Tools and Resources: Niantic Studio

I’m often asked by artists and creative practioners about AR tools for beginners. Although game engines like Unity and Unreal are industry standard for XR development, they can feel overwhelming to those with limited experience or previous exposure to digital tools.

One platform that I have used when working with other artists is Niantic Studio.

It’s is an easy to use platform that lets you create augmented reality experiences that run directly in a mobile device’s internet browser — no app download is needed.

The platform was previously known as 8th wall until Niantic - the company behind Pokémon GO — bought the platform in 2022 and rebranded it as Niantic Studio.

For Beginners

For those who are new to AR and may not have much experience with digital tools it’s a great platform for beginners. To develop experiences, you simply create a free account and work directly in the web browser. There is no need to download or install any special software to your computer.

Features

It includes a user friendly interface, which is similar to Unity with a drag-and-drop coding, live previews, and features that can track faces, flat surfaces (like tables or walls), the surrounding environment and locate content at real world locations.

There are a range of existing templates so it’s relatively quick to get started. There are also tutorials and documentation available, as well as an active Discord community.

A recent announcement is that the platform now lets creators and small studios build and share AR projects for free, as long as the 8th Wall logo is shown on the splash screen.

Benefits 

When you're new to augmented reality or any topic for that matter - you don't know what you don't know. So the best thing to do, from my experience, is start on small projects where you get exposed to different aspects of development as you go along.

For example, a lot of people may be new to working in a 3D environment. So learning how to move, rotate, and scale an object along 3 axis is very important.

Another example, you can try importing a 3D object and learn about different file formats. If you don't have a 3D object, you can start to learn about how to create one yourself or where you can purchase them from online. That might lead you to start asking questions about what differentiates 3D objects. And so on.

The great thing for beginners when working with a platform like Niantic Studio is that it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you in terms of setting up a project or providing a template that has the kind of base experience you're looking for. But there is still a lot of opportunity for creativity and exploration. So you can learn a lot and gain a good grounding if you want to develop your skill set further and perhaps even look at game engines like Unity and Unreal in the future.