Have you ever been in blender like… oh man I’m using a lot of cognitive load to manipulate these 3D objects using a 2D interface? One of the biggest barriers to animation and 3D design is manipulating a high-dimensional object using a low-dimensional (2D) interface.

The cool thing about Mobile AR is that the phone is tracked in 3D. While this is good for content, it’s also great for content creation. This is an attempt at solving that problem by allowing you to manipulate 3D objects at 1:1 scale using mobile AR.

I used a Google Pixel 2 to manipulate and animate a rigged 3D model. The tool works with any rigged model in Unity. Basically, the app turns the phone into a 6DOF tracked hand-manipulation tool for posing and animating rigged models.

I think one of the awesome benefits of AR is that it will enable use to manipulate, work with, and communicate with 3D objects. Dope.

Up-Sides:

Works super fast for animation. The 6DOF manipulation is fun and intuitive. It’s fun to make mistakes because they look cool, and the back button means you don’t have to worry about making mistakes.

Down-sides:

In the process, I learned that 1:1 scale isn’t always the best. Mostly because it requires you to make large movements with your arm, which can get tired pretty quickly. Also, this causes drift in tracking. I think both problems can be fixed by reducing the size of the model.

Next Steps:

Better highlighting with bones in between the key points on the rig. Right now I highlight the moving elements in Green, but it would be nice to see the whole skeleton. Easy fix.

Make the model smaller

Export Gifs

Multiple/Custom models

Made by Hisham Bedri and Mike Draskovitch as part of the Hollow Earth Collective