Arthur Bouffard
Arthur Bouffard is a Technical Artist at Snap Inc. in Paris and an Augmented Reality Creative Developer. He creates experiences seen by billions on TikTok, Snap, Unity, and web, where the use of AR blends the real and digital world.
Combining a Telecommunications Engineering Master's at King's College London and a passion for visual arts, he merges art and technology throughout his work.
He has developed AR experiences for Fortune 500 companies including Adidas, the Olympics, Nike, Dior, Tiffany & Co, Samsung, JBL, Snap, LIV Golf, and many others. He also builds thought-provoking and social web experiences such as Fake My Run, featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, and the Daily Mail.
The projects shown on this website were created prior to current employment at Snap Inc. and are presented for portfolio purposes only. Snap Inc. does not endorse, sponsor, or have any affiliation with this website or its content.
Work on this page
Google Geospatial Bowling
Using Google's Geospatial API, the first city scale Augmented Reality bowling experience was created 🎳 All of these clips are real-time videos taken in-app, where the experience combines Physics and Google's Visual Positioning System (VPS). The Geospatial API works in any location covered by Street View, making it available around the world! A lot of moving parts went into making this project, such as using Unity with AR Foundation for AR Core iOS compatibility, Google's Geospatial API, Geospatial Creator, AND StreetScape API.
Wind Turbine Simulator
Exploring the potential of augmented reality as a tool to visualise offshore wind farm data ⚡️ When developing this tool, utility and realistic visual simulation were prioritised as core principles. This enables professionals and regular users alike to experiment and better understand how wind turbines work, what they could look like based on how far they are (distance), how tall they are based on the foundation type and power they produce, how big the farm is, and most importantly, how weather conditions could affect not only how they look but how they perform (wind, sun, temperature, rain).
Gravity Hands
Controlling gravity with your hands is possible with augmented reality. This experience allows spawning holograms and controlling their movements with gestures ✋ All in real-time using Lens Studio. Different hand gestures enable and remove gravity, and can even add sideways forces to the holograms.
HoloLens 2 - KCL
Mixed reality application developed for King's College London using Microsoft HoloLens 2. Demonstrates advanced spatial computing for educational purposes.
City Scale Physics
Experiencing real-time physics on a city scale is mind-blowing 🤯 This augmented reality experience allows objects to collide with your city environment. A smartphone is the only device needed. To create this, Snap Inc.'s City Scale tracking was combined with their Physics engine. Colliders were applied to the City Mesh, allowing objects to interact with your greater surroundings. The resulting experience is visually accurate & fun, with an unlimited amount of possibilities.
"Doomed" Viral TikTok
Viral AR filter featuring a dramatic red sun effect that went viral on TikTok. This dystopian atmosphere effect captured millions of views with its striking visual impact.
Temporal Portal
Yes, this is a Snapchat filter. Yes, it's less than 8 MB and running on an iPhone. This AR effect was created to experiment with drawing Cartesian equations in a 3D environment with a (GLSL) particle system. The initial curve is based on the Fibonacci Spiral (golden ratio) equations for x and y, with an added depth axis. With some distortion and glow, this portal Lens was born! (With inspiration from Loki's TVA portal 🤓)
Furniture Portal
Augmented Reality today can reach post-production level visuals 🎥 At GoSpooky, this portal experience was built where household items are duplicated with real-time physics. The result: an interactive effect where hand & foot are used to open a portal & move objects, all built on Lens Studio. Adding a layer of VFX, shadows, and realistic materials ties the experience together.
Louis Vuitton Demo
Luxury brand AR experience created for Louis Vuitton. High-end product visualization and interactive brand storytelling in augmented reality.
Piaget Emperador AR
This is the world's first Augmented (Reality) vintage watch ✨ This 1970s Piaget Emperador received a 21st-century upgrade, adding a magical digital layer to its dial. Inspired by the galaxy-looking patina, an AR universe was created that grows from the watch and surrounds you in a cloud of stars. With the fast-paced advancements in AR glasses, augmenting physical objects might become a more common occurrence. This AR effect was created with Lens Studio tech. With image tracking, the unique galaxy dial pattern is identified and tracked, making the experience proprietary to this watch.
Fitness Tracker Spectacles
Fitness tracking application for Snap Spectacles. Real-time workout metrics and performance visualization overlaid on your world.
Hand Petals VFX
Nothing feels more spectacular than VFX in Augmented Reality ✨ This real-time experience works straight from your phone! Using Snap Inc.'s hand tracking, gesture detection & VFX engine, a "flower petal" controller was built at GoSpooky. To make this effect work, multiple forces are activated to create a controlled flow of particles in any 3D space. Different hand gestures control various forces which changes the visual spread of the petals.
Desk Mover
Rearranging a desk using augmented reality 🪑 This video is in real-time and built on Snap Inc. Controlling gravity has never been this easy! This experience uses a combination of hand tracking, VFX, gesture detection, world meshing, and physics.
Hand Fire VFX
Made this fire beam VFX in AR, all controllable from the palm of your hand. It was created to feel immersive and powerful to experience in real-time, with haze and 3D hand occlusion. Multiple forces are activated to create this effect, and thousands of particles are being spawned every second.
Quest 3 Snowball
The Quest 3's world meshing doesn't get talked about enough 🗣️ To demonstrate its accuracy, a Mixed Reality snowball (throwing) experience was built at GoSpooky! The world meshing creates a detailed map of your surroundings, which acts as a physics collider and occluder. Using its LiDAR sensors, the Meta Quest 3 can map and track your environment with impressive accuracy. Scanning your room can work from up to 4 meters away, and the precision of the mesh is in the 5-15 cm margin, depending on the present objects. This experience, developed on Unity, utilises physics, 3D particle systems, VFX smoke and world meshing. Eren Önem developed the amazing snowball explosion visuals and physics!
