Facebook Camera – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

September 29, 2018

Clever Fox Enters Facebook AR Scene With Two Projects Featuring Devo And Augmented Apparel

The Los Angeles-based production company known for their digital and immersive story telling, Clever Fox, has announced that it has released two augmented reality (AR) experiences designed for the Facebook AR scene. Commonly known for their AR and virtual reality (VR) projects in the entertainment and music spaces, these new projects are the companies first steps into the Facebook AR world.

The first project is an immersive Facebook AR Effect for seminal recording artists Devo. This camera effect based on the iconic energy dome headwear allows users the chance to wear it for themselves. Devo has been getting a lot of attention recently with the performance back in June being on of the highlights of Oakland’s Burger Boogaloo event. The influential band were also featured back in a retrospective article published by Vice in August and the team at Clever Fox couldn’t be more proud to create the AR effect for the band.

Music is not the only area that Clever Fox are taking opportunities with Facebook’s AR platform. The team have also announced the soft launch of their apparel label semiFamous which features original designed augmented by Facebook’s AR camera.

“What we do at Clever Fox is always about entertaining people,” says chief creative officer Dekker Dreyer. “Whether it’s seeing something we made being enjoyed by fellow fans of Devo or making clothes we want to wear, it all starts with a sense of fun. We’re not the first artists to put forward augmented apparel, but we have a unique style and voice. Our sensibilities are what makes us different. Right now we’re testing the waters, but we’re running it like a streetwear boutique. It’s design-driven. The AR should be something fun and extra that comes with the product, not the only reason to buy it.”

Clever Fox are also partnering with artists from outside of the immersive media industry to create unique apparel designs at semiFamous. The first released design from an outside collaborator is a pair of colourful legging emblazoned with a yowling cartoon cat. Created by illustrator Emmet Helen, known for the cover art on Oni Press’s Rick and Morty comics, it marks the type of partnerships that Clever Fox wants to grow with the semiFamous brand.

“We couldn’t have done this last year,” says Clever Fox partner Julia Howe. “We’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time, but getting people to download a new app is an uphill battle. With Facebook’s AR platform we’re already installed on most smartphones. As AR continues to grow the experience of sharing content will continue to improve. Each platform has a strength and right now Facebook is the best place for us to launch this kind of experiment.”

The Devo AR Facebook Camera effect is available to download from their official page and the beta site of semiFamous is also live right now. VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest from Clever Fox in the future.

January 27, 2018

Facebook Experiments With Full-Body Tracking In Augmented Reality

Enabling mobile devices to be better compatible with augmented reality (AR) has been a big focus for Apple and Google lately, as they introduce the tools necessary to enable developers greater and easier access to AR features. Not to be left behind, the Facebook AI Camera Team is working on various technologies and tools. Adding make up and using filters is just the beginning though, as Facebook aim to create accurate full body tracking technology which uses just a mobile phone camera.

Being able to track body movements in real time is a difficult task, as the Facebook team explain in their blog post. Poses and body shapes are difficult to track across a wide range of people, not to mention items of clothing can help confuse matter, unlike facial features, which have generally uniform placements and features with fewer variable.

While still in the research phase, Facebook have managed to device technology which can detect body poses and accurately track a body against a background. The technology is based on the Mask R-CNN framework, which they’ve adapted for full body tracking and segmentation.

Unlike many solutions to body tracking, the application they’ve devised is only a few megabytes in size, and is lightweight in nature, meaning even conventional smart phones can actually run the technology.

What’s next for the team? Well, in their blog, the team state; “Developing computer vision models for mobile devices is a challenging task. A mobile model has to be small, fast and accurate without large memory requirements. We will continue exploring new model architectures which will lead to more efficient models. We will also explore models that can better fit in mobile GPUs and DSPs which has the potential to save both the battery and computational power.”

The new technology looks to be taking augmented reality on mobile devices to the next level – at this point, many apps feature AR features, whether they be comprehensive or smaller, and Facebook’s research might put them at the forefront of mobile AR technology. We hope to see a more finalised version of Facebook technology in the near future, but in the meantime, you can look at their blog for more technical information, and stay on VRFocus for more virtual reality (VR) and AR news.

July 14, 2017

Meitu And Facebook Team Up For Camera effects Beta

Meitu is one of the most popular internet brands in China, with its photo and video editing tools used by more than 450 million people monthly, creating more than 6 billion photos and videos every month. Facebook, who have themselves begun serious investment in augmented reality (AR) photography apps, are introducing Meitu AR camera effects for the Facebook camera.

Three AR camera effects from Meitu will be used as part of Facebook AR studio’s early Beta partnership program. Meitu is the first company chosen for the program that specialises in AR facial recognition technology. The three effects being utilised by Facebook are ‘Selfie from the Future’, ‘Meitu Family’ and ‘Instant Glam’.

“Meitu’s fun selfie experiences make it a natural fit for the Camera Effects Platform,” said Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Director, Platform Partnerships at Facebook. “We’re excited to expand the AR Studio beta to our first Asia-based developer, and we think the camera effects that Meitu has built with this technology will delight the Facebook community around the world.”

The new AR Studio was announced at Facebook’s F8 event in April, with the aim of allowing artists and developers to create frames, masks and interactive effects that respond to the movements of the user. Analysts are expecting future uses of the AR Camera to include branded effects to tie in to major movie, videogame or TV releases.

“Since Meitu launched its first AR-powered app in 2010, we’ve seen first-hand how the adoption of AR technology has transformed the way we interact with each other and express ourselves through the stories we share with the world,” said Frank Fu, Managing Director of Meitu’s global operations. “We are honoured to be selected by Facebook to kick-off this incredible new feature, and excited to come along for the ride as the platform further reshapes the social media experience.”

VRFocus will bring you further news on Facebook’s AR projects as it becomes available.