6 videos to kickstart your career as an AR creator
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First the obsession hits when you try AR for yourself; next, you’re waking up in the middle of the night to jot down another idea you just had for how to create an augmented reality app. The rest, as they say, is history (well, the future, really). You’re an AR creator.
Whether you’re just starting out or have built something already – if you’re looking to start your career as an AR Creator or AR Developer, check out our top pick of videos from around the web that we wish we watched when we first started…
1. Snap Lens Studio
One of the most likely first introductions to AR for many
They have easy-to-use templates for face and world lenses, there’s already a great community of creators from all over the world on there and they’re completely free. So, if you can’t quite afford to splash out on Adobe’s Project Aero, it’s the best
2. Spark AR Studio tutorial – Face Masking
This video offers a great introduction to the basic tools needed to create face filter experiences in Facebook’s AR Studio software (now called Spark AR).
3. Sarah Downey – The massive list of AR use cases
Speaking at the ‘AR in Action’ Conference, Sarah Downey takes us through a massive list of use cases for AR in a variety of different fields. Sarah successfully communicates the undeniable potential of AR, past what many understand it as; from facial recognition and detection to custom workouts synced to your heart rate.
For you, this video is a great starting point for ideas. Sarah identifies challenges within each field and tells the audience how AR can solve that and you can do the same. Challenge: Take on of Sarah’s use cases as a brief and use them to learn how to create an augmented reality app
4. Meet Project Aero
It wasn’t going to take long before Adobe developed something incredible for AR Creators and here it is. Project Aero is – in Adobe’s words – “A new augmented reality authoring tool and multi-platform system that will enable creatives to design immersive content that blurs the lines between the physical and digital worlds”. It’s not yet available to everyone (only a few AR studios around the world) but you can sign up for early access on the Aero website.
The video is part-launch, part-invitation to their exhibition ‘Festival of the Impossible’ which took place in San Francisco last year. Alone, the video isn’t going to teach you much, but it’s bound to get you excited about making ideas of yours come to life.
5. Creating great AR experiences
Speaking at Apple’s WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), Grant Paul from the Human Interface team and Omar Khan from Product Development at Apple, give an in-depth insight into how to create an augmented reality app or an AR experience that are realistic, highly immersive and incredibly engaging for the user. They also touch on making your AR content look great, and teaching users how to interact and engage with both the digital and real-life elements of the AR experience.
Of course, a lot of this is quite ARKit heavy (and at 1hr 2 minutes and 37 seconds, is quite a long watch) – but there are lots of great principles in there that can apply to any AR Creator, regardless of their level.
6. Prototyping for AR
“We’re going to look at a few techniques that we use, which will hopefully help you in two ways: First, they’re going to hopefully help to make AR more approachable and second, we’re going to show you how to save time and money by making sure you build the right things before you write a single line of code”
We were sold on this video from that sentence alone. At last year’s WWDC, Praveen Sharma – Human Interface Designer at Apple – gives solid, actionable advice to make creating your first, or second or fifteenth project less daunting. Hoping to save you time and money to just go for it!
Ready to start your career as an AR creator? We put you in touch with huge brands and awesome opportunities to monetise your skills and build your portfolio.
