UNITY: A guide to setting up and using the RealSense SDK in Unity

[MartyG]

Hi everyone!

After thoroughly analyzing the manual for the RealSense Unity toolkit and putting the knowledge into practice, my company has written its own 2-chapter illustrated guide to our experiences in setting up the SDK files in Unity and learning the basics of programming objects in the 'Inspector' panel of Unity to respond to camera inputs.  We share this guide freely here in the hope that it helps some of you get your projects off to a flying start!

http://sambiglyon.org/?q=node/1259

>>Please also see the post on Converting PXC scripts for use in Unity script files (https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/topic/536627) and
their other guide on Prototyping RealSense project controls with physical controllers using Unity's built-in "Input Manager"  http://sambiglyon.org/?q=node/1268
and the new guide Simple Hand Tracking /Object moving guide.

And there's a new Tips and tricks (Unity/RSSDK) for the developer community to compile our Unity knowledge, please feel free to contribute.

[Colleen_C_Intel]

Thanks for posting this Marty!  It's wonderful when community members share great content!

[MartyG]

Thanks Colleen!  I know from the experience of our contest entry last year that getting the camera controls up and running at the earliest opportunity means that a project is a lot less stressful and a lot more fun.  Once you have made something that works with the camera then you've met the basic requirement for entry and can focus on creativity instead of sweating about the deadline!.  So if I can save others from programming pain and worry, I'm really happy to share.  :)

EDIT: Thanks muchly too for making this post a 'sticky' on top of the forum!

[Pruthviraj_N_]

Thanks so much Marty!

Your contributions in this forum has helped people a lot!

Cheers mate!

[MartyG]

Thank so much, Pruthviraj!  My philosophy is that if you believe strongly in what you're making then you needn't be afraid to share your knowledge with others.  

Sharing is a virtuous circle, where there are times when you can be helped by other peoples' contributions just as much as your own ones help them.  :)

[Pruthviraj_N_]

Exactly!

If my friends at Coursera.org havent told about Intel Perceptual challenge, i wouldnt be touching this awesome technology today!

Feels so much better to start my day and end my day working for this challenge and interacting to people here! :)

By the way i checked your brief description of Unity setup, very nicely made up and shows 'Simple is powerful'

I have Unity 4.5.0 but not Pro. Just hoping to get RealSense SDK work on it!

[MartyG]

Unity 5 is due out soon (wish I knew when!) and Unity say on their FAQ for it that if you have already used up a 30-day Pro trial period on version 4 of Unity then you will get a whole new 30 day trial period with Unity 5 and so be able to use the camera with Unity that way.

The Pro version of Unity is needed for the camera to work properly, as the SDK files are treated as plugins and the free version of Unity does not support plugins.  However, as my guide shows, you can at least program the camera setup in your Unity application's objects with the free account, even if you cannot actually run it to test the settings with the camera.

You do not say whether you have used Unity 4's Pro trial period.  If you have not, you may be able to activate the Pro trial by going to the 'Help' menu and selecting the 'Manage Licence' option.  A pop-up with some buttons on appears.  

If you click the 'Activate new licence' button then you can activate the Pro trial period on your Unity account if you are eligible to do so, using the 'Activate a free 30 day trial of Unity Pro' button.  If you are ineligible then it will be ghosted out with the word 'Disabled' and will have to wait for Unity 5 to come out if you do not want to pay for a $75 a month subscription to Unity Pro.

My advice is that if you need to wait for Unity 5 because you've used up your Pro period on v4 and can't afford a paid subscription, program as much of the camera code into your objects as possible and then switch to working on a non-camera aspect of the project until Unity 5 is released.  That way, you will only have to debug the camera code once you have Unity Pro instead of write it all from scratch, which will be a life-saver if it is getting towards the finals deadline by then.

[Angel_Antonio__R_]

Beautiful!

This is great for me and those who are just beggining with unity

[Ricardo_Braga]

Nice job!

[MartyG]

Our complete start-to-finish 41 episode RealSense Unity project diary is now available online for free.

https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/topic/541604

[Vidyasagar_MSC]

That's awesome Martin.Thanks for sharing and educating us .

Will surely try follow and try this.

[Jonathan_C_1]

Please help, and thank you for anyone who does.

I have a problem with the Realsense camera and the Unity toolkit. The camera runs fine on the first level, but once I switch scenes, the camera turns off, even when I have a RS item in the scene or if I keep the object for each scene. Thanks for any and all help.

[MartyG]

Hi Jonathan,

I had a setup in my Unity app where I had two scene files, a title page and the main game.  So I did a test where I added a camera script to the title page so that the camera would switch on when I ran the program and the title page loaded.

The camera turned on when I ran it thanks to the test camera-script I had placed in the scene.  Then when I clicked on the start button to go to the main game, the camera turned off as it loaded the game in and then turned itself on again when the game had loaded.

So I think it's normal for the camera to deactivate when changing scenes.  The problem would be if the camera doesn't come on again when the new scene has loaded in.  Is that what is happening to you?

[MartyG]

Thanks Amr!  This guide is very old now though.  Whilst Part 2 (about RealSense triggers and rules) remains valid today, Part 1 (setting up RealSense) could be slightly misleading now as the process for installing the RealSense library files in Unity has changed a little since the introduction of Unity 5.

If you choose to copy the RealSense library files manually into your Unity project instead of importing them automatically via the Unity Toolkit application, copy them from the Bin > x64 folder of the SDK rather than Bin > x86, since Unity 5 needs the 64-bit versions of the library files in the 'x64' folder in order to work with the camera.  Best of luck!

[Derp_K_]

Pretty good , Thanks

[Anthony_M_1]

Cheers! Thanks a lot for posting.

[MartyG]

Thanks too!  Glad you found it helpful  :)