Making 3D virtual tours Fast, Cheap, or Good (Part Two)

Photo by Letizia Bordoni on Unsplash

Last time, we talked about 3 ways you can customize your tour building process to make faster, cheaper, or produce better-looking 3D virtual tours.

Now we’re diving right back into that with 3 more steps you can take to get your ideal mix. First up is…

#4: Automatically level your panoramas

Better-looking 👎

Remember those distortions we talked about last time? And how the more distortions your panoramas have, the stranger your tour will look to viewers, especially in VR?

Well if your panoramas do have distortions, don’t worry. There’s a way to lessen them. You just have to make your panoramas level.

To illustrate how to do that using Metareal Stage, here’s a distorted panorama:

Notice how the wall corner in the left isn’t quite vertical, and doesn’t match up with the grid?

Let’s fix that:

By drawing a level line over that corner, we’re letting Metareal know that this line should be vertical. The software then adjusts the panorama accordingly.

We recommend drawing around three level lines in your panorama, to make sure everything’s square.

Now, that’s the process for adding level lines manually. Metareal also lets you add level lines automatically, simply by ticking a checkbox.

You’ll notice that auto-leveling doesn’t quite reduce distortion as much as manually adding lines though.

That’s because auto-leveling uses computer vision to generate level lines. And unfortunately, the algorithm sometimes produces false positives. Computers aren’t as good as humans when it comes to processing visual information just yet.

Sometimes more lines appear than are needed, and even non-vertical lines are marked as vertical (case in point, in the image above, the software decided to generate level lines over trees).

Because of that, we only recommend auto-leveling for plain rooms with little visual noise, to keep the software from getting confused.

Someday they will rule. But it is not yet this day — Photo by Rock'n Roll Monkey on Unsplash

For everything else, we recommend adding level lines manually for best quality.

Faster 👍

To really minimize distortions, you will need to add level lines for all your panoramas. So the bigger your tour, the more work it’s going to be for you to add lines manually.

Simply ticking a checkbox for each pano is much faster. But again, it’ll compromise the tour quality, and your ability to snap panoramas together neatly.

Cheaper 🙌

Manual and automatic leveling are both available in Metareal’s free plan, so either option won’t cost you anything.

#5: Draw 3D volumes for all your objects

Better-looking 👍

Here’s a kitchen with two long islands.

Keep an eye on them as we move around the room.

Did you notice how the island closer to the wall somehow looked much more solid than the other one?

That’s because we drew a 3D volume over that island.

By drawing volumes, you’re letting Metareal know that this space is actually solid. The software is then able to add polygon meshes inside these spaces, making your 2D panoramas truly 3D.

Faster 👎

Volumes take time to draw. Here’s a tutorial on how to make your stairs 3D, for example:

It can take a lot of effort, especially if you’re not yet familiar with the software. It’s pretty important to have your stairs look 3D, because it’s one of the main parts of your tour.

But a lot of your other objects probably aren’t worth the effort of reconstruction. At some point, you do start running into diminishing returns.

So what we recommend you do is, at the very least, draw volumes of the large objects in your room. Then try moving between panos.

If anything else about the room bothers you and feels like it should be 3D, then add volumes as necessary.

No need to be this detailed with your volumes either — Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

In the kitchen above, after reconstructing the other island, it might be best to add a volume over that potted plant as well, because the blurring there is calling too much attention to itself.

After we add that, we move around again, and decide to make the coffee pot 3D as well.

Another check, and everything looks great? Time to move on to the next room.

Cheaper 👎

Polygon meshes are additional visual data for your tours. We try to keep them as light as possible, to save on storage and make your tours faster.

But tours with volumes do take up more space than those without, so try to keep them at a minimum if you want to stay at a lower cost subscription.

#6: Hire an expert to do it for you

Better-looking 👍

Photo by Gabriel Matula on Unsplash

Experts being experts, they have the experience, knowledge, and equipment to transform your space into the best virtual tour that it can be.

You could hire an agency or an independent freelancer to handle everything for you, including photography, video, and marketing.

Or if you just want someone to build the virtual tour itself, you could upload your panoramas to Metareal Stage and hire our production team to build it for you.

Faster 👍

There’s a certain learning curve to making virtual tours.

You have to know photography, either 360 photography or photogrammery. Then you need to know how to edit your photos and stitch your panoramas together. And then you need to get familiar with software you can use to make virtual tours, like Metareal Stage.

Sometimes that learning curve looks a lot like a straight wall — Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash

If you’re completely new to all this, then it’s definitely going to go much faster and easier for you to just hire a professional.

Cheaper 👎

Of course, hiring someone will cost you.

If you’re completely out of money, then you can survive by just taking any old camera you have, watching as many Youtube videos as you can, and taking a shot at making your own virtual tours.

Otherwise, you should seriously consider delegating this task to an expert.

You can do it. But should you? — Photo by Logan Fisher on Unsplash

If you crunch the numbers, you might realize that you’ll be able to maximize your time, money, and energy more if you focus on other aspects of your business, instead of pouring it all into learning, making, and marketing your own 3D virtual tours.

Or you might realize that it’s best to handle it all yourself.

Either way, it’s worth giving this option some consideration before jumping into this venture by your lonesome.

That about covers it. Now you know all the tricks to making your tour building process work for you, instead of compromising on your needs.

Now go forth, and build those tours at whatever quality you desire, at whatever speed you want, at whatever cost you can afford.

Photo by Dominik Scythe on Unsplash

Happy tour building!