14 January 2012

Installing Kinect on Windows(OpenNI) with Unity Wrapper

Real application of Kinect starts when you integrate it with any gaming engine. For a head start, OpenNI provides a wrapper in C# to be used in Unity3D gaming engine. They have also given a sample code for Ogre. You can start working on them after few simple steps of installation.

The fastest way to get started with this is to install the Zigfu bundle and Wrapper for OpenNI in Unity.
1. Download and install the latest zigfu development bundle from http://www.zigfu.com/devtools.html. This bundle install OpenNI, NITE and sensor drivers for kinect.
2. Now download the Zigfu Unity3D wrapper and extract it in your project. It contains sample scenes for help.
Now you can start developing your own motion sensing applications and games.

If you want to go with the latest OpenNI drivers and wrappers, you'll have to install them individually.
1. Download OpenNI module from http://75.98.78.94/Downloads/OpenNIModules.aspx. Select "OpenNI Binaries" in the first drop down box, then select the stable/unstable release and then download the specific module according to your system. If you want to work with PCL also, download this module from http://pointclouds.org/downloads/windows.html in the OpenNI column.
2. Now select the "OpenNI Compliant Middleware Binaries"  and download the middleware binary for your system.
3. Select the "OpenNI Compliant Hardware Binaries" and download stable/unstable release according to your system. If you want to work with PCL, you'll have to download it separately from http://pointclouds.org/downloads/windows.html under the sensor column.
4. Install all these downloaded binaries in the order in which they were downloaded.
5. Now you'll have to download the Unity3d wrapper from https://github.com/OpenNI/UnityWrapper according to your version of binaries.
6. Extract this and include in your project to get started with using kinect for application development.
7. Or you can download the Sinbad sample in Ogre from https://github.com/OpenNI/SampleAppSinbad to get started in Ogre gaming engine.

3 comments:

  1. hi.. I'm Lynda from Indonesia.
    I'm trying to download UnityWrapper on the internet, but I can't find any.
    Is it the same thing with KinectWrapper on this website?
    I imported the kinectwrapper in Unity3D but it crash everytime i tried to import it.
    Do you know where else I can download this Unity Wrapper?
    Thanks a lot before.
    Cheers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lynda,
      Its been a long time since I worked on Kinect. Seems like OpenNI has removed its official wrapper. You'll have to rely on Zigfu for OpenNI wrapper for Unity. You can also switch to Microsoft SDK. Last I used kinect, microsoft also provided Unity3D wrapper for their sdk. Hopefully, that is still active. If not, you can get other free wrappers over Microsoft SDK. I downloaded the wrapper on my system when I was using it but its very old and may not be use today. I suggest try installing Microsoft SDK and try using Unity Wrappers for that SDK. Here are some links which might be of help -
      https://github.com/adevine1618/KinectSDK-Unity3D_Interface_Plugin
      http://channel9.msdn.com/search?term=kinect+unity

      Delete
    2. There is also a free example on Unity Asset Store, based on microsoft kinect sdk. It might be using some sort of wrapper, so you can check that out.

      Delete