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Table of contents

• Vuforia Engine in Unity
• About Vuforia Engine
• Adding Vuforia Engine
• Vuforia Engine Setup
• Adding Vuforia Engine Features
• Adding Digital Assets
• Print Physical Targets
• Playing the scene
• Building and running your app
• Configuring a project for Digital Eyewear
• Next Steps

Vuforia Engine in Unity

The Unity Editor is a popular and useful authoring platform to create cutting edge augmented reality experiences for both handheld devices and digital eyewear. Visit //unity.com to download and set up Unity. Add Vuforia Engine to any project, or add our Core Samples that is available in the Unity Asset Store to get you started.

NOTE: If your project targets Android API level 31 or above we recommend updating to Vuforia Engine 10.8 or later. Updating will automatically add the manifest permission to allow data retrieval from sensors on Android devices using the VISLAM. Or, you can manually add the permission android.permission.HIGH_SAMPLING_RATE_SENSORS in the manifest file in Unity.

About Vuforia Engine

Vuforia Engine is a software development kit [SDK] for creating Augmented Reality apps. With the SDK, you add advanced computer vision functionality to your application, allowing it to recognize images, objects, and spaces with intuitive options to configure your app to interact with the real world.  

Vuforia Engine supports AR app development for Android, iOS, Lumin, and UWP devices. See: Vuforia Engine Supported Versions

This Getting Started guide will show you:

• How to add Vuforia Engine to your Unity project.
• How to set up Vuforia Engine’s Image Targets in Unity. 
• How to add content and test your AR app.

Adding Vuforia Engine to a Unity project

The Vuforia Engine is available as a .unitypackage that can be imported into your Unity project from the menu Assets -> Import Package -> Custom Package....  Importing the package will let a script make the necessary changes in your Unity project to install or upgrade to the latest Vuforia Engine SDK.

The package will automatically add the latest Vuforia Engine version to your Unity project. For more details, please see Vuforia Engine Package Hosting for Unity.

To manually check if new updates are available, go to Help -> Vuforia Engine -> Check for Updates:

Vuforia Engine Setup

The Vuforia Engine is visible in the GameObject Menu after it was imported. 

If this menu is missing, it could mean that the Vuforia Engine was not imported correctly.

Each scene that tracks and renders augmented content requires an ARCamera GameObject and support apps for both handheld devices and digital eyewear. 

Steps:

1. Add an ARCamera GameObject from the Vuforia Engine menu. 
2. Select the ARCamera and Open Vuforia Configuration from the Inspector.
3. Add a Vuforia Developer Basic or Premium license key in the App License Key field. For a guide on getting a license key, see Vuforia License Manager.

Tip: You can delete the default Main Camera after adding an ARCamera. The ARCamera contains its own Camera component. The Main Camera is not needed unless you are using it to render a specific camera overlay, e.g., user interface or minimap.

Adding Vuforia Engine Features

After activating Vuforia Engine in Unity, you can add features from the Vuforia Engine menu to your project from the Unity GameObject Menu. 

Please refer to Features Overview for more information on all of the capabilities offered by the Vuforia Engine.

You can also add the Vuforia Core Samples from Unity’s Asset Store. The Core Samples include and demonstrate many of the Vuforia Engine Features. The steps below continue to set up a basic Vuforia AR scene. 

Steps:

1. Navigate to the Vuforia Engine Menu and select Image Target. or any of the other targets you wish to use. Guides for using other targets are available from the Features Overview linked just above.