XR Dev Tips - Experimenting AR Real-Time Motion Capture
Hello everyone !
Today I like to talk a bit about the importance of experimentation or also called “Research & Development” and if you know me by now you know how much I like to keep testing new tools either within Unity toolset or simply anything cutting edge that can help us in the near future.
About 1 year ago someone asked me if we could use iPhone A12 Bionic tech which enables body tracking to do motion capture, my answer “I am not really sure if it is possible”, well I spent months thinking about it and then realized that this problem could be easily solved by using the AR Foundation Remote 2.0 and AR Foundation Human Body Tracking.
Why Use AR Foundation Remote ?
This tool allows me to send real-time body tracking information to Unity by simply connecting my iOS device which opens an IP address and Unity basically uses that IP to connect to it. In Unity you see all the transforms for the skeleton generated, this is essential for me to be able to record keyframes in real-time by using the a GameObjectRecorder and yes it is that EASY ! but normally most complex problems could be easy to solve once we have gone through the prototyping process.
I know some people have asked about how I implemented it and I will be publishing a new video about my implementation, in the meantime feel free to checkout the short demo video below which walks you through how it currently works with just 1-2 days of work.
So if you asked me what are the main parts of coming up with cool ideas or even solving complex problems I would say:
Schedule a few hours a week for research and development, this is a MUST for any tech team regardless of what you do.
It is a MUST to become great with GitHub, I use GitHub to track all my projects and many times I go back and use a combination of old prototypes to create new ones.
Don’t be afraid of new technology instead embrace it and enjoy the process.
It is ok if a prototype doesn’t work, move on, and keep creating more.
Keep track of your ideas and review them every single day, no idea is dumb, any idea can become something amazing.
I know some of the takeaways mentioned above are very generic but honestly that’s what it takes, don’t complicate yourself and just keep the process simple so that you can spend all your time creating amazing experiences, tools, apps, anything.
Best to you and thank you for reading this issue and if you got up to here I appreciate your time !
