Visual Studio / .NET Framework, Workshops

F03 Workshop: Creating Experiences for the HoloLens with Unity

03/17/2017

8:00am - 5:00pm

Level: Introductory

Nick Landry

Senior Technical Evangelist

Microsoft

Adam Tuliper

Principal Software Engineer, DX

Microsoft

Microsoft HoloLens is the world’s first self-contained, untethered head-mounted holographic computing device for Mixed Reality (MR). Mixed Reality blends 3D holographic content into your physical world, giving your holograms real-world context and scale, allowing you to interact with both digital content and the world around you. This workshop is your introduction to building 3D Mixed Reality applications and games for Windows Holographic using C#, Visual Studio and Unity. We’ll explores the HoloLens and its capabilities, what makes the HoloLens unique, how it fits in the world of Windows Holographic and how to work with its three pillars of input: Gaze, Gesture, and Voice. One of the most fascinating features is spatial mapping, which is how the HoloLens understands the space around the user. We’ll learn how to work with the spatial information to integrate 3D holograms with the real world. Next we’ll dive into the complete development workflow, from building Mixed Reality applications with Unity, easily integrating into the Windows Holographic API, and deploying & testing our applications to the HoloLens emulator or a physical device.

Unity is the premier advanced platform for developing stunning 2D and 3D applications for all major platforms. Microsoft and Unity have partnered to provide first class support in the Unity platform for Windows 10 for free to developers, rounding out support for every major platform. This workshop takes you hands on through understanding the essential concepts in Unity, such as textures, meshes, normals, vectors, shaders, and more. We'll also work through the basics of Unity, the UI, assets, code, ways to develop, and some simple but powerful techniques to get up and running fast with Unity and start creating experiences you didn't think were possible. You will then write code and use tools to create Windows Holographic apps that run on the HoloLens.

This is a hands on workshop. Please bring your Windows 10 computer with the following installed. Follow the latest instructions posted at https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/holographic/install_the_tools:

  • Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition or higher (ensure that Tools 1.4 and Windows 10 SDK 10.0.10586 is enabled under Universal Windows App Development Tools node)
  • HoloLens Emulator (optional but required to run Windows Holographic apps)
  • Unity 5.5

You will learn:

  • Core concepts of Unity development
  • Overview of the HoloLens device and the Universal Windows Platform (UWP)
  • Building 3D apps for Windows Holographic in Unity with C#
  • Interacting with holograms using gaze, gestures and voice
  • Using the HoloToolkit for Unity
  • Deploying Windows Holographic to the HoloLens emulator or device