AR/VR Today Episode #5: Development Special

As a special edition of AR/VR Today, we’re going to highlight some ways of breaking into the AR/VR industry. From how to get started with AR/VR development, to finding projects as a seasoned developer.

I’m new, and I’d like to get started in AR/VR Development

Well, the first place to start is going to be tutorials and courses. Get experience with a single platform and branch from there. Below are a selection of tutorials and courses that will get you started.

Developing for AR

There are a bunch of platforms and engines that you can use in order to make AR apps for mobile devices. Apple and Google have their own platforms, but other platforms such as Unity. It’s really up to you to decide which platform you want to develop for, but the best places to start are always the platform creator tutorials.

Interested in developing your apps on iPhone with Apple’s ARKit? Start here.
What about on Android with Google’s ARCore? Start here.
If you want to make use of the Unity platform for your AR experiences, start here.

Developing for VR

Much the same as with AR, VR has a number of different, well-established platforms that you can get started with. There’s Unity, Unreal, even Google has their own VR SDK.

Unity also has a plethora of tutorials for VR, which you can find here.
How about developing using the Unreal Engine? Unreal has a variety of tutorials for VR, but also AR & MR here.
Facebook’s Oculus also has a great selection of tutorials in their documentation section, here.

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Tutorials in Focus

There’s a lot of information in the links above, and so here’s a few featured tutorials that we, at AR/VR today, have picked out as our favourites.

(iOS) ARKit 2.0 Tutorial — Quick Look by AppCoda

Not quite a course, but an excellent tutorial for those interested in ARKit and iOS development in general, AppCoda has published a post that showcases ARKit, how it works, and how the framework deals with 3D models etc. For a short tutorial, it’s very informative and well worth a couple of hours of your time. The tutorial can be found here.

(iOS) Beginning ARKit by Ray Wenderlich

The ‘Beginning ARKit’ course can be found here. It’s unfortunately no longer free, and can be accessed by purchasing the Ray Wenderlich subscription (some of the content is free however). The course is 2 hours, 22 minutes long as while it’s labelled as an advanced course, is very easy to follow along for a developer who is somewhat familiar with the Swift programming language.

(Android) ARCore Sceneform SDK: Getting Started by Ray Wenderlich

Another excellent tutorial from the team at Ray Wenderlich, ‘Getting Started’ (here) is a straightforward guide to getting to grips with ARCore and the SceneForm SDK. Ray Wenderlich has a number of excellent courses in relation to ARCore, and while they are part of a paid subscription, it’s a great way to get started.

(Android) Introduction to Augmented Reality and ARCore by Coursera

Coursera have an excellent course that you can enroll in for completely free (or $29 if you wish to have the certificate). The ‘Introduction to Augmented Reality and ARCore’ course (here) is a 4-week course that provides plenty of information for anybody that is wanting to get started as an AR developer using the ARCore. The course starts today (11th April), so you’ll have to act fast. It’s worth checking out Coursera for their other excellent courses on AR & VR.

(iOS) Learn ARKit with Unity by Udacity

Another completely free course from the team at Udacity, you can learn AR development with Unity & ARKit as part of a 4-week nanodegree, here. There doesn’t seem to be any fixed enrollment date with this course, so there’s no rush to start. Although, with Unity actually recommending this course on their website, it might become a paid course at some point.

I’m already a seasoned developer, but where can I find work in the AR/VR sectors?

With AR and VR being a hot topic over the past couple of years, there are a number of communities, meetups and job boards that have sprung up, with each of them providing a number of job opportunities.

Communities

Communities are an excellent way to meet fellow-minded individuals and companies alike that are looking for people to collaborate with, either in sharing ideas, or working on projects together.

With communities such as Ninjar, labelled as the top 3D/AR/VR network, and are trusted by some of the leading companies in their respective sectors (BMW, Vice and Byton to name a few), you have the opportunity to meet some of the greatest leaders and influencers in the AR & VR space. Signup is free, and you can find out more about the community here.

Other communities such as The VR AR Association, and even us at AR/VR Today provide a great way to reach out to others in order to get your career in AR/VR started.

Meetups

With Meetup.com being a great place to meet people in your area for a variety of different interests/topics, it’s worth checking out if there are any AR/VR meetups near to your location. If you’re in the US, here’s a selection of Virtual Reality meetup groups.

Job Boards

Of course it goes without saying, if you’re searching for a job, it probably makes the most sense to check out job boards such as LinkedIn, Indeed.com and the rest. But, there are others out there which specialise in jobs for the AR & VR industries.

JobsinXR.com is a job board dedicated for exactly these industries, and have a number of jobs on their website, here. Aside from this, you can join the Ninjar.com Marketplace, upload your work and find potential jobs, and while it’s not yet released, AR/VR Today will have their own jobs board in the near future. So stay tuned for that.

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If you have any recommendations for tutorials, content, job boards or anything else to help your fellow community members, you can either email us (mail@arvr.today) and have it featured in one of the next emails, or simply share it on our Facebook group.