Vision Pro Meshing
Meshing your surroundings on the Apple Vision Pro is incredible 🤯 This quick experiment did not disappoint: The scanning speed/range, the tracking stability, the segmentation of people (not including them in the mesh), and the amount of information the Vision Pro can handle simultaneously is really impressive. The LiDAR sensors combined with the computing power of the device allow for keeping track of very large areas in unprecedented ways.
3D Particles Demo
This fun experiment tests 3D particle systems in Lens Studio 5.0 ❄️ This real-time experience allows you to draw with particles, using a bottle as a magical wand. The bottle label is being tracked, enabling this experience to work on any product! A smartphone can impressively handle around 25,000+ simultaneous 3D particles at 30+ FPS.
Hero Lens Andrea
Augment your outfit? Yes, that's a thing 💎 For the last 6 months, augmented reality experiences have been developed with the team at ARNTREAL, creating digital skins for their new clothing collections. The concept is awesome: Each clothing item is tied to a user (via an NFC tag). Each user can level up their account to unlock new AR skins. To try them, just point your phone at your clothes, and your AR skin is instantly visible! The result: 50+ million views, thousands of sales, hundreds of thousands of AR skins tried.
London AR Touring
Experimenting with Snap Inc.´s City Landmarker feature is mind-blowing 🤯 Pointing your phone at any street and it knowing where you are & the depth of every building around opens up endless possibilities. This is a huge step in developing outdoor environmently-aware AR experiences! The 3D mesh seems to come from satellite data, so this will definitely be coming to other regions (only available in London at the moment).
Fake My Run
Viral project that went international, featured on major news outlets including WGN TV and The New York Times. A satirical take on fitness tracking apps that sparked conversations about digital authenticity.
AI Shoe Try-On
A photo-realistic AR try-on experience created in less than 1 hour using AI & ML. This process can make the digitalisation of physical products much easier, allowing for the creation of entire AR catalogues 👟 Luma AI was used to make a photorealistic NeRF capture, brought into Blender for cleanup, then Lens Studio by Snap Inc. foot tracking ML template was applied. Camera Kit could then allow implementing this into a standalone shopping app 🛍️
Solar Panels Calc
Ever wondered how many solar panels would make your home energy-independent? 🌞 With this augmented reality tool, you can now scan any surface and find out how many real panels you can place, how many kWh they will generate, and how many you need to become self-sufficient. On a technical level, the lens uses LiDAR to accurately estimate surface areas and generate a 3D map of an environment. A classification ML model determines what surface is the ground, and Raycasting is used to avoid placing solar panels near unexpected obstacles.
AR Frame Data
Real-time AR frame data visualization. Technical demonstration of AR tracking performance and spatial data in live environments.
Disco Ball Physics
This footage is purely AR. This experience allows spawning and hitting glowing orbs with your hands using real-time physics 🤚 Using a LiDAR world mesh, the holograms can bounce off the walls and floor! The kind of fidelity seen in the clip is possible due to Snap Inc.'s latest update, which allows for live world meshes with physics. Foot tracking even allows for kicking the balls 👟🪩 The world mesh is captured directly within the experience with no need of pre-scanning!
Casio VL-1 AR
Virtual recreation of the classic Casio VL-1 synthesizer in AR. Play the iconic 1980s keyboard with authentic sound and interactive keys.
City Scale Trees
Large-scale urban forestry visualization. Plant and visualize thousands of trees across cityscapes to demonstrate environmental impact.
London Tube Map
Interactive AR London Underground map triggered by Oyster card. Navigate the tube system with real-time route planning in augmented reality.
"Favs" Viral TikTok
Another viral TikTok filter that captured millions of views. Simple but effective AR concept that resonated with audiences worldwide.
Audio Reactive
Custom shader that responds to audio input in real-time. Visual effects that pulse and morph based on sound frequency and amplitude.
Plant AI Copy
An AR copy of this plant was created, can you tell which is which? The use of AI for capture processing makes it more convincing. In a digital future, being able to copy existing three-dimensional objects is becoming increasingly important. With NeRFs (AI), being able to capture reflections and textures of objects adds a layer of realism to these captures. Luma AI was used for the NeRF capture, Blender for animations and mesh cleaning, and Lens Studio as the AR platform with Remote Assets for maximum resolution.
LiDAR Sticky-note
Virtual sticky notes anchored to real surfaces using LiDAR scanning. Leave AR notes that persist on walls, desks, and any surface.
Lightning Hands
An AR lightning system was developed that uses raycasting to zap your surroundings ⚡️ This real-time experience powered by Lens Studio detects where you are looking, interprets hand gestures, and maps world surfaces around you (LiDAR generated) ⚙️ To create this effect, a combination of scripting and particle systems push glow particles on a random path in the direction of the target. As a research project at GoSpooky this lightning component can be transferred to any new project due to its simple structure.
Mattercraft Book
The feature parity gap between app and Web AR is only getting smaller 🙂↕️ You now have real-time physics, particle systems, world tracking, image marker tracking, + much more, happening all inside your smartphone's web browser. No need to download any apps! Zappar shared their new 3D web tool, Mattercraft. To test how far a mobile web browser could be pushed, this bookshelf physics experience was developed. The result: 40-50 simulated 3D objects with real-time physics, 100's of particles, and world tracking – all happening simultaneously.
Hand & Ball Demo
Physics-based interaction between hands and virtual ball. Realistic collision detection and bouncing mechanics in AR.
Shader Spark SL
Custom shader library for Spark AR Studio. Collection of visual effects and shader techniques for social AR filters.