How is Adobe trying to integrate augmented reality experiences? – Adweek

Adobe wants to make augmented reality available to the masses.

At its annual MAX event this week in Los Angeles, the company introduced a new tool that, he hopes, will help to democratize AR creation across multiple devices, allowing artists and designers to create their own. own experiences. The tool, called Project Aero, was initially revealed as part of the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. It is now open to the private beta and includes both AR creation and content delivery capabilities.

Although the RA has been a place of experimentation for some time, technology has largely been limited to technology companies, brands and agencies creating experiences on smartphones, tablets and even some headsets. However, with Project Aero, Adobe is trying to pull itself together with more familiar design tools, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, and is using similar concepts to offer large scale AR solutions. Sensei, the company's artificial intelligence platform, is also integrated to identify and create lighting, emotions and an awareness of space.

According to Stefano Corazza, Augmented Reality Manager at Adobe, creating AR experiences is much more than creating a shoe or anything else in AR; It's about "reinventing the retail experience". He added that the company began by involving big brands in the hope that the adoption could affect small businesses and individuals.

"It's a bit of the current of democratization," said Corazza. "Some ice breaks, then goodness spreads to everyone. We would like the benefits to spread as quickly as possible. "

For starters, Adobe collaborates with companies such as Apple and Pixar, while using brands such as Adidas to help them create compelling examples of how RA can be used in real-life situations.

Adobe has also shown how its platform can create RA experiences from two-dimensional art. For example, it took an illustration and fragmentation of its layers to create a kind of tunnel allowing users to discover the art using their phone. There are also tools such as proximity triggers that allow objects to animate when a user gets close enough. (Adidas uses it to let a shoe seem to turn in the air and break with labels for each topic.)

According to Simone Cesano, senior director of design at Adidas, the brand wants to let the creativity of its designers express itself differently and allow customers to use in-store technology to interact with products and even to design their own. . For starters, it is important to test the addition of RA to some retail outlets, both for AR shoe design and to explain the equipment used.

"As you move to AR, the digital and physical retail channels are beginning to merge," he said.

According to Scott Belsky, director of products at Adobe and author of several books on creativity and innovation, it is interactivity that will help advance the new medium.

"When I think about RA, all that is not animated will feel boring," he said. "We do not expect the chairs to move and buzz, blink and blink, but we expect everything to be interactive."

Although the RA may seem new to both individuals and brands, many industry professionals are trying to pre-empt the broader adoption that is expected when RA becomes available on the mobile web rather than in apps. This technology, called WebXR, was created by both Google and Mozilla to enable the AR capabilities of their browser.

Adobe is not the only company to bet on the RA. Earlier this week, Jaunt, a San Francisco-based virtual reality production company, announced plans to lay off a large number of its employees while focusing more on RA.

"We believe that these changes will allow us to focus on the innovation and value of products that will continue to be at the forefront of the immersive sector and generate the highest value for the company to long term, "wrote Jaunt in an article about the changes.

Artists interested in new mediums also experiment with AR. Estella Tse, known for her virtual reality paintings with a program called Tilt Brush, said she's also thinking about creating narrative narratives in AR that makes the experience more interactive. As a Chinese-American, Tse said that she was thinking about how to express her dual identity in a dual reality – both RA and real life – and decided to create a true clay sculpture completing a component RA. The result was a bust of her head as a gallery piece accompanied by a drawing representing her dragon, which she created in virtual reality then transferred to AR.

For his project, Tse also shared the text between AR and real life, forcing the viewer to use both to read the quote, since half already existed in each world: "You spend so much time pretending to be in the world. be someone else that you completely forget what that is. be yourself."

"I wanted to do something that contrasted what exists in AR and what existed in real life," she said. "And I think it was a very good case of use to mix these realities. The part could not exist only in AR, nor in a physical space either. "

Because creating in RA requires the use of software and traditional artists were not familiar with those like Unity, Tse explained that many of his fellow artists were worried about trying it. To solve this problem, she tries to make it easier to create in AR because developers do not have code, simplifying what developers create and for which artists want to use the technology.

According to Jamie Myrold, Adobe's vice president of design, partnerships between designers and more technical staff will be more critical than in the past. She said designers need to start thinking more spatially now.

"When we look at the idea of ​​spatial design, I think some of the things we see are still something new," she said. "And I do not think we really pierced the knot to know where that will take us."