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Video Call Participants Patches Overview
Video Call Participants patches let you track all the participants in a video call and retrieve their ID and call activity. They are useful for building group effects for video calling.
You could use these patches, for example, if you’re building an AR game designed for a set number of players and you want your effect to respond in a certain way if one player leaves the game or video call.
If you're familiar with scripting, you can also use the ParticipantsModule API to get this information.
Available Participant Patches
There are four patches you can use to create these kinds of effects: Participant, Participant Finder, Participant Select and Participant ID. You can find them in Spark AR Studio, in the Video Call Participants section of the Patch Menu.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Participant | Use this patch with the Participant Finder and Participant Select patches to output a participant’s ID and status. This could be the participant in the self-view, or other participants on the video call. |
| Participant Finder | Use this patch to find and identify the participants on a video call. Connect it to the Participant Select patch to target a specific participant. |
| Participant Select | Use this patch to select a participant from the other participants in the Participant Finder patch. Connect it to the Participant patch to get the status and ID for the selected participant. |
| Participant ID | Specify the participant you want to select using the unique ID that identifies them in a video calling session. You can retrieve this ID from a script using the |
Example
In the example above, the instructions Tap to Play are displayed on screen when both the participant in the self view and Participant 2 is active in the effect. We used Spark AR Player for Desktop to preview this, to simulate an environment with multiple participants on a call.
We achieved this with the patch graph below:
To find and select the participants we want, we connected:
- The Self output of the Participant Finder to the Participant patch. This finds and stores information on the participant in the self view.
- The Other Effect Participants output of the Participant Finder patch to the Other Call Participants input of Participant Select. This finds and selects between the other participants on the video call who are active in the effect. In the Participant Select patch, we entered 1 in the Index box to select the second person joining the call, excluding the self.
- The Participant output of Participant Select to the bottom Participant patch. This stores the information on the second caller.
To trigger instructions based on which participants are active in the effect, we connected:
- The Active in Same Effect output of the top Participant patch to the First Boolean input of the And patch. This checks if the participant in the self view is active in the effect.
- The Active in Same Effect output of the bottom Participant patch to the Second Boolean input in the And patch. This checks if the second person joining the call is also active in the effect.
- The True output of the And patch to the custom instructions property patch for the Device. If both the self and Participant 2 are found, a true boolean signal is sent to show Tap to play instructions in the effect.