Founded by Pierre Addoum and Guillaume Pineau-Valencienne in the summer of 2012, Bear (bear2b.com) quickly gained its reputation by offering the first augmented reality solution dedicated to the Print sector. At the end of 2016, the company had 17 employees in France, spread between Paris and Montpellier.

Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the technology that allows digital information (videos, photos, links, games, etc.) to overlap with real-world objects perceived through the camera and the screen of a smartphone.

Scanning a poster/book/magazine/catalog can significantly increase the user experience.

The demand of the general public for digital content is growing stronger, due in particular to the growing role of smartphones in our lives.

All your existing and future paper supports can be increased without modifying or degrading the visual. BEAR is convinced that paper still has a bright future ahead of it, providing a solution that enriches paper and stimulates interaction with the user.

Significantly increase user experience with a fun and effective tool.

At any time, update the digital contents linked to a printed visual without modifying it. In this context you no longer need to re-submit the application in the stores whenever you change your content.

Unlike QR Codes, the solution proposed by BEAR does not require to impose an element on the visual before printing. In addition, digital interactions that will appear on your phone or tablet screen can be changed at any time.

You therefore have maximum flexibility to set a certain number of actions, for example:

• URL link
• Social networks
• Photo
• Video or Audio,
• Call to action (phone, email, Vcard)
• 3D Objects (static or animated)

The application is mainly composed of a scanner. A click on the phone screen will launch the scanner, which automatically detects and recognizes the indexed images and overlay the previously defined interactive content (clickable button, web page, 3D, etc.).

Accessible directly online in SaaS mode (https://go.bear2b.com) the platform was designed and developed to be easy to use and to meet the expectations of people from the publishing, communication, transport, tourism and marketing industries. It brings a real comfort for the creation of digital contents and interactions, but also for the follow-up of the campaigns and the marketing analysis of the usage data.

A SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform is an on-line platform that evolves over time, enabling customers to benefit from a solution that is always at the forefront of innovation. This means that every new feature developed by BEAR will be made automatically accessible to its customers without the need for any updates, making the end-user and end-user experience much more enjoyable and intuitive.

To stimulate the download and use of your application, you can communicate on your social networks, carry out e-mailings or integrate pictograms on your paper to highlight these new interactive contents.

Bear's teams will assist you in the development of your strategy and in the definition of the most effective use cases according to your target and your universe.

Yes, white label applications are available on the App Store and Google Play.

BEAR offers an independent solution free of any obligation. A mobile site is therefore not necessary. However, it is advisable to redirect the URL button to a responsive site for optimum user comfort.

1. Welcome to the client interface

   When you log in tohttp://go.bear2b.com with your login and password, you first enter in the Dashboard section.

   

   The Dashboard allows you to measure your audience and the performance of your campaigns from the same page.

   You will see the number of downloads of the application, the volume of scans and interactions generated by your audience over a given period of time. You can refine these results by period and / or campaign

   You can also see the ranking of the targets (pages) that were scanned and the actions (buttons) that were most often triggered.

   Principles of navigation

   

   Customization options allow you to change the language, switch to full screen, change the user icon and log out of the platform.

   The help button redirects to the support page related to your current view

   User View:

   

   Dashboard> Measuring your audience
   Campaigns> Create and manage campaigns
   Multimedia Library> Store Multimedia Files

   Admin View:

   

   Dashboard> Measuring your audience
   Log> Get a detailed view of the scans and interactions
   Campaigns> Create and manage campaigns
   Multimedia Library> Store Multimedia Files
   Users> Share access with your employees
   Messages> Send push notifications to your audience
   

2. Campaigns

   A campaign is a set of target images gathered in the same group. The campaign entity can take up the targets of the same book, book, magazine, catalog, packaging, and any other campaign for editorial or marketing purposes.

   Any target image must be classified in a campaign. You can also create folders (by customer, topic, contact person, etc.) in which you will rank your campaigns.

