Book Image

Augmented Reality with Unity AR Foundation

By : Jonathan Linowes
2 (1)
Book Image

Augmented Reality with Unity AR Foundation

2 (1)
By: Jonathan Linowes

Overview of this book

Augmented reality applications allow people to interact meaningfully with the real world through digitally enhanced content. The book starts by helping you set up for AR development, installing the Unity 3D game engine, required packages, and other tools to develop for Android (ARCore) and/or iOS (ARKit) mobile devices. Then we jump right into the building and running AR scenes, learning about AR Foundation components, other Unity features, C# coding, troubleshooting, and testing. We create a framework for building AR applications that manages user interaction modes, user interface panels, and AR onboarding graphics that you will save as a template for reuse in other projects in this book. Using this framework, you will build multiple projects, starting with a virtual photo gallery that lets you place your favorite framed photos on your real-world walls, and interactively edit these virtual objects. Other projects include an educational image tracking app for exploring the solar system, and a fun selfie app to put masks and accessories on your face. The book provides practical advice and best practices that will have you up and running quickly. By the end of this AR book, you will be able to build your own AR applications, engaging your users in new and innovative ways.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
1
Section 1 – Getting Started with Augmented Reality
5
Section 2 – A Reusable AR User Framework
8
Section 3 – Building More AR Projects

Specifying the Planets project

We are going to build a planet information app that allows users to scan planet cards to visualize a 3D model of each planet in the Solar System. Imagine this being part of a trading card collection or a companion app to a children's science book. When the user points the device's camera at one of the planet cards, they can see a 3D rendering of the planet. Upon pressing an Info button, the user can get additional information about that planet. In this section, I will define the general user experience flow, give you instructions for preparing the planet cards for your own use, and help you collect assets that you'll use in this project.

User experience flow

The general onboarding user workflow will play out as follows:

  1. Startup-mode: The app will start, check the device for AR support, and ask for camera permissions (OS-dependent). Once read, the app will go into Scan-mode.
  2. Scan-mode: The user is prompted to aim the camera...