Snap Levels Up What’s Possible in AR at Its Annual Lens Fest

Snap has showcased its commitment to Augmented Reality and the strength of its AR ecosystem at its latest Lens Fest event, by unveiling new engagement numbers as well a host of new features for Lenses, monetization tools for AR creators and even new features for Spectacles.

Lens Fest, running virtually until 9th December is Snap's annual, global event that highlights the innovation and creativity from every corner of the Snap AR community. Starting four years ago, with a couple of dozen Lens Creators celebrating and building Lenses together in LA, it now hosts thousands of attendees virtually from around the world.  

Today, there are 306 million Snapchatters around the world, using Snap’s camera to create an average of 5 billion Snaps every day. More than 200 million of those Snapchatters engage with Lenses on Snapchat more than 6 billion times every day.

What’s more, more than 250,000 Lens Creators from more than 200 countries and territories have built more than 2.5M AR Lenses - those Lenses have been viewed more than 3.5 trillion times. 

Snap Co-Founder and CTO Bobby Murphy, said at the event: “It’s so exciting to see how the community taps into cutting edge AR technologies and brings them to life in innovative and creative ways. Over the last year, our team has introduced a suite of advanced new features like garment and skin segmentation, 3D Body Mesh, and VoiceML -- all to help AR creators and developers build more engaging, realistic, and accessible experiences.”

New Features for Lenses

Also announced at Lens Fest, Snap has launched a suite of new features and tools in the 4.10 update for it’s AR creation software, Lens Studio. All Lens creation starts with Lens Studio, whether designed by the community or the team at Snap. From there, Lenses can be featured across Snapchat, Snap Camera, Spectacles, or into other apps through Camera Kit.

Over the last year, Snap has taken some of the most innovative technologies it’s developed, and brought them to Lens Studio. Features like garment and skin segmentation, 3D Body Mesh, and VoiceML have already given AR creators and developers brand new capabilities to build more engaging, realistic, and accessible experiences. 

Custom Landmarkers

Snap launched Landmarkers in 2019 and Local Lenses in 2020, layering augmented reality onto  dozens of popular destinations around the world. And coming soon, creators will be able to make Custom Landmarkers, transforming local landmarks into AR attractions. All it takes is a mobile device with a LiDAR Scanner to map the area and create a 3D model to bring into Lens Studio. We’re excited to soon hand over our Landmarker mapping technology and let creators turn more of the world—from statues to storefronts—into their canvas.

World Mesh -- Any creator can use depth information and world geometry understanding to create experiences that look and feel more like they’re part of the real world, previously only possible with higher end devices, making Lenses like the below Matrix world possible.

Some of the other new features announced for creators in Lens Studio 4.10, include:

New Monetization Opportunities for Lens CreatorS. 

Snap is continuing to find ways to support its growing creator community and their big ideas.

New capabilities for Spectacles

Snap introduced Spectacles over five years ago as a fun, hands-free camera designed to help capture your perspective and stay in the moment. Since then, we’ve taken an iterative, public approach to improving each generation and learning alongside the community. Now, our next generation Spectacles (with AR display) have helped creators make hundreds of Lenses that bring new perspectives to things we do everyday:  

We’ve been listening to the feedback from the creator community, and from those insights, we’ve already developing advanced, new capabilities that creators can tap into: