iPhone 8 to feature Animoji, send 3D animated emoji based off your facial expressions

We are continuing to dig through the leaked iOS 11 GM firmware. We’ve found a brand new feature for the iPhone 8 called ‘Animoji’, which uses the 3D face sensors to create custom 3D animated emoji based on the expressions you make into the camera.

Users will be able to make Animoji of unicorns, robots, pigs, pile of poo and many more.  Full gallery below …

In the iOS 11 code, Animoji are described as ‘custom animated messages that use your voice and reflect your facial expressions’.

Users create them from within the Messages app on an iPhone 8; it appears the feature will be exclusive to the OLED phone as it relies on the face-tracking 3D sensor hardware.

Apple has a wide range of 3D emoji models included in the build, from chickens to dogs to foxes.

They use the iconic art style of the 2D iOS emoji set but have been beautifully recreated in 3D so they can be used to generated animated videos on the fly.

See them in the gallery below.

There is also a heart asset model which will be used in conjunction with the ‘puppets’ above, to add to the animation.

A separate asset highlights the variety of expressions the iPhone 8 will be able to detect. Animoji will be customized by the left and right eyebrows, cheeks, raising the chin, opening or squinting eyes, moving jaw, lips, as well as mouth movements like frowning and smiling.