Creating 3D Tracking Maps

To be able to use 3D Tracking in your Wikitude powered application, you will need to create a so called Tracking Map. This Tracking Map is a simple file (.wtm file) which contains all the information needed by the Wikitude SDK to track the 3D objects of your choice. Similar to a .wtc file you might know from 2D tracking you later have the choice of packaging the Tracking Map file within your app or store it on a web server and let the Wikitude SDK download it.

Using the Wikitude iOS Example Application to record Tracking Maps

To use the Wikitude SDK (Native API) example application to recored a Tracking Map, download the Wikitude Native SDK release package and open the Xcode project that is located in the Examples/Native\ Examples.xcodeproj.

Note: Tracking Maps are stored in the applications Documents directory.

  1. Start the Wikitude SDK (Native API) Example Application
  2. Tap on "Record Map" at the top-right of the screen
  3. Enter the name for the Tracking Map that you are about to record
  4. Now position your device so that the objects you would like to track are visible on the screen
  5. When you are ready click on "Start Tracking Map Recording" to begin the recording
  6. Move the device around until the quality changes from 'Bad' to 'Average' or 'Good'
  7. After you captured everything you would like to track with this particular map, click on "Stop Tracking Map Recording"
  8. Decide if you want to actually save the recorded map or delete it
  9. If you choose to keep it, connect the device to your Mac, start iTunes and download the .wtm file from within the iTunes File Sharing menu. (Alternatively you can also download the App Container from within Xcode)

Quality of the Tracking Map

The Map recorder and the 3D Tracking sample in the sample app both include a high-level quality indicator, when you record a map. This quality indicator gives you a first estimate how well the tracking performance will be. There are tree levels, which will be displayed

Check out the guide 3D Tracking Guidelines and best practices how to come to a decent recognition and tracking result.

Editing a recorded Tracking Map

During the beta phase of 3D tracking it is not possible to edit the tracking map after it has been saved.