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[Feedback] What can we do to improve our Camera Kit documentation for you? (Q223)

stevenxu
stevenxu Posts: 612 👻
edited July 2023 in General #1

Hey Camera Kit developers - starting this thread as of 03/21/23 to collect your feedback on ideas or suggestions to improve the current state of our documentation here: https://docs.snap.com/camera-kit/home

Prompts you can use:

  • What's missing?
  • What needs better explanation?
  • What needs more examples?
  • How's the structure of the docs?
  • What tutorials do you want/need?
Tagged:

Comments

  • Mahendra
    Mahendra Posts: 2
    #2

    What's missing?
    React-Native support.

  • Pico Alta
    Pico Alta Posts: 22 🔥
    #3

    Firstly, on the positive side:

    • The quality and the reliability of all the lenses is amazing!
    • Creating and submiting lenses through lens studio is intuitive
    • The example repository that almost works completely out of the box has been very helpful
    • The example repository containing various examples such as the custom carousel example has been helpful. I worked on the iOS part so far, and not being an iOS developer, the examples and the differences between them helped me setup the project properly.

    Coming from a Unity 3D C# background, what I mostly missed was:

    • Video tutorials on getting started and altering small things, such as the UI. Unity has a large community with people making video's on various topics, but since CameraKit is so new there is not so much information available. After trail and error I managed to find the solutions.
    • API documentation with examples. In my opinion Unity does this really well, going from classes deeper in each class member with examples. To be honest, I haven't looked to much in your API docs because I didn't know where to start. Going from a broader perspective into depth could work. See this example on Material.color docs with a description and example code: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Material-color.html
    • Instructions on how to combine Unity and Snapchat. I worked this out eventually with a lot of researching, but a Unity plugin would be amazing.

    Other things that I find / found difficult:

    • The navigation within the Camera Kit dashboard website is somewhat difficult. Sometimes I lost navigation to my lens groups, lenses, the app overview and such. I bookmarked all of the links so there were easier for me to find.
    • Instructions on how to prefetch lenses, and what benefits this approach has
    • Limitations of the platform, lens group max size and such.
    • Explanation on the concepts of lens groups and lenses and how they relate to CameraKit
    • A readme in the repository with the current supported Lens studio version. I found this in the changelog file, but this was not the first place for me to look.
    • Finding out how to hide the snapchat carousel
    • Opening a specific lens with a lens id from the start
  • utof
    utof Posts: 3
    #4

    I can't find platform support page anywhere. Please give me the link or make a page about it. like in arfoundation

  • utof
    utof Posts: 3
    #5

    @Mahendra said:
    What's missing?
    React-Native support.

    what do you mean? what about this?

  • Paul Freeman
    Paul Freeman Posts: 4
    #6

    I think it would be useful to have some outline instructions on how to use the referenceUI's on iOS and the corresponding way to do that on Android.

    For our iOS app, I realised that the best way was to simply make my own copies of referenceUI classes and then to modify them. This felt a little odd as normally I'd hope to subclass and just tweak the behaviour of my subclasses. It would be useful for beginning camerakit developers to have this approach documented.

    Similar guidance would be useful for Android, particularly regarding things like CameraLayout. It's useful to see the custom preview and carousel examples though. Still a short guide on best practice for customisation could start people in the right direction.

  • stevenxu
    stevenxu Posts: 612 👻
    edited April 2023 #7

    @Mahendra said:
    What's missing?
    React-Native support.

    Thank you for sharing your feedback! This is a top request and our team is looking into this. Could you help answer the following questions to help us better identify what next steps could look like:

    1. What are the details of your React Native request?
    2. Have you attempted to implement a React Native bridge using Camera Kit SDK? What, if anything, did you find challenging?
    3. What kind of examples do you want to see from the Camera Kit team using React Native bridge?
    4. Are you open to contributing to an open source community that maintains this React Native bridge?
  • stevenxu
    stevenxu Posts: 612 👻
    #8

    @Pico Alta WHOA!!!! This is amazing detailed feedback. Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with us. I love how you broke it down. Confirming I've shared with our PM and Eng team to review. I'm going to create a separate ticket for the net new items we haven't discussed around yet. I'll follow up with any questions from our team and updates

  • stevenxu
    stevenxu Posts: 612 👻
    #9

    @utof said:

    @Mahendra said:
    What's missing?
    React-Native support.

    what do you mean? what about this?

    This is only RN support for Creative Kit, not Camera Kit.

  • stevenxu
    stevenxu Posts: 612 👻
    #10

    @utof said:
    I can't find platform support page anywhere. Please give me the link or make a page about it. like in arfoundation

    Thanks for the feedback! Currently, we communicate more of what's not supported and broadly what version lens studio is supported. You can what's not supported here: https://docs.snap.com/camera-kit/guides/quick-start/build-manage-ar-content/lens-studio-compatibility

  • stevenxu
    stevenxu Posts: 612 👻
    #11

    @Paul Freeman Thanks for your detailed feedback. Noted and I know we have another thread related to this so our Android eng will take a look.

This discussion has been closed.

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