OVERFLOWING IDEAS
SNAP PARTNER SUMMIT 2023Way back in 2020, Snap decided to make a physical sculpture out of my Lens “Good Mornin’ Coffee” for the floor at SPS 2020. Unfortunately the in-person event was cancelled due to the pandemic, and with more important things to worry about, I assumed the sculpture was never made.
But I was so wrong. Now as Snap prepared for the first in-person Summit since 2019, they revealed to me that the coffee sculpture has been ready to go for years. In that time, Snap has developed a ton of new technology, including custom landmarker lenses. We realized the sculpture would be a perfect test for custom landmarkers, and the coffee cup would finally get the spotlight.
Technical Difficulties:
With 3D marker tracking, lighting was extremely important. I developed this without ever setting foot in front of the statue until it was revealed. The day before the big event we discovered that the reflectiveness of the coffee cup and changing lighting conditions would throw off the tracking. A last minute adjustment was made with the help of some Snap engineers and I created 3 different versions of the lens for morning, noon, and afternoon light and deployed them throughout the day.
PROCEDURAL SHADERSThe main challenge to this project was mapping a procedural shader on top of the existing statue. Using the 3D scan straight from the statue, I modeled some geometry to sit on top, and created a very large shader graph to handle 4 different materials scrolling during a choreographed animation.