A Holonaut’s Guide: HoloLens Step-by-Step Setting up Unity3D + Visual Studio

Greetings fellow Holonauts!  Here are Step-by-Step visual instructions for setting up your Unity 3D application to run on your HoloLens! 

Ready to get Holographic!  This will be the start of a series of articles on making your first Unity 3D Holographic experience, ie. game 🙂

As detailed in “A Holonaut’s Guide: HoloLens Development Resources” – check out “Download HoloLens Developer Tools” – once you have those installed you’re ready to go!

Also check out the newly launched HoloSoft.Net for the latest HoloLens / AR / VR news!

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1) Launch your Unity studio, and let’s start a New Project

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2) Enter the Project Name and Location for your new project.
3) Make sure you have 3D selected.
4) Then Create Project

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5) When the Unity project launches, select Main Camera in the Hierarchy section (far left).
6) Note that the Inspector section (far right) will show the details of our camera.

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7) As the HoloLens is the center of our Universe, we need to change the Inspector > Transform > Position to X: 0 Y: 0 Z: 0

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8) When using a HoloLens we want to see the real-world, so we need to make the background transparent.
9) We do so by selecting Camera > Clear Flags and setting it to Solid Color

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10) The Solid Color that we need is black, so make sure Hex Color is 00000000 (just drag the color selector to the bottom-right)
11) IMPORTANT – if not set all the way to 00000000 – this will cause your deployed Unity app on the HoloLens to be show in 2D.

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12) File > Save Scene ( or Ctrl-S ) – name it “HoloLens”

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13) File > Build & Run – brings up our Build Settings dialog box

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14) In Build Settings > Platforms > select Windows Store and then click Switch Platform
15) IMPORTANT – If you don’t have Windows Store as an option then you need to go back and install the UWP Runtime for Unity – see http://unity3d.com/pages/windows/hololens#download

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16) In Build Settings > Windows Store > SDK – change it to Universal 10

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17) In Build Settings > Windows Store > UWP Build Type– change it to D3D (Direct3D)

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18) In Build Settings > Windows Store > check the Unity C# Projects option

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19) In Build Settings –> click the Player Settings button (bottom left)

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20) In the Inspector section (far right) > scroll down to you see Other Settings section.
21) IMPORTANT – Check the Virtual Reality Supported option.  If you don’t then when you deploy to the HoloLens the application will be launched in 2D not 3D

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22) In the Inspector section (far right) > expand Publishing Settings > scroll down to Capabilities section.
23) Scroll down with the Capabilities scroll bar and check the Microphone option – will allow us to use voice commands.

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24) Check the SpacialPerception option – allowing the HoloLens to detect its surrounding environment.

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25) In order for us to see something when we deploy to our HoloLens, let us add a sphere.
26) In the Hierarchy section (far left) > click Create dropdown > 3D Objects > Sphere.

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27) As we can see, the sphere appears right on top of our camera, change the Inspector > Transform > Position to X: 0 Y: 0 Z: 2 – where Z is the distance away from us as seen by the blue arrow.
28) Also, lets make the sphere smaller, change the Inspector > Transform > Scale to X: 0.2 Y: 0.2 Z: 0.2.

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29) Lets connect to our HoloLens – see my previous article on “HoloLance is Online! Connecting your PC to your HoloLens

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30) Save your project – File > Save Scene ( or Ctrl-S )
31) Once again, File > Build & Run – brings up our Build Settings dialog box.  Click Build.
32) You will be prompted to create a C# build folder – Build Windows Store dialog > New Folder > name it App (this could be anything btw)

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33) Watch it build baby… 🙂

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34) Unity will launch a Windows Explorer > drill down into App

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35) Click your *.sln file ( in this case BubblePop.sln )

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36) In Visual Studio > change to Release

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37) In Visual Studio > change to x86

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38) In Visual Studio > change to Remote Device

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39) As seen previously in (32) enter the IP Address for your HoloLens

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40) In Visual Studio > Build (F5) your project

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41) If all deploys as expected (which sometimes takes a restart of either the HoloLens or Visual Studio) – you’ll see Made with Unity appear

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42) Then your first Hologram from Unity appears!!!  Walk around it – it’s truly amazing.

Well done Holonaut!  We’re on our way to making some fantastic experience…

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