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

Starting with a new scene

We start this project with a new empty scene and set it up with the AR Foundation objects: AR Session and AR Session Origin. Create a new scene named ARFramework using the following steps:

  1. Create a new scene using File | New Scene.
  2. Choose the Basic (Built-in) template. Press Create.
  3. Save the scene using File | Save As, navigate to your Assets/Scenes/ folder, give it the name ARFramework, and then click Save.

Next, we'll set up the scene with the basic AR Foundation game objects as follows:

  1. Delete Main Camera from the Hierarchy window by right-clicking and selecting Delete (or the pressing Del key on your keyboard).
  2. Add an AR session by selecting GameObject from the main menu, and then XR | AR Session.
  3. Add an AR Session Origin object by selecting GameObject from the main menu, and then XR | AR Session Origin.
  4. Select the AR Session Origin object in the Hierarchy window. In the Inspector window, click Add Component...