Turn Your House into an 80s Music Video With ARKit

The launch of Apple’s ARKit has allowed many interesting and exotic ‘proof of concept’ ideas to come to light. One such idea is an app powered by ARKit that allows you to turn your environment into a recreation of the classic 80s music video ‘Take On Me’ by A-ha.

The original music video for Take On Me was painstakingly hand-drawn to give the appearance of a comic book world. The music video – widely regarded as one of the greatest of all time – concerns a comic book creation coming to life. The rotoscoped animation one the video was carefully crafted to resemble rough pencil sketches.

The proof-of-concept software allows the user to scan their environment and apply an augmented reality (AR) filter effect to change the user’s surroundings to resemble the rough pencil sketch effect used in the music video. The app is not publicly available and is simply meant to be a demonstration of the capabilities of ARKit.

Trixi Studios, who created the app, intend for it to be a showcase of what is possible using ARKit, and how the suit of tools provided by Apple can allow even small, independent developers to produce extremely professional results by integrating AR into their products.

Other recent demonstrations of ARKit’s capabilities have come from VRobot developer Luden.io, who demonstrated a ‘god simulator’ title called AR Tribe using ARKit’s capabilities. Directive Games also teased that they were working on something powered by ARKit with the release of a video showing an AR build of mobile title The Machines seamlessly sat on top of a table.

A video demonstrating Trixi Studios ‘Take on Me’ app is available to view below.

VRFocus will continue to bring you news of new projects produced using ARKit.

‘Take on Me’ Built With ARKit Opens a Portal to ’80s Nostalgia

The mantra goes: If it’s possible, someone will eventually build it. That statement rings true for everything from the weird and spastic games like Mosh Pit Simulator or hardware add-ons like the pulsating haptic skin from Omnipulse, and while I’m just not sure why ’80s Norwegian synthpop band A-ha really needed to be realized in AR, I feel so much better about the world now that I’ve seen it.

Created by Chip Sineni of Trixi Studios, the augmented reality app was built using Apple’s ARKit, a developer tool recently released by the company running on the iOS 11 beta that lets you create AR apps and games. Because of the wide-spread availability of Apple devices supporting the iOS 11 beta, the company claims millions of iPhones and iPads are already in the hands of prospective developers around the world. So it’s no wonder when weird and wild things come creeping out of the woodwork.

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The 10 Coolest Things Being Built with Apple's ARKit Right Now

Reflecting what happens in A-ha’s “Take On Me” music video, a man beckons to you from the inside of a comic book, which then opens to the iconic hand-drawn world parodied in popculture ever since the music video’s release in 1984.

Like the inter-dimensional portals we’ve seen built using ARKit, the app lets you walk through to the ‘other side’ and experience the world just like in the music video.

In case you haven’t experienced the glory of ’80s synthpop first-hand:

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