The story behind ARToken

How it all began

The Cappasity story began when a team of professionals with a strong record in 3D gaming participated in a project which required a large number of 3D models. To the team’s surprise, the creation of a single game character took up to two weeks. In order to facilitate the process and make it cheaper the team designed a prototype of a 3D scanner. Soon it became clear that 3D content production and integration could be deployed in more industries than just gaming: engineering, the automotive sector, trading, etc. This is when Cappasity was established, with the aim to develop an easy and a fast platform for 3D content mass-production. 

In 2013, being a young and ambitious company, we seriously examined the retail and fashion industries, as this market was starving for new AR/VR and 3D visualization solutions for their businesses. E-commerce is the ideal medium for such innovations: consumers enjoy trying on clothes in online stores before buying, studying products closely, and using their tablets to see if a chosen piece of furniture fits into the bedroom, etc. Willing to take a chance, we decided to tap into this emerging industry, which demonstrates an extraordinary growth rate. Until recently, 3D technology was time-consuming and not suitable for mass production.For instance, 3D scanners were (and still are) rather expensive and the creation of a single 3D image took up to 30 minutes. That didn’t meet the fast-paced requirements of fashion and online retail when new catalogues contain thousands of items and catalogue updates occur every two to three months. Moreover, previously available 3D scanning technologies were not tailored for the specifics of fashion merchandise. They failed to capture textures such as transparent elements, glistening surfaces or black matted surfaces. The resulting 3D image files were heavy, slowed webpage download and negatively affected the view time.

Cappasity solutions

Cappasity set its sights on developing tools to revolutionize AR/VR and 3D technologies — and succeeded. We introduced a professional 3D digitizing solution comprising:

 • Easy 3D Scan® software, which generates a 3D image in two to three minutes and is capable of digitizing thousands of items per day.

 • 3D View — a new format, revolutionizing the concept of 3D digitizing. You used to have to take 32–60 pictures, process them manually one at a time, and then find a way to embed them. If 32 pictures were taken, the end product looked Cappasity background Cappasity: how it all began White Paper v.1.0 August, 25 2017 21 more like a slideshow. This format does not overload a website with heavy traffic: The download rate is four times faster on average, as we are streaming the data and enable users to interact with an object if only 30% of it is downloaded. 

• 3D Hologram — a new format, compatible with various AR/VR devices.

 • API used for synchronization with product catalogs: We implement Cappasity tools for customers’ e-stores; Additionally, Cappasity tools show better compatibility with various browsers than most comparable alternatives.

 • Cappasity.AI to analyze customer interaction with 3D content and provide a customer interest heatmaps for each product. 

What has already been achieved

We deliver a 3D digitizing solution that has become easier, faster and much more friendly than could be imagined a couple of years ago. Over more than four years on the market, we have attracted the attention of leading brands: We established relationships with large merchants and fashion brands, such as TSUM, Jazmin Chebar, Jake, PrestaShop to name a few. Top luxury retailers have announced conversion increase by 10-40% after implementing 3D imaging, and 91% of customers say they want to have the option to have a 360-degree view of products. Today, our platform provides more than 700,000 views per month and we are working on new features and a mobile 3D-imaging app. 

Cappasity graduated from the Plug and Play Retail (Sunnyvale) Batch 7 accelerator. It was selected to join the Dec 2017 Batch of the Lafayette Plug and Play acceleration program in Paris and attracted $1.8m from VCs. We also host AR/VR/3D events in our office in Santa Clara inviting specialists from all kinds of industries including, of course, AR/VR and gaming. The events have grown very fast, attracting people from tech companies and VR startups. 

What will be achieved

As an ambitious team, we see the overwhelming potential our technology can bring to the AR/VR industry, but also, we must not overstate the opportunities our platform will create for mass AR/VR/3D content production if shared with the community. We will provide developers our SDK so they can build their own apps on top of it, and we are hard at work on the Unity plugin release for direct embedding of 3D content into the AR/VR environment. So, we are ambitious enough to bring our experience and technology to the inception of a decentralized AR/VR ecosystem for 3D content exchange. We’ll address the AR/VR/3D content demand with an AR/VR Ecosystem that makes 3D modeling of real objects easy for everyone and brings the AR/VR community together for a brighter AR/VR future.