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Add Unity-powered features to your app using Unity as a Library

September 16, 2020 in Engine & platform | 2 min. read
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You can enhance your existing apps by easily adding AR, real-time rendering, mini-games and more into your native mobile experience. Unity 2019.4 LTS adds support for using Unity as a Library controlled by Android/Java and iOS/Objective C apps.

As we announced last June, Unity is creating solutions for developers who want to include features powered by Unity while making apps for Android with Java or for iOS with Objective C. With Unity 2019.4, you can integrate both the Unity runtime and your content to run inside a “native” platform app on iOS/Android using Unity as a Library. This means that you can now insert features such as augmented reality (AR), 3D/2D real-time rendering, 2D mini-games, and more directly into your mobile apps.

How it works

Unity offers controls that let you manage when and how to load/activate/unload the runtime library within your native application. Beyond that, the mobile app build process mostly stays the same. Check out our documentation for more detailed information and project samples for both Android and iOS

Please note that using Unity as a Library requires that you deeply understand the architecture of Android/Java and iOS/Objective C applications. 

A closer look at the AR scenario

Unity as a Library offers tremendous benefits for a variety of use cases across industries, but it’s particularly useful for inserting AR experiences into existing mobile apps. To see this feature in action, check out the Unite Copenhagen 2019 session about the development of IKEA’s AR-enhanced IKEA Place mobile app, “Inserting AR directly into a native mobile app.” 

We also made this short AR-based demo to show you see how easy it is to integrate and edit AR elements.

You can find the source code for that AR sample here.

Beyond mobile

While this capability is new for mobile platforms, you can already harness the power of embedding Unity as a Library for Windows and the Universal Windows Platform. You can find more details in our documentation

Unlock new possibilities in your app by using Unity as a Library.

 

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September 16, 2020 in Engine & platform | 2 min. read

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