Facebook Global Hackathon Picks Winning Spark AR Effects

Facebook recently concluded its second global hackathon and announced the winning submissions across several categories, including the top three picks in the augmented reality group. This latest event in the year-long series invited Spark AR creators to build World AR experiences that help enrich communities or otherwise support a social good.

Over 175 submissions were received, from creators in Taipei to Oslo. Our congrats to the three winners who took home a cash prize and a new Oculus VR headset. Here’s a little more information on each of the winning submissions:

First Place

Little Foodies by @newyellow
Taipei, Taiwan

Using a plane tracker, a custom 3D model and a combination of patches, blocks and scripts for animation, audio and text, creator Hsing Huang grabbed first place with Little Foodies. The effect lets you pick a 3D character, adjust its pose, emotion, and speech bubble, and then place it on any surface in your scene.

“With Little Foodie, you can express how much you love (or hate) your food!“

Give it a try on Instagram today and let the world know what you really think of your next lunchtime order.

Little Foodies AR effect demo video

Second Place

BlowBubbles by @datasapiens.life
Oslo, Norway

This playful effect uses a plane tracker with a particle system emitter and some beautifully designed texture and material fifles, to create soap bubbles. The creative team at Data Sapiens also used Spark AR Studio’s new audio responsive capabilities to help trigger the experience when a user blows into the mobile microphone. You can learn more about how the team created this effect, and some of the challenges they encountered on their project submission page .

“We learned a lot about world space in Spark AR, and how to make AR experiences more physical.“

BlowBubbles is available on Instagram now, go give it a try!

BlowBubbles AR effect demo video

Third Place

Pirate Dash 360 by Vincent Tok, Yan Kai Ong, Rui Qin Ng, Gabriel Koh
Singapore, Republic of Singapore

The team behind Pirate Dash 360 created a truly immersive world AR game using Patch Editor, several 3D objects, plus a few custom scripts to control the placement of the game tiles, as well as the animations and user interactions. The end result is a fun, puzzle game that challenges your memory and your problem solving skills with multiple challenges.

“It’s been an incredible journey, we created a fully functional AR game!“

Learn more about Pirate Dash 360 , and watch for updates to come from the creators soon.

Pirate Dash 360 AR game demo video

Congratulations again to all of these creators and a big thank you to everyone who participated. You can learn more about future online hackathons and challenges by joining the Facebook Online Hackathons group, or by subscribing to the Spark AR newsletter.

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