Create richer interactive AR with Adobe Aero Desktop (Beta) and Mobile 2.0

October 20, 2020

Adobe Aero mobile (iOS) is just a year old (first released at Adobe MAX 2019), and already we are seeing some mind-blowing experiences being created with it – from Don Allen III’s futuristic worlds to Adobe creative directors Vlad Petkovic and Justin Patton’s beautiful entry for the Festival of the Impossible, “My Home, My Mind”.

Now, with this new release launching at MAX, you can take your AR projects a step further and tell even more immersive stories.

In the latest release of Adobe Aero, we’ve added several significant features that will help you build richer and more complex experiences. You’ll be able to add interactivity that goes beyond images and video – making your content come to life, bringing the audience into the narrative, and providing additional information for the viewer. Here’s a quick overview of the latest release.

Go deeper with Aero for desktop

We’re thrilled to announce that Aero is coming to the desktop (Mac and Windows). The desktop app – now available as a public beta – allows for much deeper precision and more complexity. The desktop app is ideal for iOS users to edit creations in a more robust environment. (Note: an iOS device is still required to view the experience in the physical environment).

Working comfortably with more screen real estate means you have deeper narrative control, as you can see all the content that’s laid out on the canvas at one time, manage more sophisticated scenes, and make intricate design choices. You can easily assemble scene assets and precisely edit their placement in a non-AR view, either before you test them in Aero mobile or while making adjustments to colour and texture after prototyping in the real world environment on Aero mobile (iOS).

The desktop app also provides direct access to content created in other apps. Your experience on the desktop will be a preview of what you will see on mobile, so that you can get a simulated understanding of what the viewer’s experience will be like.

https://blog.adobe.com/media_b47b9a508cffd238936efdd355a41ff75db6850e.mp4

Import animated GIF or PNG sequences

Aero gives you access to interactivity and animations without the need to code. You can play animations you create (e.g. imported 3D-animated objects), add motion to static objects (e.g. edit an animation path recorded with your mobile device), or add new animations to existing 3D assets. Across desktop and mobile, you can now also import PNGs and GIFs (a huge customer request!), which makes creating 2D custom animations a breeze and means you can set 2D animations to play in your AR experience based on assigned triggers.

Multi-track animation

In response to feedback from the Aero community, we’ve also introduced the ability to add multi-track animations to existing objects that have already been brought into Aero, so that you can play them sequentially. This much requested feature is great for animating characters imported from Mixamo, for example. Aero enables you to add 3D characters with pre-recorded animations – walking, running, gesturing, etc – to your scene.

Publishing a share link now gives you the option to add a custom thumbnail and generate a QR code, which you can share or post anywhere.

Sharing a QR code makes it easier than ever to enable your audience (peers, collaborators, stakeholders or followers!) to view and interact with your Aero experiences on their own iOS device – all they need to do is direct their camera at the QR code with the Camera app open.

The ability to create a custom thumbnail, meanwhile, enables you to choose which image should represent your experience, making it faster to find the project later when continuing to edit and giving you creative control over what it will look like when you share your artwork.

Behance Discovery tab and publishing a Behance project

On iOS, Aero now features a Discovery tab that shows curated AR content published by other Aero authors. The tab takes you to a Behance gallery of inspirational experiences that you can view right in the Aero app. Tap on each project to see it in action. Also new in this release of Aero iOS is the ability to publish your Aero project directly to your Behance profile. Learn from and connect with the community – directly in Aero!

Blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds

Precision is key for building even richer and more immersive AR experiences, and you can now do this with Aero’s new desktop app. It gives you more control, enables you to create more complex scenes, and helps you really push the boundaries of what’s possible in AR. The new animation features, meanwhile, set your assets in motion and add a new level of interactivity to the experiences you create to really pull in your audience. You can also easily publish and share them and connect with fellow Aero users and discover curated content.

Give the new features a whirl, experiment and play with the latest capabilities of this exciting emerging technology. We can’t wait to see what you will create with Aero!