Getting Started with Unity and the Mixed Reality Toolkit

Getting Started with Unity and the Mixed Reality Toolkit

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Getting your development environment properly setup is critical for any venture into software development.  This tutorial aims to cover all the step by step instructions on how to get your machine into the best possible state for developing Windows Mixed Reality applications using the Unity 3d Editor and Microsoft’s open Mixed Reality Toolkit for Unity.

The Toolkit does a good job documenting all the steps for setup, but I figured going though step by step could be useful for some people.

What you’ll need

For the purposes of this Tutorial all steps below use the following software:

If later versions of the software are availible, it’s suggested you check the Mixed Reality Toolkit’s Readme and follow the instructions there.

Check your version of Windows

Windows Mixed Reality development requires you to use the Windows operating system and the latest SDKs.  You will need to running the Fall Creators Update (Version 1709, Build 16299).  If you are not running the Windows 10 Fall Creators update, then you will need to Update your version of Windows.

Pro Tip: You can check your windows version by pressing  + R and type “WinVer”

Fall Creators Update

Setting up the Environment

Once you’ve got the proper version of windows, you’ll need to tinker in the settings a bit to make sure you’re ready to start developing.  You’ll need to enable Developer Mode in the operating system settings.

Pro Tip: You can quickly find the Developer Settings by pressing  + S
and type “For Developers Settings”

Enable Developer Settings

Installing the tools

Visual Studio 2017

Follow the default installation instructions, select the following workloads:

UWP Workload
Unity Workload

Select the following Individual Components:

Visual Studio Components

You can install more workloads, components, and UWP SDK’s if you’d like.

Unity Editor

Download and install the version that targets your specific development needs.

Pro Tip: Be sure to select .NET Scripting backed

Unity Installer Options

Getting the Mixed Reality Source Code

From here, you’ve got a few different options on exactly how you’d like to get the Mixed Reality Toolkit into your project:

 Fast/Easy Import

This post covers how to download the latest Unity Package from the GitHub repository releases and import it into your project.

Advanced Import

This post covers how to clone from GitHub and copy the folders by hand into your project’s asset folder.

Git Expert Import

This post covers how to add it as a submodule to your existing repository, then include it in your project via symbolic links.

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