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How to make a VRWe're going to begin by using VR Worx 2.0. When you start the program, you get the welcome screen which asks you to choose your type of project. For the 360 degree circle, we use the panorama - first on the list.  Once you've selected the type of project, VR Worx brings up the project template. You literally just click on each tab in order and your project will be done. The first tab is the "Setup" tab. Here's where you provide the program some information on your camera and your project. One very critical part of the Setup tab is the "setup" button next to "Acquire From" near the top of the screen. If you take your photos as we did with the camera on its side, then every photo is going to have to be altered by 90 degrees. If it takes 18 photos for my camera to create a 360 degree circle with 50% overlap, then that's a lot of correcting for me to do - and very time-consuming!! In fact, it's exactly what I did when I first started and after doing it once, I said to myself that "the same people who made this so simple, wouldn't have made this part so hard. Read the manual and find out what to do." Sure enough, under that little setup button is the option to have the computer flip all your pictures for you. It is a two-second choice that saves you hours of work if you're making multiple vr's. Here's the image file setup dialog box. Notice that in my case, it shows me the way it is going to change the photos. Trust me, if you forget about this part, the software will remind you. The other night when I was doing quite a few vr's, I made the wrong choice in this step and didn't notice. A few minutes later, I was importing the images, started to look at the thumbnail shots of the photos and noticed that they were all upside down. I stopped what I was doing, backed up to the first tab and corrected my error.  Here's the full Setup tab screen. After
you've figured out how your photos should come in, you have to tell the
computer how many photos you took to make your 360 degree circle. All
of that depends on your camera. In our case, it took 18 which is the
number we select from the
Maximium Frames box. The default number is 10. Next, you have to tell
it
the focal length of your camera or else the FOV (Field of View). I just
tell it that I have something close to a 35 mm focal length and move
on. The next choice for image size is critical. I'm using cameras that
create huge individual files. They provide wonderful detail but would
make it difficult
for people to download the files and use them. Consequently, I drop
down
to something in the 520 pixel range from the drop-down menu. You can
experiment
and see what the resulting file size is. Experimentation is okay! Keep
an eye on the percentage of overlap. It should be around 50% for smooth
play.
 Moving right along to the next tab, you've got to bring in the photos you created for your vr. I choose multiple, so I can bring them in with the minimum number of steps. That presumes you were careful when you took the photos and didn't stop in the middle of shooting your vr to take other pictures instead and then return to your vr.  You don't have to add 18 (or whatever number your camera requires) at once. You might have your photos in different chunks. To make this process efficient, it is best to get in the habit of shooting your photos for a single vr in a group and pay attention while you're doing it so you don't end up with multiples of a single shot which can confuse you a bit later on. I can say this with authority because I've done it - confused myself, that is, by not paying attention when I was taking the shots and occasionally shooting the same chunk twice. And, if you think you're confused, you should imagine how the software feels when first you tell it you're going to use 18 photos to make a circle and instead you try and feed it 24!! Assuming you were on the bit when taking the photos, all you have to do now is click on the the very first photo that begins your vr and tell the computer to Add 18. Of course, if you told the computer your circle would be made of 26 photos or whatever, that button would have that number in it, instead.  You can see the photos at the bottom of the box, along with a pictorial representation of the type of rotation that will be applied after you clicked on the Add 18 button. It's a handy reminder of what you are doing.  The empty rectangles are now filled with the appropriate pictures. When you do this a few times, you'll start to be able to spot errors, such as duplication of pictures, by just glancing at the photos before you stitch them together.  After Acquire is completed and we have our photos in their spots on the circle, we go to the Stitch tab. This is really difficult. Just click on Stitch. The big white square you see before you click on the tab will shortly be filled with your pictures joined together. DON'T WORRY if things look a little funny at this point. The next step, blending, does amazing things with smoothing out the rough spots.  Here's our photos stitched together. Notice some changes in lightness and darkness from picture to picture. I don't mind a lot. I see it as a challenge for improvement. At this point, I'm still excited by the fact that it's this easy!  The Blend command is next in line after your photos have been stitched. You've probably caught on by now that you just click on the next tab in sequential order and then click on the button. It's just not that difficult. Just like with "Stitch," you'll begin with an empty white rectangle on the page. After it has finished working its magic, your blended product will show up here. It is quite amazing how it smooths out the little inequities between the photos.  Okay - here's our result from the blending process. I'm happy. Let's move on to adding hot spots to our vr.  Hot Spots are a handy feature that allow you to create all sorts of options from within your vr. We'll keep this simple and just concentrate on picking out areas on our photo that we want to invisibly highlight. Unless users tell the computer to show them where the hots spots are located, they will remain hidden. Think about the tree in the picture above. Many people may be unfamiliar with the grey-green material hanging from the branches. You could put a hot spot on that part of your vr so that you or a student could link a command from the hot spot to activate a voice file or a movie clip explaining what Spanish Moss is. Creating a hot spot is simple. Click on one of the shapes over on the left under tools. Squares and circles are on the top row and polygons, rectangles, and ellipses are on the bottom. After clicking on the shape, move to your picture, click, hold, and drag across the area you want to be a hot spot. In this example, I've highlighted the trunk of the tree so that students can later explain what type it is. You can always use the select tool (the arrow) to move your hot spot after you've created it. Notice that each hot spot will be numbered. There are also options you can apply to the hot spots, but let's stay away from that for now. Remember that you don't have to add hot spots. However, if you went to the effort to create a vr, why wouldn't you just take a moment to consider how you can make it even more useful to the end-user later on?  With the hot spots added, we click on the Compress tab. I would suggest leaving the default options alone until you have a chance to create a few and see how you would like things changed. Just click on the Compress button. It is now going to take all of those images you've strung together and make it a nice smooth file.  You're just about done when you get to the Playback tab. Here's your chance to check out how the vr turned out. Put your mouse in the middle of your vr and click, hold, and drag to move around your panorama. I would suggest clicking on the Annotate button to provide additional information for individuals that might later use your vr. It lets you fill in details such as general information, who created it, etc. in simple text boxes. When you're finished, click Export and before you know it, your vr will be exported in QuickTime format for use on anyone's computer.  Our vr is finished now and has been exported. Here it is showing up in the QuickTime player. One quick note here. I've noticed that some new computers, even very high powered PC machines, are not always coming pre-loaded with the QuickTime plug-in. Considering that this is probably one of the most useful plug-ins on the web, it's not a bright move. If you find you can't play your vr for some reason, it is most likely because your computer is missing the QuickTime player. Just go to the Apple site and get it. It's free. Instructions on how to download and install are available here in a PDF format.  One or two last points: When you create your vr, you have the option to not only create the QuickTime movie of your final product, but you can also create a VR Worx file that contains all of your pictures and all of your settings that produced your vr. This can be very handy if you've had to correct a few mistakes where you didn't quite have all of your pictures in order. You don't want to have to go through the process of finding out which were the correct pictures again. Saving your VR Worx project information is the same as in other programs. Click on File, Save As and give your file a name. The only point to note is that this file will be rather large if your photos were of high quality. The resulting file is far, far bigger than the vr you made. This is one time when the parts and pieces add up to much more than the whole! I've found it handy to keep my Worx files in case I want to go back and play with some special effects or to change the dimensions of the photos to produce a smaller vr. We'll talk more about other features later. |