SparkAR Certification Cheat Sheet

Hey there!
I've just passed the Meta's SparkAR Certification exam and want to share with you the most important points I've noticed while studying and taking the test.

Disclaimer: while this is a cheat sheet, you shouldn't be cheating on this test! Use it for study purposes only.

🎨 Design Best Practices

Focus on a solid use case: focus on a specific goal or task
Make it social: Consider multiple faces support
Design for different device types: test on multiple mobile devices
Design for repeat use: make effects flexible
Keep it simple: clear instructions, one or two main interactions
Add to the camera experience: keep things recognizable
Avoid the edges of the screen: they can be obscured by UI
Amount of effort: make main features happen as soon as possible
Keep interactions obvious: e.g., pinching changes objects size
Avoid system-level command gestures:
• Switch camera view - double tap.
• Camera zoom - pinch in/out (except when resizing
stickers or 3D objects).
• Video zoom - touch and hold camera capture
button then drag up.
• Return to Facebook News Feed - swipe left.
Be mindful of accessibility concerns: no flashing lights

🧊 Assets

2D: png, jpeg, svg
3D: fbx, glTF, collada/dae, obj, dae
Audio: Mono M4A, AAC codec (44.1Khz), 16-bit
Fonts: TrueType/OpenType

🔁 The Patch Editor

Data Types

Boolean Signal: true/false. (eg. Mouth Open port: open/closed)
Scalar: one-dimensional value. (eg. Mouth Openness port: half = 0.5)
Pulse: event that happens at some point in time
3D Point: three-dimensional signal (rotation, scale or position)
2D Point: two-dimensional signal (rotation, scale or position)
Color: RGBA channels. It's indicated by a square with a color
Progress: scalar signal w/ 0-1 range. (e.g.: Animation patch)
Vector2: for 2D points and 2D texture coordinates
Vector3: for 3D points, 3D normals and 3-channel (RGB) color.
Vector4: for 4D position and 4-channel (RGBA) color
MatrixN: for rotation or affine transformations
Texture 2D: typically represents an image and can have 1 to 4 channels.

Some patches can switch their data types to accommodate a creator's needs, as in the case of the 'Value Patch' that can be used as a color or a number

Main Patches

Shader Render Pass: frame delays, glows, blur
Audio Playback Controller: controls audio clips
Animation: play animation once
Loop Animation: play animation in a loop
Frame Transition: control frames in an animation sequence
Screen Tap: make something happen when the screen is tapped
Object Tap: make something happen when someone taps a specific object
Screen Pan: detects a swipe of the finger across the device screen (use it with Divide patch)
Screen Pinch: use to change scales
Screen Rotate: use to rotate an object
Gallery Picker: user can add an image as texture from the gallery
Picker UI: pick up to 10 options
Slider UI: change a value with a slider (not visible on the simulator)
Global Transform: relative to the scene
Local Transform: relative to its parent object

Patch Editor Tips and Tricks

Use a nullObject0 as a container to avoid changing the properties of an object
Create a fade transition with the Mix Patch
Both Multiply Patch and Negate Patch can be used to invert values
An AND Patch can be used as a data passthrough (stoping it or continuing)

👕 Materials

Standard

The standard material adds realistic depth to 3D objects using a lighting system called the Phong model.

Diffuse: define the base color and pattern
Specular: shininess
Normal: realistic textures (bumps, grooves,...)
Emission: illuminate from itself
Alpha: mask the alpha channel
Tile: scale textures
Offset: shift the texture origin
Render Options: how the material renders
Used By: the object this material is applied to

Flat

Flat materials don't respond to lighting and display color and texture values absolutely

Diffuse: add a color from the palette to your material
Environment: check this box to add an environment texture to your material.

Blended

The blended material includes a blending mode to mix textures and colors.

Texture: texture file
Color: from the palette
Blend Mode: Normal/Add/Multiply
Opacity: transparency
Double-sided: both sides of a face normal
Cull Mode: front / back (back improves performance)

Physically–Based Material (PBR)

Used to create realistic-looking objects
in Spark AR Studio. The different properties in this material allow you to add surface roughness, metallic effects, and lighting that mimics real-world light.

