Hands-On Augmented Reality Development with Meta Spark Studio: A Beginner's Guide

Explore Meta Spark Studio, a program used for augmented reality (AR) effect creation and deployment across multiple social media channels. This beginner’s guide to AR development focuses on practical, project-based learning — no prior coding or design experience is required.

You will start by learning the fundamentals of AR as a whole and become familiar with key terminology and core concepts, building a baseline understanding of the technology overall.

Using that foundational knowledge, you’ll embark on step-by-step tutorials and get hands-on with building AR effects. Projects include selfie effects that react to facial expressions and target tracking effects that respond to images detected in the real-world environment. You’ll also learn how to create an entire AR game, including animations and scoring.

Along the way, you’ll learn techniques for how to customize each one of these projects to fit your own unique vision. Additionally, you’ll become familiar with the ways to publish and share these creations with others.

With access to this technology being available in nearly every smartphone, the world of AR is expanding every day. Now is a great time to tell your creative story through this new medium.

What You Will Learn

• Create a face tracking project that reacts to facial expressions
• Build a target tracking project that responds to images in the real world
• Develop a complete AR game with animations and scoring
• Customize project templates with alternative assets and parameters
• Understand how to package these effects for official publishing through social media platforms

Who This Book Is For

This book is ideal for students, educators, creatives, small-business owners, or anyone else interested in creating immersive AR experiences for social networking platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. No coding or design experience is required.

About the Author

Jaleh Afshar is a designer who has built digital experiences across various industries and platforms, including mobile, web, wearables, voice, and emerging technologies. Currently a Product Design Director at Meta, she has taught courses, led workshops, and published on augmented reality.