#MixedRealities Week 5: Track Record

For my week 5 in class activity I created a simple scene in Unity that, using the Vuforia engine, detected an image through the AR camera, and then placed a 3D asset of my own creation on top of it. A short video of this project in action can be found below.

(Video of my project in action)

This project began with the creation of a custom 3D asset in Photoshop, created at first in 2D, then transformed into a 3 dimensional model by the software's powerful 3D tools. The original drawing was created by using the "Submarine" shape drawing included in Photoshop, with the text being written in the default Photoshop font. I then converted the drawing into 3D, following Adobe Photoshop's own tutorial that can be found here converting the shape into a 3D postcard, then changing it's mesh (Adobe Photoshop, 2020) After this, I simply exported the model, and added it to my Unity project folder as a Asset.

The image above is a screenshot taken directly after changing my model from 2D to 3D in Photoshop. I am unclear as to why the color changed from it's original light grey, to pink. However after rendering the model out, it seemed to go back to normal.

(My 3D model being rendered in Photoshop)

Although I had initially wanted to render my object in Blender, I was extremely interested in how powerful Photoshop's 3D render ability's were, as the software is not normally known for them. I was pleasantly surprised with the results, with the overall rendering time taking around 20 minutes, on default settings. This seems to be slightly faster then Blender's typical rendering time, at least on my old and outdated hardware.

(Screenshot of my 3D model imported into Unity, placed into the scene)

Importing the model into Unity as a asset was a relatively straight forward process, and one that I had completed countless times at this point.

(Vuforia Template image I placed my 3D model on)

For my tracking/target image, I used the default Astronaut template image, that comes with Vuforia. As you can see in the demonstration video, the target image was then brought up on my phone, and placed directly in front of my laptops camera. Inside the scene, the view from my webcam was displayed by the AR camera as a flat 2D image, which my model was then tracked onto, using the Vuforia Astronaut template image as a tracking point.

(Custom image I added into my Unity project, using Vuforia's database feature)

After this was completed successfully, I then played around with changing what my tracking image was, importing a custom target image of a New Zealand Silver Fern flag (as can be seen in the screenshot above) created in Adobe Photoshop and modeled after a flag I have hanging above my bed . This image, after being created, was added into Vuforia's target image database, before being downloaded onto my computer, and selected in Unity on the ImageTarget's Image Target Behavior Script (found by clicking on the ImageTarget, and scrolling down on the Inspector window) Unfortunately, as of the writing of this post, I have not gotten a 3D object to track the real flag in my bedroom.

In the future I would like to add some interactive elements (e.g. buttons) to my 3D object, as well as some background elements (ambient interfaces)

References:

1. Adobe Photoshop (2020, July 28) Create 3D objects and animations. Adobe. https://helpx.adobe.com/nz/photoshop/using/creating-3d-objects-animations-photoshop.html