Needs:

A base texture: base with color and details
An ORM texture: roughness, metallic details and occlusion strength
A Difussion map: for the pattern
A Specular map: for shininess
A Normal map: for realistic textures (bumps, grooves,...)

Face Paint

It is used to create a mask effect that shows the skin and features of the person using the effect, either behind a custom texture or a color.

🔥 Blend Modes

Subtract: subtracts pixel values of the source from the destination. In the case of negative values, black is displayed.
Replace: the non-transparent pixels of the source replaces the corresponding pixels of the destination.
Alpha: linear interpolation between the pixels of the source and destination as specified by the alpha values of the source.
Associate_Alpha: same as alpha blend mode, but for source with RGB channels of each pixel premultiplied by its alpha.
Add: adds pixel values of the source to the destination.
Multiply: multiplies the RGB channels of each pixel from the source with the values of the corresponding pixel from the destination.
Screen: values of each pixel in the source and destination are inverted, multiplied, and then inverted again

✨ Textures

A texture is an image file used to help define the appearance of an object in your scene.

Lighting

To optimize realistic lighting:

Bake lighting directly into 3D objects used for decoration in face effects to hint at highlights and shadows.
Bake lighting into static (non-moving) objects such as furniture and accessories for a more realistic effect.
Use a soft light setup without strong highlights or shadows. Baked lighting works best in environments where the light, intensity, and color don't change throughout the effect.
Use MatCap (material capture) reflection environment textures with flat shaders.

Things to consider

Only PNG and JPG files
Use JPG when transparency is not needed
Up to 1024 x 1024 pixels in size
Merge material as much as possible
For repeating patterns, use a lower resolution image and apply visual shaders with texture tiling

🎾 Shaders

A shader is a set of algorithms that determines the appearance of a 3D object's surface. Shaders are particularly useful for applying complex changes to the material.

Visual Shader Patches

Consumer Patch: property of a material (position, scale, ...)
Texture Asset: applies a texture to the material
Blend: blend two colors or textures
Color Space: outputs a texture's RGB, HSV and HSL color values. (useful for isolating colors)
Composition: outputs two combined functions as a data stream
Fallback: fallback value when you disconnect the main value.
Fragment Stage: processes each fragment instead of at the vertices
Function: identity function, outputs the its argument
Gradient: creates a grayscale gradient (use w/ Mix to create a color gradient)
Gradient Step: defines each color to be used in a color gradient
Reder Target Size: useful to get the exact pixel size, like when pixel blurring
Shader Derivative: captures standard derivatives
Texture Sampler: samples a texture at the specified coordinates
Texture Transform: scale, rotate, pivot and reposition a 2D texture on a 2D or 3D object
Vertex Attribute: provides the value of the selected vertex attribute among a selection of parameters
Vertex Transform: provides a vertex transformation matrix from a dropdown

📹 Camera

It represents the camera in the device showing your effect
It can't be removed from a project
Children objects move with the camera

Properties

Transformations: Position, Scale and Rotation can't be edited
Texture Extraction: when extracted, it appears in the Assets panel as cameraTexture0
Segmentation: separates part of the scene

👤 Segmentation

See more here

Types

Person Segmentation
Hair Segmentation
Skin Segmentation

Optimization

From the chest upwards on immediate foreground
Balanced lighting settings
Only works on newer devices (iPhone 6S+, Galaxy S6+, ...)
Avoid Face Tracker when using segmentation

🎵 Audio and Music

Instagram Music is not supported globally (use trimmed audio files instead)

🔎 Trackers

Face Tracker

Multiple face trackers impact on performance
Can be used with Face Landmark patches

Target Tracker

It is made of two textures:

A semi-transparent preview of the target image
A texture provided by Spark AR Studio that looks like a frame.