   
   

   When you enter the campaign section, the first view displayed is the mosaic of existing campaigns with their title, cover image, and the number of targets they include. Layout options allow you to display your campaigns as a mosaic (default) or list, by creation history (default) or alphabetically. To enter a campaign, simply click on the campaign area you are interested in.

   

   Create a new campaign

   To add a campaign, click the green '+ New campaign' button, choose a name and click 'Create'.

   

   You can optionally set validity dates for your campaign, beyond which campaign images will no longer be scannable.

   You can manually enable / disable a campaign at any time.You will also find in the campaign options the elements that determine the presentation of the "On-Demand" campaigns in the mobile application. Any user can rename the campaign title and / or change its description. The title and description are the text that will appear on the representative image of the campaign in the mobile application if the campaign is displayed. Only an administrator account can choose to put a campaign on the mobile app.

   Finally, you can restrict your employees' access to a given campaign by selecting the "private campaign" option. When this option is selected, only the campaign creator and administrator profiles can see and edit the campaign.

3. Targets

   To create a target it is necessary to have previously created a campaign. Click on the campaign of your choice.

   

   Create a new target

   You must choose a name for your target. Then you can either upload a file from your computer or give the URL of an image by filling the URL field. Once you have chosen your image, you can click the "Save" button.

   After refreshing the page your target will appear on the screen with the written notice in blue "Processing in progress". The image you uploaded requires processing before being scannable, it usually takes less than 1 minute. Once the target is processed, the image quality is indicated by a color to evaluate whether your target will be recognized by the mobile application. If your target is shown in red there is a high probability that your visual will not be recognized by the App, in which case we recommend that you use another target image. Congratulations! You've created your first target!

   Targets can be created individually by uploading a single image, or grouped by uploading a pdf file. Just as for a campaign, you can set validity dates for your target, dates beyond which the target will no longer be scannable.

   

   You can manually activate / deactivate a target at any time.

4. Interactions

   The screen is divided into three areas: the right area lists all the interactions of the target you are in, the middle area displays the target to which you want to add interactions and finally the left part lists the different interactions available.

   
   

   To add an interaction simply drag and drop one of the icons located in the left column. Once the button is positioned on your target you can change its position and size by pulling one of the corners. For more precision you can also do this by manually entering the position and the size in the properties of the action. If you intend to regularly reuse an interaction with the same parameters, we advise you to take advantage of the "Mes interactions ".

   
   

   An interaction saved in this section will be applied to each new target with the same editing and positioning parameters.

   

   Editing an interaction

   Once your interaction is positioned and to the right size you can edit its parameters by clicking on the pen to the right of icon or by double clicking on it. For example, the "URL redirection" button can be edited: the URL of the page where the user of the mobile application will be redirected when it clicks on the button, and the image associated with the button.

   By default the image that will appear after a scan will be the purple URL redirect icon on gray background.

   You can choose an image in the library of existing images or upload a new image of your choice.

   You can also choose the option "no cover image" in which case nothing appears in the application but the area covered by the interaction remains clickable and starts the interaction.

   

   Instant full screen

   Instant full screen launch If you do not want to view interactions in augmented reality and prefer to launch a web page automatically after a scan, choose the "full screen instant" option. This option is only available for URL, HTML, Video, and Audio interactions.

   Enabling this mode on a specific interaction will hide all other interactions that may have been created.

5. Media library

   The contents (image, video, 3d object, etc.) associated with several interactions can be stored in the media library. No need to upload the same media file each time you want to use it on a new target. The media stored in the platform is offered as an option when you create a new button. To add a new item to the media library, simply select the media type you want before you point to the destination file.

   

   You can also choose to share it with your colleagues by activating the 'public' option. As with campaigns, you can store your media in specific folders by client, thematic, etc.

