Snapchat brings Landmarkers to India, announces Lens Studio 2.1: All you need to know

At its Partner Summit in Los Angeles in April this year, Snapchat took its augmented reality game to the next level with the **announcement of 'Landmarkers'** . Landmarkers are essentially a set of lenses aimed at breathing new life into some of the world’s most famous locations. The lenses till now worked on structures like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Flatiron building in New York, and the Capitol in Washington DC, Buckingham Palace in London. Now, however, Landmarkers is in India as well. You will see the Gateway of India and Taj Mahal dance and do the googly eyes too! [caption id=“attachment_7232301” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”]  Snapchat Landmarkers is now in India.[/caption]

Snapchat Landmarkers

Still confused what Landmarkers does? It’s basically a Snapchat lens that transforms famous landmarks into animated characters. For instance, you can use the lens to make the Eiffel Tower throw up rainbows, make confetti pop from the top of the Capitol building. And now you will be able to see the Gateway of India wearing a flower tiara while a wavy ribbon (sporting the colours of the Indian flag no less) swoops through the entrance. via GIPHY

Snapchat Lens Studio 2.1

And how are these Landmarkers created? That is thanks to Snapchat’s Lens Studio. Earlier this year, Snapchat announced the v2.0 of the free desktop app, which came with a revamped systems for rendering 2D images and text to the screen. This allowed 2D elements to automatically adapt to different screen resolutions and Snapchat UI, which means, you and I could participate in making AR lenses for Snapchat. Now, Snapchat has once again upgraded the platform to Lens Studio 2.1, which come with new features like six new templates, fourteen new Landmarkers spread across the globe, including the two in India, and additional tools that support an even wider range of creators. via GIPHY The new templates in Lens Studio 2.1 include: • Face In Video: Track your face onto a video. • Portrait Particles: Jazz things up with customised particles that segment behind the user’s head – decorate with headers, footers, and post-effects. • Countdown: Ready, set, customise! Create Lenses that count down to specific dates and add celebratory 3D hats and glasses. • Skeletal: Track 2D images to heads, necks, shoulders, elbows, and hands to create sweet joint collaborations. • Hair colour: Modify your hair colour with fresh styles and tones from root to tip. • Make-up: Put your face on the easy way with AR lip gloss, blush, eyeshadow and more. [caption id=“attachment_7234071” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”]  Lens Studio 2.1[/caption] Additionally, if you download Lens Studio for the first time, you will now see a new interactive tour that breaks down Lens creation step-by-step so even first-time users can use it. And for existing users of the platform, Snapchat says it has added start screen content that highlights new templates and features and showcases Lenses from the community. Also, Lens Studio Templates are now on GitHub, and creators can add their own, too. Search for and use the “lens-studio” tag so others can discover your work.