As users’ aesthetic preferences continue to evolve, “natural, authentic, and comprehensive” is becoming the new direction for portrait enhancement. Instead of the visibly retouched look once sought after, users now favor a seamless, true-to-life appearance. They care about the harmony of facial features, skin texture, and body shape as a whole, while also seeking more varied, personalized ways to express themselves visually.

To respond to these market changes and help partners better meet user needs, Faceunity has launched AR Video Effects SDK v9.0.0. With comprehensive upgrades across three core areas—natural skin enhancement, precise reshaping, and creative assets—the new version helps customers create a more appealing and competitive AI portrait enhancement experience.

Expanded Skin Enhancement Features

Recreate Natural Portrait Texture from Head to Toe

As authenticity becomes a mainstream aesthetic preference, users want more than to “look better”: they want to bring out their beauty while retaining their individual features.

In response, Faceunity has upgraded the skin enhancement system in AR Video Effects SDK v9.0.0. The new facial fullness feature uses AI to analyze facial contours and the interplay of light and shadow. It precisely identifies areas prone to appearing hollow—including the cheeks, areas around the eyes and nose, nasolabial folds, and corners of the mouth—and enhances facial dimension and fullness for a naturally youthful look.

The newly released full-body skin smoothing feature covers the face as well as the arms, legs, back, and other body areas, enabling intelligent skin optimization across the whole body. Built on a high-precision skin segmentation algorithm, it preserves authentic texture details while refining skin appearance, creating a more consistent look across the face and body.

Whether in close-up shots or full-body scenes, Faceunity AR Video Effects SDK delivers more delicate, natural portrait skin enhancement and a visual experience closer to unretouched skin.

Expanded Face and Body Reshaping

Support Personalized Aesthetic Expression

As aesthetic styles become more diverse, each person defines beauty differently. Standardized, one-size-fits-all enhancement increasingly fails to reflect users’ distinctive qualities. People want more nuanced, personalized controls to create a look that matches their own aesthetic preferences.

To address increasingly specific aesthetic needs, AR Video Effects SDK v9.0.0 introduces several fine-grained reshaping features. The new pupil size adjustment precisely identifies the pupil area and produces natural enlargement or reduction, making the eyes appear more expressive and lively.

The breast enhancement feature further refines body-shaping controls. Using body keypoint technology, it naturally optimizes body contours and enhances a subject’s visual presence while maintaining a realistic appearance.

From subtle changes in eye expression to full-body proportions, multi-level, precise reshaping gives users ample room for visual self-expression. It also helps partners expand their portrait enhancement feature sets and create distinctive experiences that users will enjoy.

New Creative Assets

Inspire More Engaging Content

Beyond new features, a rich and continually updated asset library is also important for increasing user engagement and product appeal.

Version 9.0.0 adds multiple recommended makeup looks. By combining beauty effects, themed makeup, and filters, users can easily create a range of styles.

The premium sticker library has also grown, with more than 20 assets tailored to aesthetic preferences in different regions worldwide. Drawing on trending topics, holidays, local cultures, and more, they offer creative inspiration and engaging interactive options, helping platforms sustain engagement and long-term growth among global users.

In-House Technology Foundation

Powering Leading Real-Time Portrait Enhancement

These new features and experience upgrades are built on the deep integration of Faceunity’s in-house AI portrait technology and comprehensive engineering system.

AR Video Effects SDK integrates core algorithms including advanced, high-precision portrait segmentation, AI-powered analysis, and face and body keypoint recognition. Together with an in-house high-performance rendering engine, they enable both accuracy and natural-looking portrait processing while ensuring smooth, stable real-time performance.

Version 9.0.0 has now been adapted for all device models, with a particular focus on performance compatibility and runtime optimization for lower-end devices, ensuring a smooth and stable experience across hardware configurations. It also fully supports mainstream operating systems and platforms, including HarmonyOS NEXT, iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Web, Unity, Flutter, and Electron, helping customers reduce implementation costs, shorten development cycles, and accelerate product launches and deployment at scale.

With robust real-time AI portrait enhancement technology and extensive global service experience, Faceunity AR Video Effects SDK is widely used in markets including China, North America, Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, and the Middle East. Products it serves include leading Chinese live-streaming platforms Huajiao and Huya; Josh, described as India’s “TikTok”; MeetMe, a leading U.S. social app for meeting new people; social live-streaming app SuperLive; South Korea’s Aili Live Assistant; and global mobile video calling app Tango.

Its rich real-time interaction capabilities and wide range of effects help customers quickly create entertaining, immersive experiences, increase user participation and time spent, boost content-sharing activity, and drive traffic conversion and business value. To date, the SDK has been called more than 100 billion times in total.

Going forward, Faceunity will continue to advance the integration of AI and real-time imaging, driving portrait enhancement toward greater authenticity, precision, and personalization while helping global partners unlock new value in the AI imaging industry.