With ARKit already baked into the mobile operating system of “hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads,” the massive potential install base means there’s plenty of reasons for developers to start making new augmented reality apps for Apple’s App Store. Now Udacity, the for-profit online education site that was spawned from free Stanford University computer science classes, has created a course that says will take you one month to complete so you can start making your own AR apps for iOS.
Students can choose to learn to develop AR apps using the Unity game engine, or using Swift in combination with SceneKit, Apple’s own 3D graphics API. Udacity maintains the Unity course, a result of a direct partnership with Unity Technologies, is “the fastest way to learn ARKit.”
Although Udacity offers plenty of free courses, the ARKit course costs actual money; $200 for either Unity or Swift versions. It’s however offered as a discrete course so there’s no monthly fees or tuition cost looming over your head.
The course is said to take about a month to finish if you study 5 hours per week, including video demonstrations and hands-on quizzes and projects. Udacity doesn’t have dedicated professors like university ‘distance learning’ programs, but to make up for the professor-student interaction they provide the opportunity to get detailed feedback from expert project reviewers, and also an online community that can provide real-time support.
Before starting, students need to be familiar with creating iOS applications using Xcode. Udacity provides its own course for beginning iOS develpers, but also stresses that you don’t actually need prior 3D development experience before taking the course.
Udacity offers two courses on VR Development for different skill levels, the lowest ‘Foundation’ course requiring no prior experience to start creating.