   

6. Push notifications

   BEAR messaging allows you to send notifications to your mobile audience by using the Apple Push Notification and Google Cloud Messaging services. The technical connection to these services is made during the creation of the mobile app so the Messages function in GO is ready for use. In order to send a new notification, click on the 'New message' button and fill in the header and body boxes and click the 'Send' button 'to send your message immediately or' Save 'if you want to send it later.

   You can target your audience by platform -iOS vs. Android-or campaign-only users who scanned this campaign will receive the message- and view the number of potential users affected by your message. Mobile app users will receive Notifications as soon as the sending process is complete. They will also be able to see a history of the last messages sent in the Notifications section of the app.

   

1. Creating a single target image (jpg, png)

   In order to be recognized correctly, images indexed in our databases must have a minimum size, for example, for a page size A4: 1000px height. Beyond a certain size, the impact of the resolution of the image on the recognition is zero.

   This is why a PNG image of 5000px high and weighing 10MB will not be better recognized than a 2000px image weighing 1MB. We recommend uploading images weighing between 100kB and 1MB so as not to slow down the interface.

   This is why we invite you to check the size and origin of the images before submitting them on the platform. Images from prepress or indesign streams are sometimes oversized. Web streams are perfectly suited for use in augmented reality.

   Minimalist images will be poorly recognized and poorly monitored by the mobile application. We advise to upload a target image rich in details (varied shapes, angles, texts, etc.) and color contrasts.

   Recommendation : 72dpi, color : RVB, poids : de 100ko to 1Mo

2. Creating multiple target images (pdf)

   The platform provides all the cutting and image processing, transforming a 10 page pdf file into 10 unique images indexed individually in the platform. Image processing is automatic and optimized for our platform so you do not have to worry about the size of the original PDF.

   However, make sure that you do not use a poor quality PDF (eg pixelated images) because the quality of the indexed images and the recognition would be degraded. A contrario uploader a very large pdf file will have no impact on the quality of indexed target images but will slow the platform and lengthen the processing time of the pdf.

   Caution: do not upload a file containing cut lines or a color calibration because the cutting lines will disrupt the 'signature' and the recognition of the image by the mobile application.

3. Interaction Cover Images

   The cove images that are displayed in augmented reality with the interactions are downloaded by the mobile application after the target is recognized.

   This is why it is important not to upload cover images of too large size and weight. This is even less relevant since cover images are usually displayed in small dimensions, for example at the size of a button or a logo. If the cover image is too large it will take longer to appear in the app. We recommend using cover images ranging from 10k (logos) to 100k.

   Tip, to lighten your images>https://tinypng.com/

4. Animated GIFs

   Animated GIFs will be very useful to create your increases and strengthen the immersive side of the user experience, however their weight can easily increase, so optimization is mandatory.

   If you create a cover image from a touch-up or a cut-out of the target image, we recommend starting from a 1000px target image by the largest side (1000px is also the image size which will be displayed in the platform).

   In all cases the GIF must not exceed 500x500 px 72 dpi.

   If my target image is a square (1000x1000 px) and I want to present a GIF covering the entire page, the GIF will be 500x500px, then it will have to be enlarged in the platform so that it covers all the support .

   Limit frames.

   Avoid exceeding 50 frames
   If a GIF exceeds 20 frames, check the option "disposes" on Photoshop

   
   Do not exceed 1MB to 2MB per GIF

   It's up to you to adjust the web export options to optimize rendering while maintaining image quality

5. Videos

   To be played on all phones, videos must be loaded in .MP4 format

   The videos are displayed in streaming, meaning that the video playback in the app can start quickly without the need to download all the content.

