend–fast, flexible, powerful.
Now that it’s live, please help us test and share this Effect.
Pro tip: Torch-made Facebook AR Effects can be used on both iPhones and Android devices through the Facebook app!
From design to Facebook in 2 hours
For this first Facebook project, we wanted to test the practical limits of immersive AR for social cameras. Instead of flashy view-only animations, we set requirements for this project that would test the complexity, logic, and personalization capabilities of social AR while staying under the notable file limit for Spark AR apps–which is smaller than the Torch Blog header image.
Here are the technical and functional requirements for our Mother’s Day Flowers app:
- World Camera Effect – Uses the outward facing camera to present an immersive app on social media.
- Interactive & Customizable – Gives users creative control within the app, builds to personalized outcomes.
- Multi-scene – Utilizes multiple scenes to organize interaction logic and animation capabilities.
- Shareable – The app has a topical, relatable reason for sharing.
- In Market in One Week – This app took a designer 2 hours to design, test, build and share this Torch AR app as a Facebook Camera Effect.
Help us test the app
We’d love your feedback! Tell about the Mother’s Day Flowers app in the comments below, or share your customized AR bouquets on our Facebook page.
