AR R&D | 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
Wind Turbines Farm
2024
I've been exploring the potential of augmented reality as a tool to visualise offshore wind farm data ⚡️ When developing this tool, we decided to prioritise utility and realistic visual simulation as core principles. We wanted to enable 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).
Solar Panels Calculator
2024
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.
City Scale Collider Physics
2024
Experiencing real-time physics on a city scale blew my mind 🤯 I built this augmented reality experience where objects can collide with your city environment. A smartphone is the only device needed. To create this, I used Snap Inc.'s City Scale tracking and combined it with their Physics engine. I found a way to apply colliders 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.
Vision Pro Meshing
2024
Meshing your surroundings on the Apple Vision Pro is incredible 🤯 I developed this quick experiment and was not disappointed: 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 a way I hadn't seen before.
Meta Quest 3 World Meshing
2024
The Quest 3's world meshing doesn't get talked about enough 🗣️ To demonstrate its accuracy, at GoSpooky we built a Mixed Reality snowball (throwing) experience! 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, using particle systems and VFX to make the app less CPU-intensive! With the radical improvements made to passthrough technology, mixed reality feels more anchored and real than ever.
Disco Ball Physics
2024
This footage is purely AR. I built this experience where you can spawn and hit 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 👟🪩
Hand Controlled Fire VFX
2024
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.
Disco Ball Physics
2024
This footage is purely AR. This experience allows users to spawn and hit glowing orbs with their 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. Trying such an experience on an AR headset would be incredible.
Gravity Cube Hand Controller
2024
Controlling gravity with your hands is possible with augmented reality. I made an experience where you can spawn holograms and control 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.
City Scale AR Tutorials
2024
Made two tutorials on City Scale AR for Snap Inc. explaining how to make these world-scale experiences, one of which using physics📍
The first tutorial goes into the basics of City Scale experiences, highlighting how to place content around a city based on a digital map. The city mesh here is used to occlude digital content.
The second dives into using real-time physics collisions on a world scale with the city mesh, recreating a viral effect built a few months ago.
Hoping the knowledge can be useful to someone!
Watch them here:
https://youtu.be/LwxksW0NzfA
https://youtu.be/_zMdqjTF0a4
Louis Vuitton Demo
2024
Louis Vuitton AR demo experience
Cartier Prototype
2024
Cartier AR prototype experience
London VPS Shard
2024
Experimenting with Snap Inc.´s City Landmarker feature blew my mind 🤯 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).
Temporal Portal
2024
Yes, this is a Snapchat filter. Yes, it's less than 8 MB and running on an iPhone. I initially created this AR effect to experiment with drawing Cartesian equations in a 3D environment with a (GLSL) particle system. I based the initial curve on the Fibonacci Spiral (golden ratio) equations for x and y, and then gave the function a depth axis. Then added some distortion, glow, and ended up making this portal Lens! (With inspiration from Loki's TVA portal 🤓)
Furniture Portal
2024
Augmented Reality today can reach post-production level visuals 🎥 At GoSpooky, I built this portal experience 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.
Plant NeRF AI AR
2024
I made an AR copy of this plant, 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. I used Luma AI for the NeRF capture, Blender for animations and mesh cleaning, and Lens Studio as the AR platform with Remote Assets for maximum resolution.
3D Particles Coca Cola
2024
Created this fun experiment to test 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! My phone impressively could handle around 25,000+ simultaneous 3D particles at 30+ FPS.
Lightning Hand
2023
Developed an AR lightning system 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) ⚙️ As a research project at GoSpooky this lightning component can be transferred to any new project due to its simple structure.
Hand Petal VFX
2023
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, we built at GoSpooky a "flower petal" controller. 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.
Bodybreaking Lens Effect
2023
Bodybreaking lens AR effect
Audio Reactive Shader
2023
Audio reactive shader Spark AR
Kings College HoloLens 2
2023
HoloLens 2 augmented reality project at King's College London
Casio VL-1 Emulator
2023
Working emulator of the Casio VL-1 synthesizer