Snapchat will let creators make LiDAR lenses for iPhone 12 Pro

Folks who make augmented reality lenses on Snapchat will soon have another powerful tool at their disposal: the LiDAR scanner on iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. Snap has rolled out a Lens Studio update that offers lens creators a much broader canvas. As such, Snapchat will be one of the first apps to tap into the scanner.

The scanner can capture a metric scale mesh of the environment, which lets the Snapchat camera gain a deeper understanding of the geometry of objects and surfaces. Snapchat says creatives can tap into the iPhone 12 Pro's A14 Bionic chip and Apple's ARKit tech to render thousands of augmented reality objects in real time.

Version 3.2 of Lens Studio includes an interactive preview mode to provide an idea of how the LiDAR lenses work, even before the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max start shipping. Creators can also preview their LiDAR lenses in the Snapchat app if they have the most recent iPad Pro.

Snapchat using LiDAR for augmented reality lenses (Snap)