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Docs & Tutorials

Image Tracking

Image Tracking can detect and track flat, curved or concave images in 3D space. This is great for building content that’s augmented onto posters, magazine pages, bottles or coffee cups for example.

Creating an Image Tracking experience

Section titled “Creating an Image Tracking experience”

To create an Image Tracking experience, you may customize a ready-made Project Template or add an ImageTracker component to an existing project.

Customizing a template

When you open Mattercraft, you will be presented with a few Project Templates to help you get started.

Upon selecting an Image Tracking template, your .zcomp will display a project which includes an image target file (also called a .zpt file), an ImageTracker component, as well as some simple content and basic behaviors.

You can track your own image by generating the .zpt file from the Left Menu’s + (plus) icon, and swapping the ImageTracker’s Source property to your new file. For more information on this, head to our Target Images article.

You may customize any Mattercraft template like an ordinary Mattercraft project.

To learn more about getting started with Mattercraft’s templates, check out our dedicated Project Templates documentation.

Adding to an existing project

To add Image Tracking to an existing project, you will first need to follow the instructions on our dedicated Zappar Camera article if you have not already.

After following the pre-requisites, you can then add an ImageTracker component to your .zcomp. To do this:

  1. Click on the + (plus) icon in the Hierarchy (or right click on a Group Node)
  2. Find the AR component category and from here, select ImageTracker

Follow our Target Images article to learn how to create and use a target image.

ImageTracker properties

Section titled “ImageTracker properties”

The ImageTracker has the following specific properties:

PropertyDescription
SourceThe target image file that content will track to. See our Target Images article for more information.
Show Preview Design TimeShow or hide the target image as a reference in the 3D Viewport.
Mask Objects Beneath SurfaceMasks (hides) any objects that appear behind the target image.

After understanding the basics of Image Tracking, you can learn more about this tracking type by exploring the following articles: