Perfect Corp.’s Fashion Push Hits the Wrist with Virtual Watch Try-on – WWD

Perfect Corp. helped make virtual makeover a must-have feature for beauty, beauty Brands and now app maker YouCam want to do the same with fashion, starting with accessories.

The augmented reality developer made its intentions clear at this week’s CES, where it showcased a new virtual experiment for wristwatches. This sale follows the launch of eyeglasses and earrings in June 2021.

What looked like a test of new categories last year now looks like an expansion strategy. According to the company, brands like Gucci have already adopted the feature for luxury eyewear, seemingly validating the move to fashion, and the latest update takes it even further by taking the experience beyond the mold. face. The effort and investment to make the watch experience work, with the same quality as YouCam’s digital innovations, is geared towards a higher priority than a pet project.

Of course, AR for glasses, earrings, watches and other products already exists. But the experience varies widely, from the cartoonish aesthetic to the erratic motion.

Improving that sounds simple, but real development is a complex business. Give beauty, beauty AR professionals, wrist and hand is new territory. Wayne Liu, senior vice president and general manager at Perfect Corp., explains that mapping and tracking faces are easier because they have more physical landmarks or distinct features than a desk hand. The team had to create a new tool and method, and the work led to AgileHand, an artificial intelligence-based tool. Technology has advanced hand tracking capabilities.

Now, Liu believes the technology can unlock even more accessories.

“We announced eyewear last year and then we’ll go into jewelry,” Liu told WWD. “It’s not just limited to your face or your hair. Anything you can wear on your wrist, watch, ring, bracelet – it’s all coming, because we have this AgileHand Technology. ”

Using a physical rendering of a 3D hand model, data scientists trained the system to understand a range of gestures, movements, and other variables, such as skin tone, texture, and size hands and fingers. Tools like Advanced Ambient Lighting join the mix, and in general, they make test sets look more realistic. Watches can be sized to fit the wrist and rotate naturally with the arm as it moves or rotates, while also reflecting differences in ambient light. Just like the real world.

It’s easy to see how the team’s beautification experience informed the project. In the physical world, ambient light can change the way cosmetics look, so the YouCam app’s virtual makeup adapts to those conditions as well. The company also offers skin analysis, which provides a basic understanding of natural skin tone and texture.

For the beauty sector, augmented reality has become important, driving brands like Estée Lauder, MAC Cosmetics, Madison Reed, Benefit, Bobby Brown, Fenty and many more to look to Perfect Corp. To provide. So are major tech platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, and Google.

The list of companies overlaps with Modiface, a beauty AR competitor owned by L’Oréal that works with some of the same companies, as well as others. Between these two main rivals, there are a lot of virtual lipstick marks to revolve around.

Partnerships can be important to Perfect Corp. in many different ways. The company’s fashion breakthrough might not have happened without them.

“Some of our beauty companies are part of a fashion house or part of a large corporation, with both the fashion and beauty sectors. So that’s why it’s easier for us to enter the market – because the same team handles both,” Liu said. “They kept asking us if we had anything on the fashion side.”

The questions are not surprising, given the recent hype. This concept, which re-imagines the Internet as a hyper-connected 3D environment, sets off a race among all sorts of brands to launch immersive experiences and virtualized products. Even Perfect Corp. also considers this watch a “metaverse ready solution” for luxury timepieces. Until a future version of the web comes out, users will be able to see an ever-growing list of jewelry and other fashion accessories. One day, options may even include AR clothing.

There was nothing to discuss with Liu. He admits that trying on virtual clothes is much more difficult. But he believes everything is worth exploring, especially if it means more data points creating a comprehensive, 360 view of the consumer.

“We can look into your eyes, and maybe the makeup you’re wearing, and then we can recommend the right glasses,” he adds. “In the end, everything will come together. So we’re going to look at the person, instead of looking at, ‘OK, this is the makeup.’ ‘This is leather.’ ‘These are eyeglasses.’

“We can look at the whole person and then make the best recommendation.”