The new TrueDepth camera in iPhone X made possible not only Face ID technology, but also Animoji animated emoticons. The technology itself may not be the most breakthrough, but it is definitely memorable and unique. However, it turned out that the development of Animoji was much more complex and time-consuming than it might seem.
Our colleagues at Wired have figured it out. They write the following:
If you trace the origins of new technologies available to the public, usually (but not always!), Paths lead to boring laboratories with recent university graduates. In the case of Animoji, we are talking about research that was conducted about 10 years ago at a couple of prestigious technical universities in Europe.
In particular, Mark Pauley, co-founder of Faceshift, took part in the developments in question. This motion capture technology company Apple acquired in 2015.
It turns out that since 2015 Apple I have been interested in this topic, and the release of Animoji became possible only thanks to research done ten years ago.