Facebook Adds New AR 3D Drawing Tool to Stories

Since AR or Augmented Reality is becoming popular with every single day, more and more applications are making use of this technology. The most recent addition to the list is none other than Facebook stories!

They have released the latest update for the Facebook app, and it lets users draw with 3D AR tools. This was first spotted by Matt Navarra, Director of Social Media at The Next Web.

WOAH! Facebook has a cool new 3D AR doodle tool pic.twitter.com/gXiMZlBUa7

— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) April 12, 2018

With these tools, the user can draw anything they like while they are shooting a short video that Facebook calls “stories.” But that isn’t anything surprising as many apps allow you to draw shapes while you are shooting a video. The specialty with Facebook is that the images aren’t just placed in a 2D plane.

You can actually move your mobile around the drawn images, and they will be given an effect as they are suspended in space (3D tracking).

This is undoubtedly going to bring in more user engagement as previously, Instagram was the go-to place for users to edit their photos with vibrant add-ons. The update has gone live for both Android and iOS platforms.

If your device hasn’t gotten it yet, wait a bit as the rollout will happen very soon. The AR drawing option is listed on Facebook stories main camera interface itself, and one can use this feature just by tapping the icon.

If you are wondering how Facebook achieved such a feat just by using your device’s back camera, it all comes to intelligent software programming. When you point your camera at something, the software quickly looks for edges and creates a 3D map of the setting using the edges as a reference.

Though there are some criteria that need to be addressed for the smooth working of this feature. The software needs sufficient light and must recognize the edges to work properly. If the optimum conditions are not met, this feature will turn off itself.

One must note that the AR feature in the Facebook app is still in its infancy. We will see more AR features and new brush strokes in the coming months.

Facebook is aiming to be the all-in-one social media platform with its latest features. The introduction of ‘stories’ and ‘looping gifs’ are a sign that it is aiming to capture the market share currently owned by Snapchat.

This new feature is certainly an area where we will see more and more updates and changes.