I wanted to test some of Apple’s new Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, so I put together a fun little exercise app featuring HE-MAN. Here is a video showing the the app in action:

One meter tall He-Man exercising

Creating the app

The pieces I pulled together for this app are:

He-Man action figure
Light box
A lot of photos of He-Man with my iPhone
Apple’s HelloPhotogrammetry program
Blender 3D tool
Adobe’s Mixamo site
Apple’s Reality Converter application
Betas of Apple’s next macOS, iPadOS, and Xcode
And code I wrote.

I took several dozen photos of the 6-inch He-Man action figure, and I used Apple’s HelloPhotogrammetry program to convert those photos into an OBJ file (and materials).

I used Blender to remove a little bit of clutter that was added to the 3D model.

Next, I uploaded the OBJ file to Mixamo to create various animations.

Mixamo exports FBX files, which I converted to USDZ via Apple’s Reality Converter app.

I then wrote the Augmented Reality (AR) program, which included the transitions between the different exercise animations.

I originally made He-Man 6 feet tall (1.83 m), but he was a little too big for my room, especially when doing the spinning back kicks. I shrunk him down to a more kid-friendly 1 meter in height.

The Future of the program?

I do not plan to release the program, in part because I do not have a license from Mattel.

But maybe Mattel will see this blog post and create AR programs for many of their action figures / dolls. Mattel has a ton of intellectual property to work with. I can imagine kids would love to see their favorite characters come to life in their own homes.

Photo of 6 inch tall He-Man in the light box