"Life's Embrace" Unity AR Foundation with Lightweight Render Pipeline
22This was inspired by the beautiful cinematography and story of the movie "The Fountain," and what a fantastic idea of a sphere hurtling through space on its course with a dying Nebula as a sacrifice so that life can be reborn. In my scene, I show a matriarch providing energy to sustain the tree until it reaches its final location.
This is mixed reality app done using Unity's AR Foundation version 1.0, ARCore XR Plugin 1.0.0p24 & Lightweight Render Pipeline 3.3.0 preview in Unity build 2018.3.0f2. Sadly the LWRP is not the latest and the post render package does not work in this preview version of the LWRP & AR Foundation so some features like 'Bloom', vignette, ambient occlusion, depth, or color grading are not available for global effects. I can say even in this preview, that the LWRP does make a noticeable difference in performance in this version versus a version done with no pipeline and standard shaders. The AR Session scripts to allow the for the main prefab already in the scene to anchor immediately in set location away from the camera so not tapping of the screen is necessary. This was done to control its position, but also because prefabs with reflection probe or lightmap baking are not performed at runtime so need to be baked prior to building & active in the scene. I could have controlled this activity (not the baking) in the scene programmatically, but wanted its appearance to be seen immediately.
Here is a beta that you can sideload to one of the phones compatible with ARCore ( http://bit.ly/lifes_embrace ), but keep in mind that Unity does use the latest version of ARCore so not all the latest phones supported may not work. This will be available in in the Google Play Store before X-Mas, as well as the Apple App Store a little later.
Happy Holidays from all of us at All Things 3D.
The music is the main theme from the movie "The Fountain" composed & written by Clint Mansell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fou...) and hauntilying performed by Natalya Plays Piano - https://youtu.be/-jQIbsbWVVo