Initializing SKVideoNode using AVPlayer object - SWIFT - ios

Question

I'm playing around with ARKit and have created an app which overlays video content onto recognized images. Code is as follows:
import UIKit
import SceneKit
import ARKit
import SpriteKit
class ViewController: UIViewController, ARSCNViewDelegate {
#IBOutlet var sceneView: ARSCNView!
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
sceneView.delegate = self
}
override func viewWillAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
super.viewWillAppear(animated)
let configuration = ARImageTrackingConfiguration()
if let imageToTrack = ARReferenceImage.referenceImages(inGroupNamed: "ALLimages", bundle: Bundle.main) {
configuration.trackingImages = imageToTrack
configuration.maximumNumberOfTrackedImages = 3
print("Images successfully added")
}
sceneView.session.run(configuration)
}
override func viewWillDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
super.viewWillDisappear(animated)
sceneView.session.pause()
}
// MARK: - ARSCNViewDelegate
func renderer(_ renderer: SCNSceneRenderer, nodeFor anchor: ARAnchor) -> SCNNode? {
let node = SCNNode()
var videoNode = SKVideoNode()
var videoScene = SKScene()
if let imageAnchor = anchor as? ARImageAnchor {
videoNode = SKVideoNode(fileNamed: "video1.mp4")
videoNode.play()
videoScene = SKScene(size: CGSize(width: 640, height: 360))
videoNode.position = CGPoint(x: videoScene.size.width / 2, y: videoScene.size.height / 2)
videoNode.yScale = -1.0
videoScene.addChild(videoNode)
let plane = SCNPlane(width: imageAnchor.referenceImage.physicalSize.width, height: imageAnchor.referenceImage.physicalSize.height)
plane.firstMaterial?.diffuse.contents = videoScene
let planeNode = SCNNode(geometry: plane)
planeNode.eulerAngles.x = -.pi/2
node.addChildNode(planeNode)
}
return node
}
}
This works perfectly... once! But the problem is that once the video has finished playing, because of the limited controls available via SKVideoNode I cannot figure out how to restart the video automatically. Ideally these should play on a loop.
I've done some research and it seems that the best way is to initialize my video node using an AVPlayer object.
So, I attempted to do this but cannot get it working.
I added var player = AVPlayer() in my class and then tried to initialize my videoNode as follows:
var videoNode: SKVideoNode? = {
guard let urlString = Bundle.main.path(forResource: "video1", ofType: "mov") else {
return nil
}
let url = URL(fileURLWithPath: urlString)
let item = AVPlayerItem(url: url)
let player = AVPlayer(playerItem: item)
return SKVideoNode(avPlayer: player)
}()
I then attempted to user player.play() but the video never plays. Instead my plane just appears as a blank rectangle over my images.
Once I successfully initialize this I think I'm able to add an observer to check when the video has finished player and restart it, but I'm struggling to get to that point.

Answer 1

First, you don't need SKVideoNode in a SKScene in a SCNNode. You can directly use AVPlayer as diffuse content of you SCNNode :
plane.firstMaterial?.diffuse.contents = player
For looping you have to subscribe to a notification on the player and reset time to zero at end :
NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(forName: .AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTime, object: player.currentItem, queue: nil) { _ in
player.seek(to: .zero)
player.play()
}