Tag: unity

Quick AR Creation Tip: Have a “toolbox folder”

Posted on by Syazmedia PLT in Augmented Reality (AR)

If you are like me and have a lot of things to do with so little time ( that’s the way we like it!) having a “toolbox folder” saves you effort. In this post I will share what I have inside my toolbox folder.

I’m not saying this is the best way but I have a toolbox. This have almost everything I need, scripts I built from all these year so I just drag and drop my toolbox into Unity and I am ready to go!

I have one for each engine that I use. Here is what it looks like:

I have one toolbox for each engine. Ready to drag drop into Unity

A look into my Toolbox

Storage Template

When building anything in Unity, regardless what engine you are using it important to be organized. So my folder structure is something like this:

My folder structure

But I did not create it from scratch every time I am working on something. It is already arranged like so inside my toolbox. So, when I drag my toolbox in and all folders will be there ready to go.

The folders are already there ready to go

Ready Made Modular Scripts

Most of the things that we need to do in AR are quite repetitive in some sense or another. So, i build modular scripts that allows me to achieve an interaction quickly by drag drop a pre-made script and assigning the values in Unity.

Ready Made, modular scripts

Image Target Template Script

Image target template script is my default drag to a Vuforia Image Target. I rarely code interactions since the time I have this. It has all my basic functions like play animations, audio and event handling. Sometimes, this is all I need.

Image Target Template S

Audio Manager Prefab and Mixer

To avoid the repetitive task of managing and creating Audio Sources, All my Audio is managed by a pre-built AudioManager that has a group of AudioSource underneath it. The Audio Manager prefab is attached to the AR Camera so I won’t have volume problems. The AudioManager script has two functions:

  1. Control the play,pause etc.
  2. Allows me to play through an Audio Source based on ID. Hence, avoiding conflict that sometimes causes no sound to come out.

I usually need just 10 channels as most of the time, I don’t play more than 10 audio at the same time.

Audio Manager, It sits under the AR Camera

Conclusion

I am not actually preaching anything just sharing how I do things just so that it might be useful for everyone. Our workflows might not be the same so it is better to build your own toolset. I’m just showing this as an example.

What are your tips to make AR creation faster? Do comment below on what you think.