It’s November and here at Layar it’s a special month because we are taking a moment to shine the spotlight on some really fun tools: Layar Creation Tools. What are these, you ask? Layar Creation Tools - or LCTs as we’ve started to call them around the office - are exactly what they sound like: tools that help with the creation of Layar content.

Not everyone has super-technical code-monkey abilities, but a lot of people have great ideas for content they would like to see in augmented reality. These tools make it easy for anyone to quickly place information into a layer and see it augmenting their reality within minutes.

This month, we will be showcasing some of these Layar Creation Tools here on the Layar Blog. We will provide an overview of how they work, who they are intended for, their pros and cons, etc. If you find yourself wishing you could create your own Layar content, by the end of the month you should know how to do just that. Here are some of the tools we are looking into:

• Hoppala Augmentation


• BuildAR


• Skaloop


• VISAR

Are we missing any? If you know of some great LCTs you’d like to see featured on the blog, please leave us a comment with your suggestions!! If you have experience with any of these tools, please leave us a comment as well with your thoughts on them and how you might change or improve them.

We’re excited to share some of these great tools with you all, so keep an eye on the blog for more coming soon. Happy LCT Month!

Today Hoppala, one of the members of the Layar Partner Network, launched a tool called Augmentation. Augmentation provides an easy way for non-technical creatives to start experimenting with Augmented Reality on Layar.

HOPPALA! Augmentation comes with a full screen map interface to place and edit augments all around the world. Upload your images and icons, audio, video and 3D multimedia content with just some mouse clicks and add it to your personalized inventory in the cloud. HOPPALA! Augmentation even does the hosting for you. It simply runs in your browser, there’s no software installation required and no coding needed at all. We talked to Marc Rene Gardeya from Hoppala.

Why did you create augmentation on top of Layars API?
HOPPALA! Augmentation started as an internal test tool. The more layers we built, the more we needed to test certain use cases and scenarios. It turned out to be pretty unhandy to manually edit some source code everytime we wanted to check the effect of some parameter changes. So we created a graphical user interface. During that time we met a lot of people who told us they would so much like to step into AR and Layar but just don’t know how to do it technically. Our goal was to open AR content creation to non-technical people.

Why should non-technical people use your tools, next to the fact that it’s easy?
With HOPPALA! Augmentation non-technical people can concentrate on their strengths and just be creative. That’s why HOPPALA! Augmentation provides all the multimedia features supported by Layar, e.g. audio, video and 3D. Finally there is no more technical hurdle in the way. Everybody can create an account and start experimenting immediately. And it’s free!

What do you expect of augmentation in terms of layers created by non-technical people?
HOPPALA! Augmentation opens up the augmented reality community to a much wider audience and encourages engagement of creatives from different industries. I’m very excited to see creatives contributing a very new spin. Opening doors for non-techs will certainly enrich and speed up the overall content creation progress. HOPPALA! Augmentation is the incubator for a whole lot of new ideas in Augmented Reality.

Hey Layar Developers!

If you’re looking for a rapid development tool to create your layer, we’ve had a few fantastic creations come up lately, and we thought we’d share them with you.

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django-layar

django-layar is a project of Sunlight Labs (c) 2009.
by James Turk

http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-layar/0.1.0
Provides abstract class that responds to Layar API requests in the appropriate format. By implementing two small functions it is possible to add a layer to the Layar augmented reality application for Android and iPhone.

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PorPOISe

by Jens de Smit

A PHP-based POI server for Layar. You can find code and documentation at http://code.google.com/p/porpoise/. It can run with both tab-delimited files and a relational database as a backend, as well as an XML format.

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LayarDotNet

by Dylan Phillips

If you are a C# developer, and want to get on the Layar Bus.  Check it out.  Invitations are also open for folks who want to contribute. Check it out here: http://layardotnet.codeplex.com

The license is open source, so you are welcome to include it in your own commercial products.

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Programmer Joe

He’s not an engine, but he is a coding machine…   Joe Ludwig has published the python code for one of his Layar projects in his blog post here. For the impatient, Here’s the code.

We have seen so many great ideas for Layar content that we searched for a way to give people the opportunity to express their own Layar ideas. We present to you the Dreamcatcher. With the Dreamcatcher you can now make your own Layar screen shots. So stop what you are doing and show us what you would like to see in the screen of your phone.

Get started with the Dreamcatcher

1. It is easy, either use the Powerpoint template or two image assets provided below to make your screen shot.


2. Publish your ideas on flickr, your website or blog and share them in the comments of this post.

We are looking forward to see your creativity! Go crazy!

• Layar Powerpoint Template


• Layar Image Assets:
  Download the image files by clicking on the images and selecting [save as].
  
  
  

  In your favorite editing program you can use these files. Use the example at the top of this post as a guide.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  First find a good background image and open it. Place the phone image on top of the background image. Make a copy of the background image and size and crop it so it fits ‘in’ the phone and is a bit smaller.	Place the Layar interface image on top of the previous images. Add Logo and title in the title bar. Add PIO text in the white image area on the bottom. If possible change the brown colors to your own style.