The progress of science and technology is really not something that ordinary people can imagine. While professional special effects artists are still ecstatic about adding the "face recognition dynamic capture" function to Adobe After Effects, the MiLook team of Modu has already upgraded the blockbuster technology and applied it to their short video application "Look", so that ordinary people can also Shoot funny special effects videos at once.
Open the "Look" application interface and you will find that this is an atypical AR product. Users can record video while adding or editing virtual elements such as animated stickers, movie filters, and weather effects to the shooting interface. At the same time, with a superior real-time tracking and recognition engine, the animated stickers in the picture will accurately respond or interact according to people's movements, expression changes, and the movement of objects.
Within 15 seconds of pressing the record button, the user can complete the production of an effect video. In the past, just adding the same "five-cent effect" to a short film in the later stage required professional animators to take at least 500 minutes.
Another major feature of the next version of the "Look" app compared to other video shooting software is its video beauty function. Ordinary video beautification is done through filters, beautifying the face at the same time, the background of the video is also blurred, the effect can refer to the circle of friends brush screen a few days ago after the beauty of the chicken ... The "appearance" is to automatically recognize the face, and then carry out targeted whitening, slimming, skin polishing and other treatments on the face.
With real-time face tracking, expression recognition algorithms, real-time graphics rendering and interaction engines and other technical barriers, the "look" app has greatly reduced the threshold for the creation of short videos, and ordinary users who used to only watch PGC videos can now "play" by themselves.
Four months after going online, in the absence of any paid promotion, the installed capacity of "appearance" has been quite considerable, and the user reviews in major application markets are also five-star. In addition to the viral transmission attributes of the product itself, Meipai's recommendation of it is also indispensable. As the first partner invited by meipai open platform, the topic activity related to the "look" app once detonated the short video community with nearly 200 million users.
The entry point of the 1.0 version of the "Look" app is the video selfie app, so the initial active users are mainly young women and children. With the launch of the object tracking function in version 2.0, the use of the product has been extended to all corners of life, and the user's creative space has also been greatly expanded, and more and more male users have begun to become loyal fans of "looks", using it to "shoot 1000 kinds of life".
Regarding the original intention of creating a "look", CEO Liu Zongkai frankly said: "Like the friends around us, my wife and I usually like to record the bits and pieces of life in the form of short films, including the baby's growth experience, the small luck during the journey, the funny daily life of the pet and so on. And whenever we try to polish the video perfectly and then send a circle of friends, we find it more difficult. When I was born as a product manager, I often think about what kind of product can make ordinary users, like P pictures, easily complete the operation of beautifying, adding stickers and filters, or labeling in the video? ”
"It wasn't until a year ago that I met this group of technical boys and doctors in the current team that this question that puzzled me for a long time was answered." Zong Kai continued, "In terms of business model, in the domestic market, we are more inclined to use props and stickers as the carrier to carry out commercial cooperation, including cooperation for games or film and television dramas. In overseas markets, "Looks" will use paid functions and paid props to achieve profitability in the future. ”
As for the strategic goal of the brand, Zong Kai introduced: "By 2020, the global AR market size will reach 120 billion yuan. At present, the AR products on the market are mainly head-mounted display devices, which are far from ordinary consumers. MiLook's long-term goal is to popularize AR technology to mobile phones, and after polishing the "appearance", we also intend to launch more fun and grounded AR products based on the team's technical advantages.
The MiLook team base is in Shanghai and has another subsidiary in South Korea. From Apple to Amazon, CEO Liu Zongkai has accumulated nearly 10 years of product design and construction experience. Several PhDs in the underlying engine team have rich 2B experience, and have provided technical guidance for a number of well-known games, web products, and smart TVs in the past, and it is precisely because of their joining that MiLook has successfully obtained multiple patents in the fields of face recognition, human-computer interaction and tracking.
Founded in 2015, the MiLook team has completed an angel round of funding and is currently looking for a Series A. For interviews or cooperation, please contact MiLook Marketing Department, Email: [email protected]