   Beware of videos that come out of post-production and that are of a very high quality but totally unusable in a mobile app: a video of one minute weighing 200Mo will not be displayed in the mobile app, even with a very good wifi connection or 4G. We recommend uploading videos that weigh between 2MB to 4MB per minute of video. The 'weight per minute' of a video is an efficient measurement criterion, simpler than bitrate or frame size

   You must load video format : .MP4 ( MP4 H.264 360p video codec, AAC 96 kbps audio codec)p

   Tip, to convert your videos if you do not have an editing tool You can use online tools like OnlineVideoConverter to correctly encode the video: CloudConverterCloudConverter

   

6. Videos on texture

   Simply activate the option by checking the "Auto play on texture" box from the edit window of the video interaction.

   After a scan, the video will be played directly, hooked to the target image. The first tap on the video will pause, the second will restart playback. At the end of the video a button "play" will appear and will play the video from the beginning. Unlike full-screen playback, which is activated by default, video on texture coexists with the other interactions of the target and in particular allows you to create a sound environment.

   We advise you to export your videos in the following format: MP4 H.264 1000px high or wide according to orientation, with a reduced bitrate to 1.

   

7. Transparent texture videos

   It is possible to delete the background color of a video on texture for an even more immersive effect. We call this "HoloBear" feature. When "Auto texture" is checked, a field allows you to add the hexadecimal code of the color to be deleted.

   Several software can recover the background color of a video. For example, in Mac OS, the digital colorimeter application will copy the hexadecimal value: just point the mouse to the desired color and press the CMD + SHIFT + C keys.

   The video should have a solid background, with no trace of folds or shades of color.

   Beware, by removing the background color, the green in the example below, any element of the same color will disappear from the video. For example, if the actor has a green habit, it will become transparent.

   

   Filming on a green background

   Here are some recommendations for recording videos to be clipped:

   - Personage filmed at the same level and at eye level

   - Preferably dark clothes

   - Green background or marked contrast between the character and the background

   - No shadow projected

   - Microphone close to the actor

8. Audio

   Same principle as the video, if only the audio is lighter. We recommend to upload mp3 files preferably, weighing between 0.5MB and 1MB per audio minute

9. 3D

   A zip file containing all the elements of the animation (model, texture, etc.). 3D objects and animations are downloaded completely before displaying in the app (unlike videos that are streamed) so it is essential to upload to the platform files that are not too large and that are downloaded by the app fast enough to ensure a good user experience.

   An animation weighing 10MB may indeed take a long time to appear in the app if the internet connection is not good, and the user to discourage before seeing the animation.

   See the next chapter for an explanation of how our 3D engine works.

The Bear augmented reality solution allows real-time display of static or animated 3D objects. This 3D engine has a constant shading display, so the 3D objects are displayed in a uniform light from any angle. It supports the use of jpg-like image textures but also png, thus allowing the display of partially transparent objects.

1. Tools to use for creating 3D content

   The creation of 3D content for use by the 3D Bear engine is done through third-party software. Many solutions exist, such as the open-source software Blender3D, but also cinema4D, 3DSmax, etc. The 3D software used must be polygonal modeler, and allow the export to the format fbx.

   The active view display setting can be set to the "constant shading" type to have a preview that matches the display in the Bear 3D engine. In addition, the creation of the textures will be done through a software of editing images like photoshop allowing the creation of files jpg and png.

   

   Here on cinema4D, the selection of the constant shading type display.

2. Constraints and 3D specificities

   General Constraints

   • Any 3D object must be of polygonal type (excluded nurbs type), and must contain only polygons with 3 or 4 sides.
   • Any 3D object must have uvw type mapping coordinates. Any other type of mapping will not be taken into account (planar, cubic, cylindrical, spherical ...).
   • Each 3D object must have an associated texture. Single objects with a single color will not be displayed correctly (gray).
   • Only the "color" base channel of the material of an object can contain the desired texture. the other channels will be ignored (no current support for reflection channels, bump, specular reflections, etc.).

   Note that for the use of png textures with transparency, it is not necessary either an alpha or transparency channel activity: the color channel with a png texture is sufficient for transparent display in Bear 3D.

