working with vuforia unity plugin for augmented reality

Posted on by Shawn

Notes to self:

– working on Mac.
-install vuforia plugin for unity
-followed this: http://developer.vuforia.com/library/articles/Solution/Compiling-a-Simple-Unity-Project
-this post is handy too. http://www.marcofolio.net/other/introduction_into_augmented_reality_with_vuforia.html
-however: you have to register a key for your app that you build https://developer.vuforia.com/targetmanager/licenseManager/licenseListing
-you also have to create an image tracking database. (under the ‘develop’ page of the Vuforia website). You upload your images, it creates a database xml in return. You download it, and while unity is open, double click on the download – it adds itself automatically.
-you have to have the ios or android sdk installed on your machine. I’m working with android. I had to find the location of the sdk; needed to ‘unhide’ the ‘Library’ folder in the Finder in order to do so (Unity will ask you for the location of the sdk when it builds your app. If you don’t unhide it, you can’t find or select it).

-some screenshots from within Unity, for reference:

Screen Shot 2015-05-30 at 4.18.11 PM
delete the default camera. add arcamera from ‘prefabs’ in the project. add imagetargets from ‘prefabs’. assets go underneath an imagetarget.
Screen Shot 2015-05-30 at 4.18.21 PM
prefabs are where the magic lies. the 3dmodels folder was one I added via the finder, and then I dropped my obj and texture pngs in there. Unity updated automatically, creating also the materials folder.
Screen Shot 2015-05-30 at 4.18.48 PM
you add the app license key that you made with the online licence manager here. If you have more than one tracking image, *I think* you put that info here in ‘max simultaneous tracked images’. If you’ve got more than 1 tracked object at a time, update accordingly.
Screen Shot 2015-05-30 at 4.19.12 PM
for your image target, you select ‘data set’ to grab images from the database you created, and then image target. You also have to set ‘width’; I do not understand, yet, what units these are in.