Challenge 3: Social media filters

We sure do like a game of football and were therefore delighted that PSV was one of our launching partners! For PSV we developed an end-of-year message for their season ticket holders and members of the business club. In this end-of-the year message Donyell Malen thanked everyone personally for their support! Hower, to thank their whole fanbase the idea arose to create a social media filter as well. With volumetric video assets from the end-of-the-year message video, we managed to develop a social media filter with footballer Donyell Malen in the spotlights!

We wanted to add as much motion as possible to the social media filter. Luckily, we had the volumetric video assets of the end-of-the-year message, so we could use these for the social media filter! That turned out to be more difficult than we thought…

Volumetric video is a brand new 3D-technology, and so far not or hardly used for social media filters. It was up to us to explore the boundaries of what is possible! The first challenge was to import the volumetric video, because it has a much larger file size. than a social media filter normally can handle (4 MB). As a solution, we actually took the volumetric video apart and reduced the images per frame (textures), simplified the 3D-mesh and exported it in a different format. The outcome made it possible to use the volumetric video in the social media filter for a few seconds.

Instagram: Problems with SparkAR's policy

Our first plan was to publish the social media filter on Instagram. When we submitted it to SparkAR, the filter was not accepted. This because the filter was not allowed to have images of real people. Even though we did not work with pictures, but with volumetric video, SparkAR was implacable. It was time to look futher!

Snapchat: What are the possibilities with Lens Studio?

We started to explore the possibilities with Lens Studio from Snapchat. Pretty soon we found out that importing the frames and the 3D models worked really well! Also, the testing of the filter went better than expected and there were no problems with the policy. Finally, we submitted the filter to Snapchat and was accepted and published within one day!

‘Using the filter was fun. Within a few seconds I could put a PSV player next to me, on the table and even on a carpet. Everywhere I am, I can see him! I also got very nice reactions from people who don't understand this specific technique,' says Richard Coopmans -developer at Dutch Rose Media and responsible for creating this Snapchat filter.

An incredibly nice project with a very complex edge, but we're very happy with the results!