It’s hard to deny that Snapchat isn’t about selfies. The app’s various filters like swapping faces and giving yourself cat ears pretty much relies on you taking a selfie, and it seems that the company’s interest in selfies is going to be taken up a notch. A report from TechCrunch has revealed that Snapchat has recently acquired a company that captures 3D selfies.
The company is known as Seene and their app actually debuted several years ago, in which it was able to scan the person’s face and turn it into a 3D model. However what was the point of such an app was unclear at that time, but now it looks like Snapchat is interested in the technology behind it.
Before you think that the company has acquired Seene just to add a new filter, think again. Apparently Snapchat is more interested in the technology that allows Seene to capture 3D models rather than actually creating a new filter (or maybe there will still be a filter, but it wouldn’t be the main focus).
One of the upsides of Seene’s technology is the fact that it doesn’t require special infrared sensor or multiple cameras, unlike Google’s Project Tango and the Microsoft Kinect. All it requires is your phone’s camera. It also relies on your phone’s processing power to create the 3D models as opposed to a cloud backend, thus localizing the process to make it faster and also removes the need for it to be online.
Now it remains to be seen what Snapchat will ultimately do with the company, but perhaps they could market the technology to advertisers to help spice up ads, or like we said, maybe a new selfie lens which admittedly would be a bit of a waste.