Bengaluru-based AR developer wins award at global conference

Bengaluru: The AR creators, developers, and partners are tapping into the community's engagement and excitement about augmented reality today and its vast potential for the future. There are over 300,000 creators, developers and teams from around the world who've built more than 3 million AR Lenses.

The winners were announced on Tuesday for the Lens Fest Awards, celebrating the year's most creative and innovative Lenses. Snap's panel of experts reviewed hundreds of entries from around the world across five categories: Fashion, Play, Education, Wellness, and Moonshot. Two talented AR creators from India, Vishal Yadav from Bangalore and Wasim Ghole from Mumbai, have been named as Lens Fest Award winners.

A talented student from the National Institute of Design, Vishal Yadav developed the Flux Fashion Lens which captures colours from your surroundings to create an outfit. Coming from an XR designer background, he has been creating lenses for Snapchat for two years. "Lens Studio allows a creator to push their boundaries of innovation and publish Lenses for free on the platform. Being a part of Lens Fest makes me feel recognized in the community and allows me to experience first-hand how other creators like me are enhancing people's realities on the back of AR. The Flux Fashion lens allows users to grab colours from the surroundings, wear those colours as a dress, and if they wish they can share it with their friends. The lens starts with instructions to tap and hold colour which brings in the eyedropper tool to grab any colour from the surrounding. Once a custom choice of colours have been picked, the camera can be pointed at someone, who can then try-on this dress. The dress is made of flowing particles that interact and bounces off the ground and create a trail wherever the person wearing the dress goes." said Vishal, sharing his experience of being a part of Lens Fest and creating an award-winning lens. Wasim Ghole, a talented young AR creator, developed the Soft Drink Info Lens which spotlights information about the drink. "Snapchat introduced me to the concept of AR and gave me a holistic perspective of how Snap's AR was able to capture memories like never before. The tutorials and templates in Lens Studio helped me gain a better understanding and gave me the confidence to push my creative boundaries. I believe that the possibilities with AR are endless, and it can be used in several ways to serve humanity in the best way. My lens Soft Drink Info helps users to have a track of the nutritional facts in some of the popular soft drinks in the market. As health and fitness are some of the most important aspects of our life, I wanted to create something that will educate them about the soft drinks they consume in their daily life. The lens not only makes the user aware of the nutritional count in the soft drink but also calculates the duration of different physical activities or exercises like running, cycling and cleaning, one can engage in to burn those calories," said Wasim while talking about his love for AR and his AR lens - Soft Drink Info.

Augmented reality is already enhancing daily life at an incredible global scale today.

363 million people use our Snapchat camera technology every day on average to talk with their friends and family, try on new looks, or learn something new about the world around them. Snapchatters engage with AR experiences an average of 6 billion times per day, evolving the way we use computing in our daily lives.