I continued to have the exporting/animation issues that I had over the christmas break and was unfortunately not able to find a solution to this problem in time so to meet the deadline i chose to use the original model that I had created in blender and animate this model in Unity.
Image Target
I spent some time trying to choose a more visually appealing image target and the images below show some of the options. I wanted to use a lotus flower style image but unfortunately all of these images didnt work too well as an image target during general tests.
So after testing these different images I went back to one of the original cartoon/drawn images of a pink lotus flower shown in the bottom right image above.
Model Updates
I went back to the original model that i used during some of my initial tests and changed the colour to more match the pink of the image target. Using this model i measured the size of the new image target and created a ‘Vase’ sphere to properly measure where exactly the flowers should bloom which took some time for trial and error to get the placement correct.
Updated Animation
After placing the models i started to experiment with how to create the flower blooming animation in Unity which results in the video capture below:
Arranging Around the Vase
After creating the animation I went back to trying to perfect the positions of all the flower models around the Vase and to also see how the animation works together which overall resulted very well.
Adding Interactivity
It was suggested that i could add a but more to this AR piece by experimenting with some interactivity even something as simple as pressing the screen and triggering an animation, effect or model. I started by adding a canvas button which when pressed could trigger an animation so initially I added the standard button into the scene as you can see in the image below.
I then went into the options for the button canvas and removed the text and made the button transparent so that it would fill the whole screen this way the user can press anywhere on their mobile device and trigger the animation.
Colour Change
After succesffuly triggering an animation with the button i decided to add a little more by having an altered blooming animation with a colour change. So when the image target is initially scanned it will appear in the same pink colour as all the other flowers but when you tap your finger or click the screen it will trigger a new animation and ‘grow a green flower’ instead as you can see from the images below.
Adding Sound
I decided after i tried to record some sound effects that the equipment i had to record wasnt working too well so i wanted to record a different sound effect. The main premise of this piece is flowers growing and blooming and so i felt that a pouring water or watering sound effect would work well for this and so I went out and recorded these exact sounds.
Exporting to Mobile
After finishing all of the updates for my AR Ceramics project i then tested exporting the project for mobile and tested it both through an emulator and also on my own android mobile device. The results are shown in the video capture below:
Image target size issues
The project successfully works through the emulator using my webcam on my pc and the project also works when using a large A4 version of the image target on my mobile device. However this may be an issue with the phone I have and the camera focusing but it could not focus to detect the smaller image target on the vase which is unfortunate for the testing phase. If i had more time i would test out this on different android devices or try and use a larger vase with a larger image target to see if a phone will be able to pick up the image better for future versions.