Creating Your First AR Filter in Snapchat Lens Studio

Every day, more than 250 million people play with a Snapchat Lens. Some of those Lenses — the ones that give you dog ears, rainbow mouths, or cartoon eyes — were created not by Snapchat employees, but by students and independent creators using a free tool called Lens Studio. Snap Inc. opened Lens Studio to the public in 2017 so that anyone could build AR filters. By 2023, over 300,000 creators had published more than 2.5 million community Lenses. In this lesson, you'll learn how Lens Studio works and how to build your first simple face effect.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to: • Describe what Snapchat Lens Studio is and who can use it. • Name and explain the key panels in the Lens Studio interface. • Understand how face tracking lets the app know where to attach effects. • Outline the steps to create a simple face Lens and submit it for publishing.

Lens Studio is a free desktop application made by Snap Inc. (the company that makes Snapchat). It lets you design augmented reality experiences — called Lenses — that run on Snapchat and Snap Camera. Lenses can: • Track faces and add 2D or 3D objects to them (hats, glasses, makeup effects) • Change your background to a custom scene • Detect surfaces like a table or floor and place objects on them • Respond to mouth opening, eyebrow raises, or hand gestures Lens Studio runs on Windows and Mac and requires no coding experience to start — although it does support JavaScript for creators who want to add custom behavior. You can download it for free at lensstudio.snapchat.com.

When you first open Lens Studio, you'll see several panels arranged around the screen: • Scene panel (center): The 3D viewport where you see your Lens preview. You can see a virtual head model here so you can see exactly how an effect will look on a real face. • Objects panel (left): A list of every element in your Lens scene — the face tracker, any images or 3D models, script components. Think of it as the ingredient list for your Lens. • Inspector panel (right): When you click an object in the Objects panel, this panel shows all its settings — position, size, rotation, material, and more. • Assets panel (bottom): Where you store and manage all the files in your project — images, 3D meshes, audio clips, and scripts. • Preview panel: A live preview of what your Lens looks like when running, using either a video file or your webcam.

The most popular type of Lens is a face Lens. It works because of Snapchat's face-tracking technology, which detects 68 specific points (called landmarks) on your face: the corners of your eyes, the tip of your nose, your mouth corners, your jawline, and more. In Lens Studio, the Face Tracker component is a built-in object that constantly updates the position of all those landmarks in real time. When you attach a 3D object (like a pair of cartoon ears) to the Face Tracker and set its position relative to the top of the head, the ears automatically move every time your head moves — because they're attached to the tracker, not to the screen. You can also use blend shapes — pre-built face animations in 3D models — that respond to expressions. A blend shape set up for 'mouth open' will make a character's mouth open whenever your mouth opens.

When your Lens is ready, here's the publishing flow: 1. Click 'Publish' in Lens Studio. You'll need a free Snapchat account. 2. Add a name, icon, and preview video for your Lens. The preview video is the clip Snapchat shows people when they browse Lenses. 3. Set visibility: 'Community' (anyone on Snapchat can find it), 'Unlisted' (only people with your Snapcode link can use it), or 'Hidden' (only you). 4. Submit for review. Snap's team checks that Lenses follow their community guidelines — no offensive content, no realistic violence, no impersonation of real people. 5. Once approved (usually within 24 to 48 hours), you'll receive a unique Snapcode — a scannable image that launches your Lens instantly. You can then share your Snapcode as an image on any platform, embed it in a school project, or print it on a poster.