Face Tracking

• Augmented Reality
• Face Tracking
• Mattercraft
• Tracking
• Tracking Types

Face Tracking can detect and track digital content to the user's face. This is great for building face-filter experiences which allow users to try on different virtual glasses or hats for example.

Creating a Face Tracking experience

To create a Face Tracking experience, you may customize a ready-made Project Template or add a Face Tracker component to an existing project.

Customizing a template

When you open Mattercraft, you will be presented with a few Project Templates to help you get started.

AR Face Tracking Project Template

Upon selecting a Face Tracking template, your .zcomp will display a project which includes a head mesh in the Viewport to indicate where to place your content; as well as some simple content and basic behaviors.

The template may also include a Head Mask Mesh, which will automatically hide content inside the head. This is used to mask 3D objects positioned behind the head, for example in the case of hats or helmets.

You may customize any Mattercraft template like an ordinary Mattercraft project.

To learn more about getting started with Mattercraft’s templates, check out our dedicated Project Templates documentation.

Adding to an existing project

To add Face Tracking to an existing project, you will first need to follow the instructions on our dedicated Zappar Camera article if you have not already.

After following the pre-requisites, you can then add a FaceTracker component to your .zcomp. To do this:

1. Click on the + (plus) icon in the Hierarchy (or right click on a Group Node)
2. Find the AR component category and from here, select FaceTracker

The AR component category and Face Tracking option

FaceTracker properties

The FaceTracker has the following specific property:

Note that setting a value of two (2) or more faces may impact the performance and frame rate of the experience. We recommend sticking with the default value of one, unless your use case requires tracking multiple faces.

Face Anchor Group

Each FaceTracker has an Anchor Group for faces detected and tracked in the camera view.

Anchor Group in the Hierarchy and .zcomp Scene

By default, a maximum of one (1) face is tracked at a time, however, you can change this by heading into the Node Properties Panel for the FaceTracker and updating the Max Faces parameter.

For example, you could then add another Anchor Group and set an individual Anchor ID if you wanted different content to appear on each Anchor Group.

The Anchor Group has the following specific properties:

Tracking content to a face

When your FaceTracker is in your Hierarchy and has an Anchor Group, you can start adding tracked content by placing components inside of the Anchor Group, or any Face Landmarks.

Components inside the FaceTracker Anchor Group will track to the source image

After understanding the basics of Face Tracking, you can learn more about this tracking type by exploring the following articles:

• Face Mesh
• Face Landmarks
• Face Tracking Events
• Face Tracking best practices