🤳Adding AR Capabilities

Learn how to add AR capabilities to your cloud-connected Unity project.

Now that you are successfully able to stream 3D content into Unity and know how to make custom adjustments, it's time to add AR capabilities to your project.

Unity provides a framework purpose-built for AR development called AR Foundation. It allows you to build across multiple mobile and wearable AR devices, such as Android with ARCore and iOS with ARKit.

Before using AR Foundation, make sure that your iOS device is compatible with ARKit or that your Android device has ARCore or Google Play Services for AR installed.

1. Installing AR Foundation

Clone the open-source Unity + AR Foundation + echo3D example project on GitHub and open it in Unity.

2. Setup a Simple AR Application

Open the AR Foundation sample scene located in:

Assets > AR Foundation > Scenes > SimpleAR > SimpleAR

In the hierarchy click on the AR Session Origin game object.

In the inspector view, look for the Place on Plane script and set the Placed Prefab to the echo3D prefab in the Assets > echo3D folder.

3. Set your API Key

Edit the echo3D prefab and set your API key through in the Inspector view.

Do you want to test the app in Unity before building it?

You can test the connection to echo3D by pressing Play to start the app on Unity.

Note that the Game view will show a black screen - that is expected as the Game view tries to access the mobile AR camera which doesn't exists when running on a desktop machine.

Switch to the Scene view and drag the echo3D prefab fromAssets > echo3D into the hierarchy.

If the API key was set correctly you should be able to see 3D assets from the echo3D console stream into Unity.

Stopping Unity from playing should reset everything.

You are now ready to build the AR app on a mobile device.

4. Build and Run the 3D/AR/VR or Spatial Computing Application

Connect your ARKit/ARCore-compatible mobile device or AR/VR/Spatial Computing headset to your desktop machine using a USB cable.

Go to File > Build Settings... or press Ctrl+Shift+B.

Make sure to set your platform to (either Android, iOS, or Universal Windows Platform (UWP), etc.) by choosing the target platform and pressing theSwitch Platform button on the bottom right corner.

Verify that the SimpleAR scene is ticked in the Scenes in Build list and click Build And Run.

5. Use your AR Application

First, add a 3D model to the console.

When the application is loaded on your mobile device you might be asked to approve camera access permission.

Move the phone around until a surface is detected.

Tap the screen to place the model on the surface.

The model will steam and render in front of you.

If the model is too big or too small, go back to the console and add metadata to affect its scale. After adding metadata the model should change automatically.

You did it! 🎉