Introducing Adobe Aero: Step into a New Reality

We built Adobe Aero with creatives, for creatives

Already, our work with artists in the early stages of Aero has given us a glimpse of its potential to broaden creative expression. During Aero’s private beta, which launched at Adobe MAX last year, we received strong participation from thousands of users within our creative community. We also launched the Adobe AR Residency program to work in collaboration with our creative community to build the best tool for the people who will use it. Throughout the program, we invited artists to pursue their wildest AR dreams using Aero, and to provide feedback directly with our product team to shape the tool.

Our collaboration with those involved in the private beta was foundational in shaping Aero’s development – from its UI and design to features and capabilities. Here are some highlights of Aero features available today:

• Intuitive authoring – Aero doesn’t require any coding – it’s intuitive without sacrificing quality of the final result. Build AR experiences with a visual UI, and step-by-step instructions will take you through creating your first AR scene.
• Animation – Use your hands and your device to place objects in space, shape their paths, and add triggers so viewers can interact with your objects.
• Assets at your fingertips – Hundreds of free starter assets available right in the app, plus the ability to import a broad set of 2D and 3D file formats including vector graphics, Adobe Photoshop files, OBJ, FBX, Collada, glTF, and many more.
• Easy publishing and sharing – Release your project into the world by sharing it directly on social or sending the experience to others via the Aero app.

What will designers do with Aero?

Digital is no longer confined to a single screen – it’s permeating throughout physical spaces and the real world. AR can free us from boundaries of the screen and transform any environment to a digital stage. For the last two years, we’ve seen some amazing artists use immersive media to bring “impossible” visions to life at our Festival of the Impossible (FOI). The work has been deeply emotional and engaging, blending reality with the surreal in innovative, unexpected ways.

For example, Gabe Barcia-Colombo, mixed-media artist, Adobe AR Resident and FOI participant, recently updated his project, “Descent,” with Aero. Using AR, it allows visitors to look inside the dreams—and hopes and fears—of avatars he developed from scans of real people.

“The thing I like about working in interactive media is that you can bring things off the screen and into the real world, and you can really cause this amazing effect in people where they don’t realize how this is possible,” says Gabe.