Augmented Reality
A large portion of my research for this project will be diving deeper into Unity. Through Unity, I can create 3D objects and particle vfx for the augmented reality accessories to the tattoo. Unity offers a tool called a vfx graph that helps users create detailed particle effects that will be very useful for my project. Some of the particle vfx that I would consider making is fire, smoke, and rain. To create an augmented reality image, I would use Unity’s ARKit for iOS which formats the project for AR and camera usage. By uploading an image of the tattoo, I can use it as a target. This means when the camera detects the target, the AR effects are triggered and played. An individual that has seemed to have a large impact in tattoos and technology is Nate Siggard. Nate is a tattoo artist from Los Angeles that created audio tattoos; a take on augmented reality that plays back audio from tattoos of soundwaves.
Aside from the technical aspect of Augmented Reality, it would be helpful to research different augmented reality apps. How they work and what features they offer their users is helpful in my app design. It important to know the artistic and processing capabilities of AR so that I don’t make anything to powerful for the app that can cause it to crash or slow down. Since Augmented Reality is moving at a fast pace in development, it is important that I look towards the future of the field. What can happen in 6-7 months of augmented reality? There can be new programs or capabilities that emerge that can possible make it easier and more powerful than it is right now. For the final version of this app, I would want users to be able to upload a picture of their own tattoo to customize but for prototyping purposes, it would be easier to use my tattoos. For user testing, I have close friends that also have tattoos so it would not be difficult for me to find other tattoos to test my work on.
App Design/Creation
I have no existing knowledge in this area so I would probably have to spend most of my time here. For app development, there is a program called XCode that seems like it would be my first program to research and try to understand. XCode uses Swift program language that I would also have to briefly learn. Another program that I can research for app building is Appy Pie. In terms of UI, a camera is essential as well as a photo library of the user’s tattoos. The photo library can store data of the tattoos to use as targets for Unity to detect and use as triggers for the effects. A vfx library can also be something to consider for users to customize their own tattoos with the AR technology. For prototyping, I would most likely just use a camera input directly to Unity. It seems that building the app would be close to the last steps of this project because the most important thing to me is that the technology works. After doing some research on augmented reality apps, I believe that I will get the most use out of cosmetic apps. For some reason, it never occurred to me that tattoos fall under the cosmetic category. I believe that studying the UI of different cosmetic apps would help me in organizing and planning different features for users. However, most cosmetic apps use facial recognition instead of image recognition so I would have to include/exclude different features to piece together a relevant UI for tattoos.