HoloLens Blueprints

Abhijit Jana, Manish Sharma, Mallikarjuna Rao

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781787281226
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Application Development
• Index: Computer Science

Unveil the world of mixed reality with HoloLensAbout This Book• Bring holographic insights to existing line-of-business applications, tools, and workflows• Focus on developing end-to-end realistic holographic application.• Build interactive model scripts and test them in Unity3D and holographic emulatorsWho This Book Is ForThis book is targeted at developers and designers working on mixed-reality developments for complex integrated scenarios using HoloLens.What You Will Learn• Interact with holograms using different interaction models• Develop your first holographic app• Integrate holographic applications with cloud systems• Visualize data feeds coming from the cloud through holograms• Manage the application distribution of enterprise-enabled HoloLens• Integrate HoloLens applications with services deployed on Azure• Identify and create 3D Assets and Scenes• Use HoloLens to explore the Internet of ThingsIn DetailDo you want to create stunning applications with HoloLens? Are you a developer who is fascinated with Microsoft HoloLens and its capabilities? If so, this is the book for you.This book introduces and demystifies the HoloLens platform and shows you different ways of interaction with computers (mixed-reality).You will start your mixed-reality journey by understanding different types of digital reality. You will learn to build your first holographic app. Also, you will understand holographic application integration possibilities within Line of Business Applications using Azure. Moving ahead, you will create Integrated Solutions using IoT with HoloLens. Gradually you'll learn how to create and deploy apps on a device. You will learn to publish application to the store; if you are an enterprise developer, you will also manage and distribute applications for enterprise-enabled or domain-joined HoloLens.Finally, you will develop an end-to-end realistic holographic app, ranging from scenario identification to sketching, development, deployment, and, finally, production.Style and approachThe book is a project-based guide to help you to create some really astonishing mixed-reality applications. It will provide end-to-end solutions and enable you to build stunning applications for HoloLens.

Explore HoloLens as Hologram - Developing Application and Deploying on Device

In the previous chapter, we started our journey of building our very first holographic application using HoloLens. In this chapter, we will continue with the next steps of the application development life cycle from where we left it in the previous chapter. Over the course of these two chapters, we are trying to build training scenarios for HoloLens. We have completed our envisioning phase, where we learned about the requirements and scenario identification for different training scenarios for the HoloLens device. After that, we discussed prioritization of the scenarios to be developed as part of the development phase. We took a step further toward sketching to visualize and revalidate the identified scenarios, which illustrate a kind of vision demonstration of the app. We have also covered the different aspects of 3D holographic model design for HoloLens. Now we have our 3D Assets ready to be used for the development. Finally, we have set up our development environments. All in all, we are all set to take the next steps forward.

This chapter will cover all the steps, from the setting up of the project, to deploying it on the device. A brief overview of the different aspects of this chapter are as follows:

• Setting up the Unity editor for a holographic app
• Understanding the basics of Unity editor
• Setting up the HoloLens toolkit for development
• Interacting with 3D objects using scripting
• Configuring, building, and testing your application
• Various aspects of deployment of your holographic app

We will take a step further toward development with our 3D Assets developed in the previous chapter, and we will give life to the object using scripting in Unity. You will learn how to import different assets and apply scripting to interact with the different components of holographic objects using Gaze, Gesture, and Voice Commands. Finally, you will learn the different aspects of deployment and run the application on the HoloLens device.

By the end of this chapter, you will have covered the complete end-to-end development process, starting from envisioning to final deployment in the device.

Getting started - creating a new project

To start with, we will create a new project in Unity by following these steps:

1. Run a new instance of Unity3D.
2. Create a new 3D Project by providing a Project Name and all other required details.
3. Click on Create Project.

Creating an explore HoloLens project in Unity

This will launch the Unity editor with a newly created project. Before we get into the details of holographic app development, as a developer we must have a basic level of understanding of the Unity editor. Let's have a quick look into some of the important aspects of the Unity environment and some of the Core concepts of Unity that you will be using very often while working with Unity.

The Unity3D basics

In this section, we will quickly have a look at some of the major components of user interfaces for the Unity editor. We will also go through some of the Core concepts of 3D Modelling and Scripting related with Unity3D.

The Core interface

The Core of the Unity3D interface consists of five main panels. They are as follows:

• Scene View
• Game View
• Object Hierarchy
• Project Assets
• Inspector

The following image highlights all the main panels of the Unity editor in a single view:

Unity3D Core Interface

Remember, though, all these panels have a default position in the editor; they are floating in nature and you can place and reposition them accordingly as per your need:

Scene View

Scene View is the place where you spend most of the time while working in any Unity project. This is the place where you visually construct and manipulate objects and design the visual aspects of your scene using 2D and 3D Models.

Game View

Game View is used to preview the scene you are constructing in the Scene View. This is where you run and test the application within the Unity editor before publishing it for any platforms.

Game View is just a preview window. Unlike the Scene View, you can't select objects in the Game View. If you make any changes in the scene when game mode is on, Unity reverts back to those changes as soon as you quite the game mode.

Object Hierarchy

The Object Hierarchy panel displays all the objects used in the current Unity scene in a hierarchical order. You can expand and collapse the objects based on the object model depending on their parent and child nodes.

If you add or remove an object dynamically in run...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Credits
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgments
• About the Reviewer
• Disclaimer
• Customer Feedback
• www.PacktPub.com
• Dedication
• Preface
• Digital Reality - Under the Hood
• HoloLens – The Most Natural Way to Interact
• Explore HoloLens as Hologram - Scenario Identification and Sketching
• Explore HoloLens as Hologram - Developing Application and Deploying on Device
• Remote Monitoring of Smart Building(s) Using HoloLens - Scenario Identification and Sketching
• Remote Monitoring of Smart Building(s) Using HoloLens - Developing Application and Deploying on Device
• Build End-to-End Retail Solution - Scenario Identification and Sketching
• Build End-to-End Retail Scenario - Developing Application and Deploying on Device
• Possibilities
• Microsoft HoloLens in Enterprise