8 Best Unity AR SDKs

Nowadays, when it comes to choosing an engine for their next mobile application, many developers look at Unity. The latter has attracted a lot of attention thanks to its great features, reasonable pricing and strong technical capabilities. In addition to that, Unity can function as a cross-platform game development tool, saving developers time and money that would otherwise be spent on building games for Android, iOS, Mac and Windows platforms separately.

Despite these advantages, many Unity-based games are often lacking the augmented reality features. One way of overcoming this challenge is to take advantage of augmented reality SDKs which support Unity and can, therefore, help to implement these features both quickly and easily.

The article you are about to read is going to consider the 8 best Unity AR SDKs that can be used to build your next Unity apps equipped with augmented reality functionality.

1. Unity 3D Plugin for Augmented Reality Apps by Wikitude

This plugin enables developers to create AR-powered Unity games and other mobile applications equipped with advanced marker-based AR features.

It has two versions: Professional and Expert. Both of them enable developers to use object, scene and image tracking. In comparison to the Professional version, the expert edition enables Wikitude's advanced augmented reality features in combination with external native AR frameworks.

2. Banuba Unity Face AR SDK

Banuba Face AR SDK provides face detection and tracking support enabling developers to create facial animation, AR filters and video background changer in Unity 3D. The Lite version of Unity face tracking plugin is available on the Asset Store and the SDK trial can be accessed by contacting the company's representatives via the company website.

One of the core benefits of this SDK is the fact that it allows developers to streamline their workflow with face filters in Unity by using ready-made masks or designing and uploading their own ones and applying them in real-time.

Other notable features of this tool include:

Tracking of multiple faces at the same time. There is a possibility to build and apply AR filters in Unity to multiple users simultaneously. Depending on the system capabilities, 5-8 faces can be tracked on desktop and 2-3 on a mobile device at the same time;
Virtual Backgrounds. Users of your app can replace or erase backgrounds within the app in real-time. Physical surroundings can be replaced with the company's beautifully designed 3D virtual backgrounds, animated wallpapers or videos. Existing backgrounds can be enriched by animation and AR effects which is a great way to add fun to video calls;
Triggers. This feature makes it possible to design face filters capable of replicating user facial expressions such as opening mouth, smiling, raising or shifting eyebrows as well as opening and closing eyes;
3D Face Mesh. Banuba has built a 3D face model with 3308 vertices to map face filters in real-time. It can forecast the appearance of the face in the subsequent frame, therefore increasing masks stability and precision;
Face Landmarks. Developers can take advantage of face mesh debug masks featuring 86 landmarks to track face filter performance in real-time.

3. Pikkard AR SDK

This software development kit has the image recognition functionality and gives you the possibility to build AR apps with a light, easy to use, fast, stable, computationally inexpensive on-device detection and tracking.

The important features of this software are:

Image recognition functionality. The respective SDK is a good solution for implementing augmented reality experience in your apps with native API, Unity 3D or Xamarin platform;
Cloud recognition of images with API. There is a possibility to recognize an unlimited number of images at the same time. Developers can build apps in a simple and scalable way, using their CMS to manage the markers;
AR Logos. The possibility of creating up to 1 billion unique prints;
Geo augmented marker. Developers can add AR-based geo features to their apps including geolocated augmented markers, integrating navigation services and augmented reality features.

4. Vuforia AR SDK

Vuforia AR SDK Engine is designed to build the respective applications for mobile devices. It uses computer vision technology to identify and track image targets and basic 3D objects in real-time. The platform's integration with Unity can help you to create apps and games for Android and iOS using drag-and-drop functionality.

One of the unique features of this tool is its simple setup procedure which makes it easy to create a development environment, install the correct SDK version and build the actual application.

There exists both a free and paid version of this software. The former one includes watermarks and offers a minimum set of tools. The paid version features advanced cameras, enhanced support and so on.

5. Kudan AR SDK

This augmented reality SDK which works on applications running on Unity, Android and iOS platforms takes advantage of simultaneous location and mapping functionality to concurrently localize a sensor concerning its surroundings while mapping a 3D structure. This feature can be implemented with any camera or sensor. The SDK uses less than 5% of a mobile device’s CPU and can function even under extreme lighting conditions.

6. Easy AR SDK

This software has both free and paid versions which start from 40,000 API uses per month with prices from $39 per month. Easy AR can simultaneously recognize and track multiple 3D objects in real-time. It is available for Windows, iOS and Android. The benefits of this SDK include the absence of watermarks and no irritating time limitations. Some of its other features include the ability to generate point cloud maps while scanning physical spaces simultaneously, motion tracking, free upgrades and much more.

7. Maxst AR SDK

Maxst specializes in providing AR software capable of recognizing and tracking 2D images and 3D spaces. It also features a cloud server-based image recognition functionality and AR Fusion Tracker with the powerful tracking in ARKit and ARCore.

Other notable features are:

QR Code Tracker and Barcode Reader. Recognizing and tracking QR and barcodes will allow you to augment the information of QR Code used in real life, the URL link button and the 3D model or image;
AR Fusion Tracker. This tool is capable of generating world coordinates based on Image Tracker, Object Tracker, Marker Tracker, QR Code Tracker with the help of AR Core and AR Kit SDKs;
Cloud Recognizer. This feature provides cloud-based image recognition functionality for projects that need large amounts of target images and frequent data updates.

8. Onirix SDK

This is another example of the SDK which can be used in Unity apps running on iOS and Android platforms. The SDK opens access to Onirix Studio which can be used as a separate product. The latter enables the design, publishing and hosting of different AR content. It includes different sounds, 3D models and complex scenes, and the functionality to share them with others and testing the results in real-time.

Conclusion

Unity is a popular software engine used to build mobile and web applications. Not only does it have some quirky features, reasonable pricing and strong capabilities but its functionality can also be extended with AR features made available by the popular Unity AR SDKs we've described in section 2. The majority of them support image and object tracking functionality. However, the Banuba Unity AR SDK can also help to implement advanced Face AR features such as AR masks and face filters in Unity applications.

Have you ever used the Unity SDK to build your Face AR application and if so, what is your opinion on that? Please share it in the comments section below.