Friday 14th July –

Day two of my challenge and I was looking forward to diving back into the Meta Spark software.  Unfortunately as I have so often come to understand, nothing is ever straight forward.  Instead of opening up the software, I was greeted with a message saying that I needed to upgrade.  It took around 10 minutes for the update to complete.  During this time I could feel myself becoming increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with computer software generally.

Luckily, once the update was complete everything still worked and I was able to continue with the online tutorials.  Yesterday I had explored face tracking and today I wanted to explore ‘trackers’.  These are images programmed to be recognised by the software which in turn launch or initiate the desired augmented reality experience.

Of course it couldn’t be ‘plain sailing’ could it?.  The mandatory update which had gone relatively smoothly had now caused subtle changes in the user interface.  This meant that when the online tutor said click this icon, unfortunately said icon wasn’t there. I found this really unhelpful because it was now really difficult to follow along!

However, I persevered and using my new Barcelona Graffiti book as a target I managed to produce the following results.

Image Tracking Using a Template

Below is the result of using a built in template to recognise the image on the back of my book.  This template was a good starting point as it allowed me to add my own image to augment.  It also contained a rotating object which gave a really interesting 3d effect.

Image Tracking by Assigning a Tracker

Below is a video short of an image tracker assigned from scratch.  By understanding the process in full should open up more creative possibilities.  Although the video below possibly isn’t quite as impressive as the animated one above, it was fully created by me.  This means that I can now use imagery from my new graffiti book and let my imagination run riot.  Well at least within the bounds of my current knowledge.

What Did I Learn?

Today I learned how to produce augmented reality experiences in Instagram and Facebook using image trackers.  I learnt how to use both an image tracker template plus how to assign an image tracker from scratch.

What Did I Actually Achieve?

I managed to produce two successful augmented reality experiences in Instagram. Using the back of my new graffiti book as a tracker, I was able to call up an extra layer of reality evidenced by the two videos above.  I’m leaving day two of my challenge feeling optimistic!