Meta Spark

Building Interactive Effects With Scripts

Learn how to use scripts to create more immersive effects

By: Kavin Kumar
June 28, 2023
Meta Spark

Building Interactive Effects With Scripts

Learn how to use scripts to create more immersive effects

By: Kavin Kumar
June 28, 2023

Scripting AR is a new video series where we invite Meta Spark experts from all over the world to demonstrate and discuss how they’re using JavaScript in their AR projects. As part of this series, we’ve asked each expert to contribute a short post highlighting just a few of the tips shared during their interview. Be sure to watch the full-length video below to learn more. Today’s contributor is Kavin Kumar (@rbkavin)

Hey everyone, I’m Kavin, Co-Founder of Oraar Studio, an XR studio based in London, and I’m thrilled to share my interview today as part of the Scripting AR series. In this episode, we’re talking about how to write simple scripts that will help you add interactivity to your effects, to help them look and feel more immersive.

And to help demonstrate this point, I’m sharing three different AR projects today, including Fire Portal, Fruit Mania, and Safari Ride, each of which uses scripts to add interactivity, which I think helps elevate the overall AR experience. Watch the full episode now, and see my three tips after to help you get started with scripting your own AR projects.

EPISODE 5

Building Interactive Effects Using Scripting

with Kavin Kumar

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I thought it might be helpful to summarize just a few of the tips and suggestions shared in this discussion, especially for those of you who may be new to scripting.

TIP ONE

Multiple paths can lead to the same solution

There’s almost always more than one way to solve a problem with scripting, so keep in mind it’s okay if your code looks different than another developer’s. Part of the fun of learning scripting is to see how other people solve problems. This will help you figure out which approach you like, and how you might do things differently on future projects.

TIP TWO

Build your foundation first

As you write more scripts, you may start using snippets of code from other projects, sometimes from other developers too. This is a helpful way to work faster, but try to avoid the temptation to take too many shortcuts until you have a good understanding of how scripting works in Meta Spark Studio. A little upfront investment in self-paced learning will go a long, long way to helping you work faster and more confidently in the future.

TIP THREE

Don’t worry, coding is not math

One of the biggest blockers I often hear from other creators is that they think scripting is math, or that it’s otherwise too complicated of a thing to learn. It’s not! If you’re just focusing on adding simple logic and rules to your effects, this often doesn’t require any math or hard calculations. Of course, as you start scripting more advanced effects, math becomes more of a factor, but even then there are a lot of helpful tools, calculators, and the like, freely available online to help you. Don’t let this stop you from giving scripting a try!

In addition to these beginner tips, I recommend watching the first episode of Scripting AR, which provides a great overview of the scripting capabilities in Meta Spark Studio, as well as how to use the library of documentation and tutorials available.

I hope you find this interview helpful, you can follow more of my work on Instagram @rbkavin, and find more of my AR tutorials on YouTube too. And if you haven’t already, I also encourage you to join the Meta Spark Community where many other talented creators and developers regularly talk about their AR work!

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