Put Some Heroes in a Half Shell

Arguably lead by Snap, social AR platforms have been expanding their capabilities with regard to features like body tracking and AI-based visual effects.

Full-body puppetry of a virtual character—combined with Snap's machine learning-developed ability to “erase” portions of images in Snapchat—enables a novel form of real-time social AR where users disappear entirely from the screen to appear as characters controlled by their own movements. Early examples were getting a lot of attention on social media and teasing the possibilities—the time was right to let fans become the turtles!

Starting with original models from the film, we optimized and re-textured a turtle mesh for use in real-time 3D. Social AR file size limits are famously lean, ranging from 4 to 10 megabytes, while film production assets are often several gigabytes in size.

Fitting all four turtles into one lens was a challenge as each would need their own body shape, mask, accessories, and textures. But with some extra optimization work from the team, all four characters were accessible to users.