Physics AR Part 2

AR Overview

Inspiration

We were inspired to make this effect because we love physics and wanted to be able to let other people see these physics models in action.

What it does

The Effect displays three physics animations: Trebuchet, Rocket, Free Fall

How we built it

We built our animations in Blender, and then created baked keyframe animations for these blenders.

Challenges we ran into

There were some compatibility issues between our Blender models and when we imported them into Spark AR. In addition, we spent a lot of time whittling down our file size to fit the 4MB limit allowed for Instagram effects.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our physics animations took hours of work to make, from making the 3d model, to animating them realistically, which can prove challenging.

What we learned

We learned that Spark AR is a great tool for making AR effects for both Facebook Camera and Instagram Camera. We also gained experience making 3d models in Blender.

What's next for Physics AR Part 2

We want to be able to expand this into an AR app.

Built With

blender
sparkar

Submitted to

Facebook Hackathon: AR

Created by

While I did not work on making the 3d models for this Effect, I did make the info plaques and graphs, as well as the other 3d models that our team made in our second submission, and I was responsible for the creation of this particular effect in Spark AR. I imported our 3d models into the Spark AR workspace, and I positioned the models, as well as making sure the animations worked properly. I also had to reduce the file size of this effect. Some examples would be the rocket, which was reduced from 20 MB to 1 MB, and the falling anvil, which I reduced from 214 MB to around 300 KB. I also recorded the video.

Michael Li
I created the 3d model for the Free Fall Anvil and Coin. I also did the animations for both of them. I also helped with creating the video demo and voiced it.

Tanush Chopra
I built a working trebuchet which effectively used an arm and weight mechanism to throw a ball on a parabolic curve using the graph editor to represent Newton's Laws of Motion. Additionally, I made a rocket which flew upwards and came back down to model kinematic equations by using the graph editor feature in blender. Throughout this hackathon, I faced a few setbacks including realizing that my Archimedes Principle fluid simulation would not work in Spark AR due to compatibility issues. Another setback I faced was too large file sizes. This forced me to reduce my over 100mb trebuchet and my over 20mb rocket by removing essential components which helped finish the look on the 3D models. I also worked on the submission demo video by helping in writing the script and editing the video.

Mohsin Zaidi