Almost four years ago, we introduced Lenses: a whole new way to see your selfie!
The first Lenses we made were for self expression. Next came World Lenses: 3D stickers, Bitmoji, and dancing hot dogs overlaid on the world around you. Most recently, we launched Snappables — games you can play with your face!
In just over a year, more than 400,000 Lenses have been created by our community, and people have played with those Lenses over 15 billion times!* We’re introducing Creator Profiles to help Lens Creators showcase their work and learn more about their audience.
We call them Lenses because they don’t just filter your world. They allow you to immerse yourself in something new. We believe that someday in the future, these kinds of experiences will be layered on the world around you with new ways to talk, create, learn, and play.
Today, we’re making it easier to find the right Lenses at the right time.
AR Bar and Scan
Snap is also introducing a new, unified Lens experience on the platform and additional, robust camera search capabilities. “AR Bar” and “Scan” will begin rolling out soon to Snapchatters.
AR Bar is designed to make it easier than ever before for Snapchatters to discover and navigate Lenses and camera search experiences on Snapchat. With AR Bar, for the very first time, Snapchatters will be able to Create, Scan, Browse, and Explore all in one place.
AR Bar will also feature a new Scan button, designed to surface contextually relevant Lenses and camera-based experiences with just a tap.
With Scan, relevant Lenses, including those created by Snap’s public community through Lens Studio, will dynamically surface for Snapchatters based on what is in the camera view.
Snap is also introducing new Scan partners.
In partnership with Photomath, Snapchatters will be able to point the Snapchat camera at a math equation to see the solution appear within the camera. Additionally, a new integration with partner GIPHY will invite any Snapchatter to decorate their Snaps with contextually relevant, dynamically generated GIF Lenses based on what’s in the Snapchat camera view.
Lens Studio and “Landmarkers”
Snap’s Lens Studio is a free, publicly available desktop app for anyone to build and distribute Lenses on Snapchat. Lens Studio packages up Snap’s state of the art computer vision and graphics technology into simple templates for creators. More than 400,000 Lenses have been created by Snap’s community through Lens Studio, and those Lenses have been played with over 15 billion times.
Today, Snap is updating Lens Studio to include even more capabilities for Lens creation, including templates for hand tracking, body tracking, and pet tracking.
For the first time, Lens Studio will include templates for Snap’s all-new Landmarker Lens experiences. These Lenses enable augmented reality experiences that can transform the world's most iconic landmarks in real-time.
Templates for five locations are available to creators today, including: Buckingham Palace (London), United States Capitol Building (Washington, D.C.), Eiffel Tower (Paris), Flatiron Building (New York City), and the TCL Chinese Theater (Los Angeles), with more to follow.
Snapchatters visiting these physical locations will also be able to experience these Landmarker-enabled Lenses beginning today.