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Instant World Tracking

Instant World Tracking does not require a complex understanding of the user’s environment and instead uses camera frames to allow users to place content without an initialisation phase. With this tracking type, you could build an experience that places an animated character in their room.

If you require an advanced understanding of the user’s environment and thus an initialisation phase, we’d recommend using World Tracking.

Creating an Instant World Tracking experience

Section titled “Creating an Instant World Tracking experience”

To create an Instant World Tracking experience, you may customize a ready-made Project Template or add a InstantWorldTracker 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 Instant World Tracking template, your .zcomp will display a project which includes an InstantWorldTracker component; as well as some simple content and basic behaviors.

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 Instant World 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 InstantWorldTrackercomponent 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 InstantWorldTracker

To use Instant World Tracking properly, you must also add (or replace any existing camera you have in your .zcomp with) a ZapparCamera component. Learn more about this on our dedicated Zappar Camera article.

The InstantWorldTracker has the following specific properties:

PropertyDescription
Placement modeToggles the placement mode of the tracker.
CameraPreviewOffsetSets the point in the user’s environment that the anchor tracks from.

Tracking content to an Instant World Tracker

Section titled “Tracking content to an Instant World Tracker”

When your Instant World Tracker is in the Hierarchy, you can start adding tracked content by placing components inside of the tracker.

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