Thursday, 9 July, 2020 UTC
Summary
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We’re fans of Snap around these parts.
The platform has been at the cutting edge of Social AR for quite some time. We all remember the golden days of puppy filters — and who could forget the aging filters that set the Internet ablaze? — and it’s no small feat for Snap to have been a pioneer in ushering in a new era in AR. As immersive enthusiasts and experts ourselves, we here at UNIT9 are stoked to see the mainstream embrace these features.
Snap’s 2020 Partner Summit, hosted last month at the beginning of June, unveiled quite a few exciting new features we can expect from the platform. And you’re probably wondering: What are these new features, and why are we excited about it?
tl;dr — Snap is evolving beyond a creative platform and into an innovative ecosystem, designed with the purchasing funnel in mind.
Let’s get right to it.
SnapML
SnapML at a glance, from left to right: Multiple segmentation, hand gestures, custom segmentation, ground segmentation, foot tracking.Snap lenses, as we have known them until now, employ machine learning within preset limits as designated by Snap. However, now with SnapML, these limits have been lifted: Lens Creators can now input their own machine learning parameters to deploy any number of visually engaging AR effects in the real world.
SnapML bridges the worlds of data science and creativity to create new engaging, memorable, and unique AR experiences. Not only is it truly a creative sandbox, SnapML can also unlock distinctive triggers for people to discover organically while playing around with lenses and effects, which means that no two AR experiences will be exactly alike — and that you can bake more layers and capabilities into each brand experience from the onset.
A few examples:
Custom segmentation — the ability to detect and mask any shape or object trained by SnapML. For example, you could have the lens recognise your brand logo, and then augment an effect on top of it.
Multiple segmentation — the ability to mask different areas of the world — everything from the floor and sky down to specific objects like trees and people — with individual effects, allowing a totally unique AR experience all within one lens.
Hand gesture recognition — the ability to trigger specific Lenses with specific hand gestures, eg. a peace sign.
Local Lenses
Snap Local Lenses: Paint the town red… or blue, or yellow, or rainbow.Remember seeing the Eiffel Tower puke (virtual) rainbows? Those were last year’s “Landmarkers,” when Snap turned some of the world’s greatest landmarks into fun augmented experiences through AR effects.
With Local Lenses, this premise has been vastly expanded, so that there is now a fully digital representation of the wider physical world, where users can share completely unique AR experiences.
In short: Local Lenses allow for creativity at an unprecedented scale. They are shareable between friends online and offline, and also unlock the ability for brands to create AR experiences like never before — quite literally right on people’s doorstep.
Trending AR VR Articles:
1. How to use subtle AR filters to survive your Zoom meetings?
2. The First No-Headset Virtual Monitor
3. Augmented reality (AR) is the future of Restaurant Menu?
4. Creating remote MR productions
For example, Community Snaps and 360° images allow Snap to use machine learning and 3D reconstruction to create entire city blocks and landmarks, turning them into a creative canvas. Users can then collectively paint over an entire building, or perhaps trigger animations to appear on their street, effectively transforming the real world through the power of AR. It’s a fun way to bring people together, and we can’t wait to see what other possibilities lie ahead…
Dynamic Lenses
A demo of Snap’s Dynamic Lenses.Dynamic Lenses pull information in real time, combine them with AR effects and models, and become an interactive app extension within Snap.
What that means for you and your brand: Lenses are updated as soon as an in-app event occurs. You no longer have to worry about pushing build updates or sharing outdated information; Dynamic Lenses can be harnessed to show the latest scores, prices, event times, and other timely information — without the user leaving Snap. We’re curious to see this leveraged for flash sales, game day, city marathons, and other big moments to activate around.
Scan
Snap Scan: Your in-app guide to the world around you.We’ve all been there: We see the cutest dog on the street but just can’t quite place what breed that good boy or girl is — or maybe you see a beautiful succulent in a storefront and want to know what to look for at the plant nursery. Snap can now help.
Scan uses the in-app Snap camera to identify real-world objects and overlay relevant information, such as the breed of dog or the type of plant that you’re looking at. It extends beyond a fun and shareable AR mechanic: Scan can also be used as an easy-to-use educational tool, or simply to satisfy curiosity. Whether it’s identifying specific music via Shazam or helping solve math problems, Scan can help — all through a simple tap-and-hold mechanic.
Minis
Snap Minis: The new place for you to share your school schedule and plan movie night.The Snap Minis feature has been getting a fair bit of buzz, and for good reason.
Minis are essentially a bite-sized social utility embedded into Snap, allowing you (or your brand) to create mini experiences that allow friends to plan, interact, and communicate with each other. Think of how many back-and-forth texts (and therefore time) you’ll be saving next time you want to plan a (socially distanced) movie night.
More importantly, through leveraging the user-base and ubiquity of Snap, your Snap Mini has instant scale, without any of the distribution headaches of creating standalone microsites or widgets. By being embedded directly into Snap, core platform functions such as chat features, friends, and Bitmoji are easily baked into every experience. All the user needs to do is find it — but that’s a marketing topic for another time.
Seeing how WeChat Mini Programs have been a massive success for the Chinese market, we’re curious to see if Snap Minis will also revolutionise the way people interact with their social media platform of choice.
All in all, we’re very keen to see where Snap goes next, and how brands will continue to build and iterate upon the platform. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this space.
By Jaclyn Siu
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https://medium.com/media/1e1f2ee7654748bb938735cbca6f0fd3/hrefWhat’s Coming Up Next for Snapchat? Here’s Everything You Need to Know was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.