Occlusion in AR - augmented-reality

I'm trying make virtual objects be hidden when a real world object is positioned in front of it, but not having any luck with it, i've been playing with the occlusion settings in unity but the virtual objects do not become hidden?

You could fix this problem by building your augmented reality scene with the experimental meshing enabled.
Here is an example of the concept
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn3bhnPlfcw
You then could ray cast from camera to the virtual object and turn off the object if a mesh blocks the raycast.

+1 on AndrewNakas's solution.
Another solution is to do the screen space depth buffer test. That means taking a depth image from the point cloud Tango provides, and compare it with the virtual camera's depth buffer.
Tango Unity SDK implemented this feature on the Tango AR Camera prefab. There's a checkbox named Enable Occlusion.

Related

Augmented Reality – Lighting Real-World objects with Virtual light

Is it possible to import a virtual lamp object into the AR scene, that projects a light cone, which illuminates the surrounding space in the room and the real objects in it, e.g. a table, floor, walls?
For ARKit, I found this SO post.
For ARCore, there is an example of relighting technique. And this source code.
I have also been suggested that post-processing can be used to brighten the whole scene.
However, these examples are from a while ago and perhaps threre is a newer or a more straight forward solution to this problem?
At the low level, RealityKit is only responsible for rendering virtual objects and overlaying them on top of the camera frame.
If you want to illuminate the real scene, you need to post-process the camera frame.
Here are some tutorials on how to do post-processing:
Tutorial1⃣️
Tutorial2⃣️
If all you need is an effect like This , then all you need to do is add a CGImage-based post-processing effect for the virtual object (lights).
More specifically, add a bloom filter to the rendered image(You can also simulate bloom filters with Gaussian blur).
In this way, the code is all around UIImage and CGImage, so it's pretty simple😎
If you want to be more realistic, consider using the depth map provided by LiDAR to calculate which areas can be illuminated for a more detailed brightness.
Or If you're a true explorer, you can use Metal to create a real world Digital Twin point cloud in real time to simulate occlusion of light.
There's nothing new in relighting techniques based on 3D compositing principles in 2021. At the moment, when you're working with RealityKit or SceneKit, you have to personally implement the relighting functionality with the help of two additional render passes (RGB pass is always needed) - Normals pass and PointPosition pass. Both AOVs must be 32-bit.
However, in the near future, when Apple engineers finally implement texture capturing in Scene Reconstruction – any inexperienced AR developer will be able to apply a relighting procedure.
Watch this Vimeo Video to find out how relighting can be achieved in The Foundry NUKE.
A crucial point here, when implementing the Relighting effect, is the presence of a LiDAR scanner (or iToF sensor if you're using ARCore). In other words, today's relighting solution for iOS is Metal + RealityKit.

Why we use fixed focus for AR tracking in ARCore?

I am using ARCore to track an image. Based on the following reference, the FOCUSMODE of the camera should be set to FIXED for better AR tracking performance.
Since for each frame we can get camera intrinsic parameter of focal length, why we need to use a fixed focus?
With Fixed Camera Focus ARCore can better calculate a parallax (no near or distant real-world objects must be out of focus), so your Camera Tracking will be reliable and accurate. At Tracking Stage, your gadget should be able to clearly distinguish all textures of surrounding objects and feature points – to build correct 3D scene.
Also, Scene Understanding stage requires fixed focus as well (to correctly detect planes, catch lighting intensity and direction, etc). That's what you expect from ARCore, don't you?
Fixed Focus also guarantees that your "in-focus" rendered 3D model will be placed in scene beside the real-world objects that are "in-focus" too. However, if we're using Depth API we can defocus real-world and virtual objects.
P.S.
In the future ARCore engineers may change the aforementioned behaviour of camera focus.

ARKit plane with real world object above it

Thanks in advance for reading my question. I am really new to ARKit and have followed several tutorials which showed me how to use plane detection and using different textures for the planes. The feature is really amazing but here is my question. Would it be possible for the player to place the plane all over the desired area first and then interact with the new ground? For example, could I use the plane detection to detect and put grass texture over an area and then drive a real RC car over it? Just like driving it on real grass.
I have tried out the plane detection on my iPhone 6s while what I found is when I tried to put anything from real world on the top of plane surface it just simply got covered by the plane. Could you please give me some clue if it is possible to make the plane just stay on the ground without covering the real world object?
I think that's sth what you are searching for:
ARKit hide objects behind walls
Or another way is i think to track the position of the real world object for example with apples turicreate or CoreML or both -> then don't draw your stuff on the affected position.
Tracking moving objects is not supported, that's actually what it would be needed to make a real object interact with the a virtual one.
Said that I would recommend you using 2D image recognition and "read" every camera frame to detect the object while moving in the camera's view space. Look for the AVCaptureVideoDataOutputSampleBufferDelegate protocol in Apple's developer site
Share your code and I could help with some ideas

Can ARCore track moving surfaces?

ARCore can track static surfaces according to its documentation, but doesn't mention anything about moving surfaces, so I'm wondering if ARCore can track flat surfaces (of course, with enough feature points) that can move around.
Yes, you definitely can track moving surfaces and moving objects in ARCore.
If you track static surface using ARCore – the resulted features are mainly suitable for so-called Camera Tracking. If you track moving object/surface – the resulted features are mostly suitable for Object Tracking.
You also can mask moving/not-moving parts of the image and, of course, inverse Six-Degrees-Of-Freedom (translate xyz and rotate xyz) camera transform.
Watch this video to find out how they succeeded.
Yes, ARCore tracks feature points, estimates surfaces, and also allows access to the image data from the camera, so custom computer vision algorithms can be written as well.
I guess it should be possible theoretically.
However, Ive tested it with some stuff in my HOUSE (running S8 and an app with unity and arcore)
and the problem is more or less that it refuses to even start tracking movable things like books and plates etc:
due to the feature points of the surrounding floor etc it always picks up on those first.
Edit: did some more testing and i Managed to get it to track a bed sheet, it does However not adjust to any movement. Meaning as of now the plane stays fixed allthough i saw some wobbling but i guess that Was because it tried to adjust the Positioning of the plane once it's original Feature points where moved.

ARKit and Unity - How can I detect the act of hitting the AR object by a real world object from the camera?

Think if someone in real life waved their hand and hit the 3D object in AR, how would I detect that? I basically want to know when something crosses over the AR object so I can know that something "hit" it and react.
Another example would be to place a virtual bottle on the table and then wave your hand in the air where the bottle is and then it gets knocked over.
Can this be done? If so how? I would prefer unity help but if this can only be done via Xcode and ARKit natively, I would be open to that as well.
ARKit does solve a ton of issues with AR and make them a breeze to work with. Your issue just isn't one of them.
As #Draco18s notes (and emphasizes well with the xkcd link 👍), you've perhaps unwittingly stepped into the domain of hairy computer vision problems. You have some building blocks to work with, though: ARKit provides pixel buffers for each video frame, and the projection matrix needed for you to work out what portion of the 2D image is overlaid by your virtual water bottle.
Deciding when to knock over the water bottle is then a problem of analyzing frame-to-frame differences over time in that region of the image. (And tracking that region's movement relative to the whole camera image, since the user probably isn't holding the device perfectly still.) The amount of of analysis required varies depending on the sophistication of effect you want... a simple pixel diff might work (for some value of "work"), or there might be existing machine learning models that you could put together with Vision and Core ML...
You should take a look at ManoMotion: https://www.manomotion.com/
They're working on this issue and suppose to release a solution in form of library soon.

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