This year, Lens Fest was a global, virtual event exploring the current AR Lenscape. The multi-day event focused on highlighting new dimensions of augmented reality and celebrating you, our Lens Creator community shaping the future of AR!

Spanning three days, the AR festival was hosted in an immersive and interactive online environment where attendees watched session content, chatted with other creators, explored a library of tutorials and a gallery of some of the top Lens Creators, and much more. During Lens Fest we announced:

• An investment of $3.5 million to expand our support to Lens creators and developers who are pushing what’s possible in AR through Lens Studio’s most advanced capabilities.

• Strong AR engagement in our community – over 180 million Snapchatters engage with Lenses every day, and community Lenses have been viewed by Snapchatters more than 1 trillion times.¹

• Lens Studio 3.3, bringing you powerful new tools and features to help you make even more impressive Lenses, more efficiently.

Thousands of Lens Creators tuned into Lens Fest to explore the virtual event space and watch the session content, which featured guides on building innovative Lenses with SnapML, Visual Scripting, Depth Tech and Material Editor, and tips on how to unlock and discover new experiences with Lens Studio. Watch the main sessions, Lens Studio demos, and more here!

Creator and Partner Spotlights

In between the core sessions we highlighted some of the most innovative creators and partners who are part of our AR ecosystem. We featured three partners who were looking for creators to build AR experiences or educate underserved communities with them, and a series of creators who have been including cutting-edge AR tech in their Lenses this year.

Check out the short vignettes below to learn more about the opportunities to work with our partners and to learn more about our creators:

Partner Spotlights

• Verizon - Verizon will be sponsoring an Innovation Studio for Lens Creators to build experiences optimized for 5G experiences for Verizon. Submit interest here

• LACMA - Calling all Lens Creators who want to build AR monuments and murals  in collaboration with LACMA. Submit interest here

• iDTech - Snap and  iDTech have built a Lens Studio course for students to begin experimenting in AR, and have opened opportunities for Lens Creators to mentor young creators. If interested in volunteering, sign up here

Creator Spotlights

• Char Stiles - Brooklyn-Based Artist and SnapML Resident.

• Atomic Digital Design - Paris-Based AR Dream Team.

• Paper Triangles - Turning a Passion into a Business.

• Wabisabi Games - Augmented Reality Game Development.

• Andre Elijah - Augmented Reality Game Development.

• Chanchal Choudhary - India-Based AR Gaming Engineer.

• Noland Chaliha - Machine Learning Pioneer.

• 2020CV - Building Innovative Lenses with SnapML.

• Pitch Studios - A Future-Focused Design Studio.

• Aidan Wolf + Kevin Habich - Inspiring Creators to Push the Boundaries of AR.

• Pam Taylor - Not Your Average Teenager.

• Zach Lieberman - Discussing LiDAR and the Future of AR.

Lens Fest 2020 Call for Creation

The week before Lens Fest began we put out a call to creators to build utility-based Lenses along the theme of “AR for Good”. Over 100 creators participated in building Lenses in teams and we received many great submissions.

Check out the 5 Lenses we were most impressed with and the creators behind them:

• Mask Cleanup by Danny Marree, Atit Kharel and Gera Fine.

• Green Helper by JP Pirie, Ashley Fletcher and Miha Malenšek.

• Save the Bees by Daniel Robertson, Abbas Sajad and Sufee Yama.

• Earth Breath by Steve Snygin, Benoit Pagotto and Olga Isupova.

• SOLARPOWER by Joshua Keeney, Christopher Manning and Michael Nicoll.

Overall, we are so impressed with all of the Lenses you have made this past year. The rapid growth of our AR ecosystem is because of your innovation. You are the future of AR and we can’t wait to see what our community of Lens Creators will make next. 

Happy Creating,

Team Lens Studio

¹ Snap Inc.internal data December 2017 - October 2020