A good target has/is:

High contrast (avoid pastel colors)
High Resolution (> 300x300 pixels)
Sharp (no soft edges and gradients)
Asymmetrical
Complex
Flat (no curved surfaces)
Clear
No blank space (around the actual image

Plane Tracker

Only visible through the back camera
Make sure to add instructions

🔧 Techniques

Occlusion

It is used to make something appear behind another thing.

For example, for a ball orbiting a head effect, you would do the following:

Download Face References assets
Add Asset > Import From Library > headOccluder.dae
Move it into faceTracker0 object
Scale it to match the head
Reduce its material opacity and change Blend Mode to Alpha to see it through
Add a new layer
Select the headOccluder object and change its layer to the new one
Change the order of the layers
Change the opacity to zero
Add a face mash to the face tracker
Set it to the same layer as the occluder
Uncheck eyes and mouth
Set its material to the same one used in the headOccluder
See more details here

Custom animation transitions

Add an Animation Patch
Add a Keyframe Patch and attach it the Animation Patch
Open the Keyframe Patch and change its keyframes
Connect the Animation Patch with its trigger (eg. Mouth Open)
Connect the Keyframe Patch with the property you want to change (eg. Scale)

Zoom Effect

Extract the Camera Texture and use it in the Patch Editor
Create a rectangle canvas and it's Material in the Patch Editor
Connect the Texture RGBA output to a Texture Transform Patch
Connect the Texture Transform Patch output to the material patch
Add a Face Tracker and move it to the Patch Editor
Connect it to a Mouth Open => Add => 2D Transform Pack patch
Connect the 2D Transform Pack output to the Texture Transform Patch
See more on this tutorial

📱 Platforms and Capabilities

Facebook

Can't use Gallery Picker / Media Library Component

📜 Scripting

Persistence module is used as data storage
Diagnostics is used for console logging (log() and watch())
To monitor a signal, a subscribe() from a .getPulse() is used
Reactive Programming helps with performance and treats values as signals
Use val() from ReactiveModule to explicitly convert data to a signal
To retrieve the value of a signal use pinLastValue()
To use math operators on signals, use methods from ReactiveModule and ScalarSignal

Patch Editor Type <-> Script Type

Boolean <-> Boolean
Number <-> Scalar
Pulse <-> EventSource
Text <-> String
Vector2 <-> PixelPointSignal
Vector3 <-> VectorSignal or PointSignal
Vector4 <-> RgbaSignal

☁️ Publishing

Platform Requirements: 4MB Insta / 10MB face / 5MB face ads
View Assets Summary > File size breakdown for optimization
Unique name up to 20 characters
Squared icon in jpeg format and at least 200 x 200 pixels
Up to 5 business days for review and acceptance
Effects are supported for six months after release
Demo video should be recorded using Face/Insta/SparkAR app

🚨 Policies

General user base is age 13 and above
Must not be shocking, sensational, disrespectful or excessively violent
Must not promote illegal, inappropriate or unsafe stuff
Must not promote any legal or illegal drugs
Must not be of an adult or sexual nature
Must not discriminate against people
Must not promote cosmetic procedures

📁 Project Files

.arproj: editor file
.arexport: the effect to be published on SparkAR Hub (< 40MB)
.arprojpkg: a bundle meant to be shared between creators (most complete)
.arp: a patch asset file

📚 Layers and Render Options

Layer in the bottom is rendered first
Transparent objects rendered first might occlude other objects
Use Write to Depth Buffer to always draw objects over other objects unless they also have this option enabled.
You can use layers to change how lights affect objects

⚙️ Optimization

No more than 50 objects in a scene
Max 20k vertices per object
Max 50k triangle count per object
Max 150k triangle count for all objects
Heigh between 1cm and 5m
Remove any capabilities that aren't used in a project
Use the least number of bones when modeling 3D objects
Make textures as small as you can
Textures must be up to 1024x1024
Textures must be squared and sized the power of 2 (2x2, 4x4,...)
Avoid 24 or 30 FPS sequences
Remove the ambient light that is auto-included in a project
Group patches
Avoid using subscription, constants and callbacks when scripting
Compress files

Mark Kop @heymarkkop