Lens Fest 2020 Recap
By: Josh Beckwith
Tags: Lens Studio, Tutorial, Conference, Snapchat, Augmented Reality

Lens Fest 2020 was a blast! Of course, it was an online conference, but at least it was nice seeing familiar names in the live chat window; Noland Chaliha, Clay Weishaar, Ben Knutson, Sarah Mayer, and Luke Hurd, to name a few. It spanned three days and featured a ton of new product updates, inspiring stories, tutorials, and some seriously phat beats (chat really enjoyed the music selection).

Lens Studio v3.3

The event was unofficially kicked off with the release of Lens Studio version 3.3. Everyone in the live chat was downloading it as the countdown started for the first LensFest video, myself included. I’m just starting my journey into Lens Studio, but this update seems massive! It’s a smorgasbord of digital treats — texture compression tooling, visual scripting, tutorials, templates, and more!

Visual Scripting

Snap has added visual scripting to the IDE, which enables creators to define lens logic without needing to bother with the typical inconveniences of writing scripts. It’s similar to the material node editor — everything is drag and drop, and it’s easy to understand the flow of events. If your head is screwed on correctly, you’ll be able to pick up this feature and add logic to your lenses in no time!

I’m really happy to see this addition to LS because it goes along with the whole “codeless” mindset that Snap is always talking about. I don’t think they really nailed it before now. Basically anything mildly complex required adding scripts to your project. Granted, you didn’t necessarily need to edit the scripts (just configure them), but they were scripts nonetheless. Now designers can add completely custom logic without needing to learn about boring topics like variable scopes and prototypal inheritance! Hoo-wee!

Here are a few highlights:

Create custom nodes with script

Use for-loops to iterate through collections

Search for specific node instances in the graph

Print log statements from the node graph

New templates

Snap loves templates, so of course this release comes with a handful of them. It’s mostly utility stuff, but the face morph template looks like it will be a lot of fun. Get ready for a flood of Animorph lenses!

AR Scavenger Hunt Course

In addition to the templates, there’s the new AR Scavenger Hunt Course! It comes with a template, but it goes more in depth into the “why” and “how” of the project.

Building Blocks

Building blocks are a new concept in the world of Lens Studio. They are collections of assets meant to help speed up your creation process. It’s similar to the library feature in Spark AR, but in this case you need to download all of the files at once. To me, it feels like a digital junk drawer, but I’ll definitely be using this junk more often than the junk in my actual kitchen drawer.

The building blocks are bundled into packs. For now there are two of them: the prototype pack and the refinement pack. Each contain “prefab” objects (Unity, anyone?) that you can drag and drop into your scene.

The prototype pack has 3D primitives, glasses, particles, hints, fonts, sounds, test videos, and a few other things.

The refinement pack is much slimmer, but contains prefabs that will add some extra zing to your lenses:

Object Layout

Countdown Object

Zoom Post Effects

Move Along Path

Trail Effect

Material Instanced Spawner

Navigation UI

Object Spawner 2D & 3D

Offscreen Locator

Collision Manager

Partner Spotlights

If you’re an artist looking for partnerships, Snap has 3 upcoming projects that might interest you. For now it seems to be limited to filling out an interest form, but check out the short video presentations.

LACMA

Art and technology initiative to develop a “new type of monument” to celebrate history using augmented reality. Interest form

5G Innovation Lab

Creator’s lab for AR developers with a focus on 5G tech. Interest form

Snap x iD Tech mentorship

Snap and iD Tech have partnered to build a Lens Studio course for those who are aged 13+, through iD Tech’s 1-to-1 Online Private Lessons offerings. Learn more about our special inclusion of 75 Snap Scholars, students from underserved communities who will have access to the classes free of charge. Interest form

Sessions