This iPhone AR tool can be used to make it easier to redesign your space digitally

Source: Russ Maschmeyer

Redecorating a room in your home can be a fun challenge. We emphasize the word challenge, though. But one of the new features Apple introduced to developers last month could help out with digitally planning a space. Yes, you won't need to move any furniture around first. RoomPlan is a new Swift API that uses Apple's ARKit and an iPhone or iPad with a camera and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). The scanner can generate detailed and accurate 3D floor plans, including features like windows and doors. It can even automatically recognize and measure different furniture. And then, it can edit your furniture pieces out of the shot, making it seem like you have an empty room to work with. 

IKEA has something similar that can generate a static image of a room with existing furniture digitally erased. But you won't be able to move around the emptied virtual space and see the pieces you digitally add from different angles. With the new RoomPlan API and other AR tools, it's apparently possible to make this a 3D experience. Russ Maschmeyer, a developer for Shopify's augmented and virtual reality experiences, demonstrated this on Twitter. They're trying out a "reset button" that lets you digitally take out furniture in the room to give you a digital equivalent to the blank canvas of your room. And then Maschmeyer envisions being able to swipe in different looks to help you design your space.

The RoomPlan API is now designed to generate a plain 3D model of a room, with simple shapes representing furniture and other objects. Maschmeyer and his team tried to preserve the original appearance of the captured room using the scanning device's camera to capture wall and floor textures. These were then applied to the surfaces of the 3D model and then overlaid on top of the existing room using real-time augmented reality. This technique would occasionally require some textures obscured by furniture to be digitally patched and extended, but that's something that can be tweaked into a final version and handled automatically by an app. 

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