The holiday season, with its festive lights, magic tales, and cozy gatherings, is the perfect time for brands, developers, and agencies to think outside of the giftbox and weave the magic of WebAR with reality. 

This year, 8th Wall introduced powerful new tools and updates to our platform that enable developers to make the holidays even more magical by creating immersive, imaginative interactions. From transforming the skies to placing WebAR in the palm of your hand, there's a whole new dimension of interaction and creativity you can unleash. To celebrate the season, we’ve crafted a few examples of how you can make the holiday season unforgettable using the tools we released this year. Let’s dive into how you can make this holiday season unforgettable. 

Ask Santa Anything: Sky Effects + World Tracking with Inworld AI 
We kicked off the year with the announcement that Sky Effects and World Tracking can now be integrated to transform the entire world into a canvas for AR, a first in the industry. Use these two fields together, developers no longer have to choose between creating something in the sky or on a surface. 

Imagine a Holiday experience where the sky and world before the user come alive with holiday magic. Now, combine it with the new GenAI Modules to create an experience with interactive elements that transform  in response to user interaction. By merging these two technologies, developers can create a personalized experience that speaks to each user. 

Our ‘Ask Santa Anything’ experience demonstrates this beautifully, combining Sky Effects and World Tracking with the Inworld AI Integration Module to bring the joy of Santa's visit into any space. Audiences can see Santa appear in the sky and land in the world in front of them to start an interactive experience with Santa. It’s a perfect example of how you can turn the entire user environment into a canvas for your AR creativity, with Santa engaging in meaningful, realistic conversations that leave users amazed. 

Niantic Holiday Card: Build personalized experiences with 8th Wall’s GenAI Modules 
2023 marked the introduction of our GenAI Modules, integrating Generative AI with WebAR. Developers can now create dynamic, responsive AR experiences without having to worry about setting up the tedious backend work. Alongside the Inworld AI Integration Module, we introduced 8th Wall’s GenAI Module built on Open AI which allows developers to build 8th Wall projects that use Open AI’s ChatGPT or DALL-E tools to create dynamic and interactive experiences. 

For the holidays, we combined Image Targets and the 8th Wall GenAI Module to create the Niantic Holiday Card. With this experience, users can create perfect, personalized greeting cards. Their creative prompts dynamically change the background scene, transforming a simple greeting card into a one of a kind experience. With GenAI, each experience is distinct, ensuring a one-of-a-kind creation that captures the magic and individuality of the holiday season.  

Take an ‘Elfie: Build high-fidelity holiday experiences with 8th Wall’s Enhanced Face Effects  
Throughout the year, we announced a complete refresh to our Face Effects tools, including new attachment points, face morphing toggles, enhanced face tracking, and even new ear attachment points to allow for high-fidelity AR transformations. With these enhancements, developers can create holiday campaigns where users see themselves as elves, reindeer, or even animated snowmen. These improvements mean that WebAR filters are now more realistic and immersive than ever, perfect for social media campaigns or interactive holiday greetings.

With these features, we created ‘Take an Elfie’, a charming WebAR experience powered by thes enhanced Face Effects. Transform into a jolly elf in an instant – complete with playful elf ears, a snug holiday hat, and North Pole-worthy makeup. Dive into this festive adventure, capture your Elfie, and share the holiday spirit with friends and family. 

Holiday Hands: Create Interactive experience with all-new Hand Tracking
We also expanded our Human AR suite of tools this year and introduced our Hand Tracking feature that gives users to create experiences that allow you to use the hands, wrists, and fingers together to create an interactive experience. This release opens up a realm of possibilities for natural and intuitive engagement within WebAR. Imagine holiday campaigns where users can reach out and virtually interact with festive elements, like decorating an AR Christmas tree by placing ornaments and lights with their hands or drawing festive scenes in the air.

To celebrate this release, we created a Holiday Hands experience that combines physics and Hand Tracking to make a simple interactive game that lets audiences take their mitten covered hand and push around fun 8th Wall themed ornaments. The potential for creating engaging, memorable, and interactive holiday campaigns with Hand Tracking is immense, offering a new way to experience the joy and wonder of the season.

Celebrate the holidays with 8th Wall’s latest features
As we wrap up the year, we’re excited to see developers, brands, and agencies use these tools this holiday season and next year to create memorable campaigns.. Whether it’s crafting magical winter wonderlands in AR or helping customers find the perfect gift through high-fidelity personal try on experiences, the possibilities are as long as Santa’s list. 

Explore our latest features and give these holiday experiences a try to get your creative ideas flowing. If you’re feeling inspired, join our new 8th Wall Holiday Developer Challenge and build your own Holiday experiences.

New to 8th Wall? Start building your own magical holiday experiences with a 14-day free trial.  We can’t wait to see how you use WebAR to bring joy and innovation to all this holiday season!