   

   Here in cinema4D, a mesh object made of 3-sided polygons. The associated material has only one color channel comprising a texture. On the right, the mesh is unfolded according to the UVW coordinates embedded in the object, and the associated texture.

   • The textures are only displayed on the side of the normals of a 3D object. Thus, in the case of a plane that is desired to be visible on both sides, it will be necessary to create for example 2 planes back to back for a coherent display.
   • Textures must be square, with a maximum resolution of 1024 x 1024 px. the links to the textures must be relative and not absolute.
   
   • For a display at the center of the Bear marker, the 3D scene must be articulated around the point of origin (x: 0, y: 0, z: 0). The cameras and lights are to be avoided (the user represents the camera in augmented reality, and the lights are useless in a constant shading environment).
   • In general, it is strongly advised to optimize as much as possible the number of polygons of a scene, as well as the compression of images acting as textures. The load times in the mobile application will then be significantly reduced.

   Constraints specific to animations

   • A 3D object can be animated only with the position, rotation and scale parameters, and only from keyframes.
   • Any other type of animation will not be supported: deformer, blendmorphs, animation of dots, textures, deformations from structure bones.
   • The Bear 3D engine supports object hierarchies. An object can therefore be animated relative to another animated object relatively.
   

   Here in cinema4D, a classic hierarchy. Each object is animated relative to its parent

   • In case of scale animation, all objects in the scene must have x / y / z scale coordinates equal to 1/1/1 at the first frame of the animation.

3. Creating compatible export files

   Exporting the created 3D scene will only be done via the fbx format. The export settings must be:

   • General: "light / camera / spline" disabled.
   • Animation: "Track" activated in case of animation, other settings disabled.
   • Added: "textures and materials" enabled, "textures included" disabled
   • 

     The cinema4D export fbx panel, with the parameters required for use in Bear 3D.

   • The created fbx file must be compressed in zip format, with the textures used at the same level (in the root of the fbx, without any additional files).
   • A single final zip file is created, including all data from the 3D scene. This file will be uploaded for use in the Bear 3D engine.
   • FBX file must not exceed 50 000 polygons
   • ZIP file must not exceed 4 Mo, you can also download our example file.

4. Case Studies

   Here are some examples and tracks to explore to improve the quality of 3D content created:

   • Disappearance of an object during an animation: One can make disappear a 3D object by assigning an animation key with coordinates of scale x / y / z equal to 0/0/0.
   • In order to simulate shadows and lights on a 3D object, it may be useful to conform its texture (baking textures) by assigning it to ambient occlusion or global illumination for example.
   • In the same way it is possible to conform a dynamic animation (rebound of a cube on the ground with gravity for example). The animation will be transformed into key animation images and recognized in the 3D Bear engine.
   • Playing on scale animations can bring dynamism to the appearance of an object for example and thus simulate a rebound effect.
   • It is possible to simulate a shadow of an object on the ground by using a horizontal plane and a transparent png texture.
   • In order to optimize the number and weight of the textures, two objects can refer to the same material, but with coordinates of different textures.

5. Evolutions

   We hope that this document will allow you to create optimum content for use in the 3D Bear engine. The Bear development team is currently actively working on the development of new features for future releases. This document will be updated regularly to let you take advantage of these new features to come.

The cost of using the solution is proportional to the use that is made of it. It is first necessary to choose the support (application in white label or SDK) and then the type of subscription to access the platform that best meets your expectations and projects.

An appointment can be organized to describe the price offer.

BEAR teams often intervene on the creation of visual supports, 3D animations and the creation of 2D button skin (transparent PNG, animated GIF, etc.).

At the same time, BEAR's technical teams are working on the continuous improvement of the SaaS platform and the development of new functionalities.

Bear is today the most complete and flexible solution in the market, offering the widest range of customization and customization to its customers, while continuing to develop new options in response to their expectations.

The responsiveness of the teams and the proximity with the customers allow the startup to experience a strong growth since its creation.