There are limitations to the types of Lenses that can be created using Lens Studio and how they can be distributed on Snapchat. Snapchat’s Lens Studio is similar to Facebook’s AR Studio, which the company unveiled in April for developers to produce “camera effects” (Facebook’s version of Snapchat’s Lenses) and made more widely available earlier this week. On Thursday, Snapchat launched Lens Studio, a desktop app for Mac and Windows that anyone can use to create augmented-reality Lenses that can be applied to photos and videos shared on Snapchat. Now Snapchat is democratizing the format so that anyone, including brands, can create their own Lenses and attach them to posts, as well as ads on Snapchat.
Since the mobile app introduced Lenses in September 2015, its in-house team has created more than 3,000 Lenses, and on a typical day, roughly 70 million people interact with Lenses for more than three minutes on average, according to the company. Though its sample video is far more like Nintendo’s Splatoon than Sega’s Jet Set Radio, using large splashes of color rather than written words, we’ll have to see whether Local Lenses are used solely for positive purposes, or are steps towards AR graffiti similar to what’s currently appearing in real cities as protests continue.Snapchat’s Lenses have largely been responsible for popularizing augmented reality. The company says Snapchat users will be able to “decorate nearby buildings with colorful paint” that will be visible to friends. While the technology behind the feature is fascinating, the way Snap is promoting it today feels somewhat awkward given current social unrest over the Black Lives Matter movement. Unlike rivals, which have focused primarily on mapping and marketing applications, Snap plans to let users change the look of neighborhoods with digital content. Local Lenses promises to create large-scale point clouds to recognize multiple buildings within an area - an expansion of the company’s prior Landmarking feature - to map entire city blocks, the same vision pursued by companies such as Immersal and Scape (now owned by Facebook). Snap is also previewing a new feature, Local Lenses, which will “soon” let users share persistent augmented reality content within neighborhoods. Additionally, the user-facing Snapchat app will be expanding its Scan feature with the abilities to recognize 90% of all known plants and trees, nearly 400 breeds of dogs, packaged food labels, and Louis Vuitton’s logo, plus SoundHound integration to let users find pertinent Lenses using only voice commands.
Lens Studio has also added new hand gesture templates, as well as Face Landmarks and Face Expressions that should improve facial tracking for specific situations. As an example of the technology, Lens Studio will include a new foot tracking ML model developed by Wannaby, enabling developers to craft Lenses for feet.īeyond Wannaby, developers including CV2020, visual filter maker Prisma, and several unnamed Lens creators are also working on SnapML-based filters. A new feature called SnapML - unrelated to IBM’s same-named training tool - will let developers import machine learning models to power lenses, expanding the range of real world objects and body parts Snapchat will be able to instantly identify. The latest key change is an update to Lens Studio, the free desktop development app used to create most of Snapchat’s AR filters. Now parent company Snap is enabling creators to use self-provided machine learning models in Lenses, and hoping the initiative will inspire partnerships between ML developers and creatives. Over the past few years, Snapchat’s growing collection of Lenses have been some of the best examples of smartphone-powered augmented reality, enabling users to effortlessly add facial modifications, environmental effects, and location-specific filters to their photos.