The rise of developing 360-degree photos and virtual reality across businesses has provided incredible prospects. Whether you own a business or are a hobbyist looking to try new approaches, this blog will teach you how to create amazing 360 virtual tours!
This comprehensive guide is created with our team’s passion to walk you through every step of the process, from planning and gathering material to editing, publishing, and hosting. Let’s learn how to engage your audience and enhance your online presence.
Step 1: Planning
What is 360 images?
A 360 image or can be called a panoramic image, captures a full view of the surrounding area from all angles. Simply put, it allows you to virtually “turn around” and examine the entire scene, creating an immersive and engaging experience, check this article to learn how to create 360 images .
Here is a visual example of a stunning virtual tour:
Which fields should use 360° photos?
Due to technological advancements, employing 360-degree photos to promote a business is a wise decision. It not only elicits a “wow” sensation but also enhances the immersion of their customers’ experiences, which benefits the company.
Imagine you’re having trouble deciding on a restaurant for your date tonight; it’d be fantastic to see the restaurant’s outdoor eating space. Or, while planning a trip and selecting a hotel, customers would like to examine the room before agreeing to pay for it.
If your business belongs to these fields, you should probably consider using 360 photos immediately!
Tourism & Hospitality
As customer preferences heavily influence a given market, offering 360 virtual tour will provide your company with a competitive advantage. Here’s a way to empower customers: evaluate the tour, accommodations, or services before they have to pay for them. This enables travelers to make better decisions about their travel arrangements and boosts the likelihood of closing deals.
Real Estate
For a long time, real estate transactions needed a lot of work, including numerous in-person meetings between home sellers, agents, and purchasers. However, this is no longer the case with the use of 360-degree photos for virtual tour.
Real estate virtual tour software allows all parties involved to capture the appearance of housing projects while interacting immediately. This saves money and time, minimizes consumer irritation, and ultimately increases sales.
Photographers
To maintain a competitive advantage over others, photographers must always refresh their advanced abilities and incorporate new technology. Providing 360 photo services will help you connect with a new group of customers.
Step 2: Capture 360 Panorama
The first step in creating 360-degree material for a virtual tour is to obtain a 360 camera. However, as technology advances, you may find it difficult to look for and select the best equipment. So here’s the complete comparative summary, which may be useful to you.
Comparing 360 camera vs. DSLR vs. Smartphone
Normally, there are 3 options for you to pick from depending on your purposes: 360 cameras, DSLR, and smartphone. In general, there are several factors you should consider:
However, each type of equipment has its pros and cons. So let’s dive in!
- 360° Camera
360°cameras are designed to record panoramic science in a single shot. Typically, this type of equipment is equipped with specialist software for seamless stitching and processing, making it easier to create 360-degree views.
- DSLR Camera
In contrast to 360°cameras, a DSLR camera works by taking a sequence of overlapping photographs and then using specialist software to stitch them together into a seamless panoramic view.
- Smartphone
Smartphones might be regarded as the most cost-effective way to capture 360 photos. Even if it has increasingly advanced cameras and user-friendly applications, image quality may be an important consideration.
Equipment recommendations
The key element in creating astonishing 360° images with the finest results for virtual tour is having the proper equipment. And if you’re still puzzled and panicked, don’t worry, since here is some advice from our experts:
- Recommendations for 360°camera
If you decide to go for a 360°camera, here are some suggestions based on common preferences:
- Best in overall: Insta360 ONE RS
- Best in cost-efficient: Trisio Lite2
- Best in resolution and image quality: Ricoh Theta X
- Recommendations for DSLR camera
For professional needs, we recommend using a DSLR camera with wide-angle lenses and a panoramic head. To be more specific, a panorama head will greatly assist you in making 360-degree images by spinning the camera around its nodal point, reducing errors, ensuring accurate image alignment, and streamlining the post-production process.
Various lenses and panoramic heads are based on your DSLR model, therefore it is much easier to ask an expert to choose the exact one that meets your requirements.
- Recommendations for other equipment
To create the best result for your 360° images as well as virtual tours without any interruption, you might need to consider using other equipment such as a tripod, remote trigger, and additional charging equipment.
Tips for shooting 360° images
Even if you are an amateur or professional photographer, there are various tips, tactics, and best practices that can help you get high-quality results:
1. Find the best angle
To create a comprehensive 360° view, proper positioning of your camera is the most important. Depending on the scenario, we recommend you at least place your camera around 5 feet from the floor.
2. Use a tripod
The use of a tripod remains stable, resulting in sharper and clearer photographs in the finished 360-degree composition.
3. Maximize image quality
Remember to maintain your lenses dust-free, use RAW format for final products, and employ High Dynamic Range (HDR) techniques during the capture process.
4. Plan your shoot
Consider putting a visually appealing feature in the foreground to give the image a feeling of scale and depth.
5. Avoid parallax issues
Parallax issues occur when the foreground and background are not properly aligned during the stitching process. To get rid of it, pivot around the nodal point and capture photos that overlap.
Step 3: Edit with Virtual Tour Software
Once you’ve mastered the tips and tactics for creating outstanding 360° photographs, it’s time to build virtual tours. By combining hotspots, navigation, and interactivity, you can direct viewers through a virtual space and provide them with a distinctive way to explore different places.
Here are some simple steps you may take to get started quickly:
Create a virtual tour with Panoee
First, choose a software program to make virtual tours from 360° pictures, such as TeliportMe, KRPano, or Pano2VR. However, in this blog, we will primarily present you with a tutorial on Panoee, which is one of the most user-friendly software with a variety of capabilities.
- Step 1: Click “Create a project”, name your project then start importing 360° photos
- Step 2: Create a logical flow in your virtual tour by arranging 360° photos
- Step 3: Add hotspots to connect your 360 images and create a seamless navigation experience.
- Step 4: Customize the navigation options such as arrows or menus
- Step 5: Add additional multimedia elements like videos, audio, or text descriptions.
- Step 6: Preview and test
To visualize more clearly, you can watch the video tutorial.
Step 4: Publish Virtual Tour
How to share and display a virtual tour
With Panoee, you can either choose to export a virtual tour as a ZIP file or publish it on Google Street View.
