Introducing Samsung AR Emoji
Bo Huang
Games increasingly are a fabric of our life. From medieval to contemporary to sci-fi, there are genres of all kinds, and a plethora of protagonist arch-types.
Notice that, almost always, the mobile gamer is in the shoes of some other character such as a knight or superhero instead of an avatar of herself. Why is this? Technologically, it's not easy to create a live 3D avatar as one could with even 100-year-old photograph tech. Thus as a game developer you have never had the means to make a character of yourself.
But this is changing with the AR Emoji technology from Samsung.
Here at Samsung we are constantly innovating and exploring to connect you to our multi-faceted world, real or virtual. In recent launches of our flagship phone such as the Galaxy S10, the AR Emoji is a new feature allowing users to easily create digital avatars representing the user. A 3D avatar character is easily created from a process similar to taking a selfie, and as the user smiles or laughs into the S10 camera, this avatar smiles and laughs the same.
Most importantly, we are also working on a Unity SDK that empowers game developers to access these avatars. Anyone can soon import and control the AR Emojis into their games, thus opening game design concepts never explored before. Thus with your cooperation, game developers can now design personalized gaming experiences that bring fantasy worlds to you, or augment you with a game’s props and items, thus merging the real and imaginary together.
Indeed, we hope to bring a paradigm shift over this 'play as someone else' structure that has been rigidly ingrained into players' psyche for decades. Check out how to use an AR Emoji on a Galaxy S10e, Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+ or Galaxy Fold.
And if you are a developer for games and apps, see my blog where I introduce the AR Emoji Unity SDK.
