Unity 4.6 - Simple Tutorial, Vuforia Augmented Reality.

If you are planning to migrate your Vuforia project to the new Unity 4.6 uGUI system you will want to know a couple of things. You will not only take advantage of the new user interface tools but also the Event Systems and Raycasters. In this post I will explain briefly how to detect mouse and touch events over the Augmented Reality content.

Vuforia Unity Plugin is at the moment the best option out there to create multi-platform AR applications and definitivelly the easier to use. The guys at Qualcomm did a great job integrating the Vuforia plugin in the Unity editor in such a way that it is almost inintrusive in the Unity Engine itself.

In Mofables, we are working on an AR project using Unity 4.6 and Vuforia 3.0.9. In the future I will write about the experience of creating a Augmented Reality board game that uses a phone or tablet to work. So far it has been an amazing journey to the unknown, but it is still not finished and we have still much and more to learn. On the meantime I write this post to explain the how to create simple interactive setups.

Prototype AR board game ROAR!.

As I mentioned before in my post about Event Systems and Raycasters, we have multiple Raycasters to detect events in the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D Colliders (Physics 2D Raycaster) and 3D Colliders (Physic Raycaster). Once you place a ARCamera and some kind of Marker in the scene you can add a Cavas or Colliders to the Marker GameObject or any child of it.

Now I will details those 3 kind of Raycasters with a very simple example. I will not explain how to start with Vuforia from step one. If you don't know how to do it yet, come back when you can already see any kind of AR content any marker on your phone or tablet.

3D Colliders
 

You can detect interaction with any kind of 3D Mesh in realtime AR.

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

2D Colliders

Useful if you want to create an AR 2D game.

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

uGUI components

Perfect for Augmented UI or simply detect cliking on your Markers.

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

the Canvas (Graphic Raycaster), 2D (Physics 2D Raycaster) or 3D world (Physics Raycaster). - See more at: http://unitydojo.blogspot.com/2014/08/unity-46-simple-tutorial-new-events.html#sthash.2HAkEqeB.dpuf

That's all! As you can see, there is almost no difference between using Vuforia and not using it when it comes to detect mouse and touch events. :)

I would be very happy to answer any questions you have. If you find any problems trying to detect events, please post a comment and I will try to help you. Would you like to know anything else about integrating Vuforia Plugin in your projects?