Getting started with AR development: Tools, software, and languages you should know
We will talk about what to learn to get started with AR
So Augmented reality is really growing in popularity day by day, and now a big deal of app developers want to develop AR-powered apps.
Some want to make AR games, and after metaverse, these things are booming.
I think you are one of them who will be interested in knowing what Augmented reality is and how to develop an augmented reality app.
Let get started with some boring but necessary part, “what augmented reality is?”
Augmented reality explained
so starting with, let’s talk about augmented reality meaning.
Augmented reality (AR) technology means when the virtual world overlays with the real world.
Simply Augmented reality(AR) is a technology that adds a computer-generated image from the perspective of a certain person or group of people into the real world.
For example, The most basic example of Augmented reality(AR) is Snapchat filters.
Like the Snapchat dog filter, you open your mouth and a dog tongue seem to come out of your mouth, From the perspective of the person who is taking a selfie he got a computer-generated dog’s tongue on his mouth but that tongue is never physically there, it only seems from selfie taker’s perspective that there is a tongue.
This is exactly augmented reality(AR), hope this example helps you understand it.
The first step in AR development: learning unity
So as the first step in AR development, the first thing you should learn in my opinion is about any game engine.
But which one?
If you know a bit about game dev, then you probably heard two names: unity and unreal.
These two are like most popular game engines, and most game developers choose one of them.
Unreal uses C++ as its programming language while unity use C#.
Unreal is more powerful but unity is more popular in my opinion.
I develop games in unity, not professionally only as a hobby, but still, I think unity is one with whom you should go because it got easy integrations for many AR packages like vuforia.
So let's assume you choose unity, so for AR development alone, you don’t need to learn everything about it just learn some basics.
For me, learning unity and C# hardly took 2 to 3 weeks.
Try to make a simple 2D or 3D game to ensure that you know the basics of unity, you don’t need to turn to a professional game developer, and you probably don’t even need to learn unity for AR development but learning basic unity will benefit you in many ways.
these two are games I made as beginer https://github.com/ath34-tech/Robot-uncle-shooting-game-in-unity and https://github.com/ath34-tech/Melee-combat-game-in-unity
What after unity? : learn some AR packages
So AR packages are those SDKs that will allow you to integrate AR features in your unity apps.
For example vuforia, AR foundation, ARcore, ARkit, EasyAR, etc.
For me, vuforia and AR foundation are enough to do a lot of things.
Both are some of the most popular ones for unity.
Between vuforia and AR foundation, vuforia is more industrial app oriented while AR foundation is made for games and light-weighted apps like some face filter apps.
Vuforia is my personal favorite, as it allows you to integrate some hardware and IOT too, and it can be used to make really advanced AR apps.
IOTAR is one of my favorite use cases, if you want to learn about IOTAR then check this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_Nji0JOuXg2M9VkBd4LWThmowzlz44Et
But I will suggest not to go with it if you are a beginner but it is all upon you, if you can then go for it, it is really some cool thing.
Summing everything
- Learn unity
- Learn C# and C++(C++ is optional)
- Learn vuforia+ARfoundation
- Learn some packages like leapmotion,openCV and manomotion(will explain these in some other article)
So this is just a getting started list, but this is enough to at least got good command over AR or at least to make your own AR solution.
How to learn all this?
Now come to the main question, how to learn this all?
So you got many online courses but I personally felt that some are too less and some are just too much.
I will soon write an article on some top AR courses in my view but for now, I am going to announce something for you!
I am launching a blog series on ar development on my site nerds culture:https://nerdsculture.com/category/augmented-reality/ar-development/
I wrote part 1 already (if you are reading it in the future then I may have many articles till now) and every 3 to 6 days I will upload one blog on AR development.
If you want to learn AR as a side skill or just a hobby or you are just trying to explore it or want to make a career in it, then I strongly recommend going with my tutorial.
I'm not professional but we can learn together, and just consider it as a co-learner sharing about what he learned.
So let’s learn AR together and do some great deal in this field.
don’t forget to visit my blog site: https://nerdsculture.com/
