Developers are already using the iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera for face capture apps

A Tumblr post today by a Taiwanese visual effects artist shows a hint of the potential impact that the iPhone X’s new True Depth camera system will have on future apps.

Elisha Hung, a visual effects artist at Moonshine Animation, which produces for Asus and MSI, captured his face with the iPhone X’s camera, and then used Xcode and Apple’s bew augmented reality framework, ARKit, to fetch data and later transform it into 3D renders.

The final result was a floating head with holes for eyes and a mouth that’s aggressively winking into empty space. It might not seem like much, but it’s an early look at the future of face-mapping apps as more developers make use of Apple’s facial recognition technology.

As another example of the cool things people are coming up with, Brad Dwyer, the founder of game company Hatchlings, 3D printed his face using raw data from Apple’s TrueDepth camera:

Here’s another scan. Cleaned up a little. Probably a better representation of what it “sees”

I should note, this is one frame from the #TrueDepth camera. You could probably sample multiple frames to build a better depth map. http://pic.twitter.com/yweJ7hBJ1U

— Brad Dwyer (@braddwyer) November 15, 2017