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VR Software: ULead Cool 360 Go to Start > Programs > Ulead Cool 360 > Ulead Cool 360 or double-click on the icon that you find on your desktop. Here's the splash screen that you'll see launching the software. 
When it opens, you'll see the screen pictured below. There are 3 logical steps to creating the vr or wide angle picture and guess what? They're labeled - 1 -2 - 3. Those numbers at the top will be your navigation guide. The step you're on will be highlighted in orange. Step 1: Start - wants you to decide what you want to do. The text under 1. Start says that you can click on New Project or Open Project if you're returning to the software to continue working on something from before. We're going to presume you're starting a new project. Click on New Project on the right side at the top of the list. You can see my mouse cursor turn into a hand as I move over top of the New Project option. New Project also lights up. Click to make your choice. 
New Project launches the New Project Wizard. In the title bar, they tell you this is Step 1 of 3. Project type on the left, let's you choose between a Full 360 degree panorama and a wide angle image. We're just going to focus on the the 360 degree panorama at the moment. You have 3 more important choices to make. First, give your project a name. Second, tell it where it is going to be located. You can click on the browse button and move to the folder where you want to store it. Finally, give your project a description. At one point, I used to ignore that step as I figured how could I forget what this was a picture of - wrong! I didn't realize that I was going to be making so many vr's at the time. Consequently, I can see that is both helpful to the end-user who will see your completed project so they don't have to try and guess where you were, and it will also be helpful to you as you create these projects looking back 3 years later. Good information literacy skills tell us that we should label things correctly. 
Okay, your project now knows what you're going to call it and where it will be located. Now, you have to go and find the pictures you're going to use. Keep your photos in a folder and not "loose" amongst a number of other files. You'll find that easier in the long run. Once you get to the folder with the pictures, you have to select which ones you are going to use. That's the main purpose of Step 2 of the Wizard. You can select the photos and then add them in one bunch or you can select them one at a time to add them. Why would you do that? Because occasionally, you'll notice that you have taken two shots of the exact same point. You might have been uncertain whether you took the photo to begin with, so you decided to be safe rather than sorry. If you click Add, it will bring in all the photos that have been selected. If you click Add All, it will bring everything in a folder. Watch out for that! 
When you click Add or Add All, depending on your choice, this little window pops up - Download Files. The software is now taking your selected pictures from the folder and putting them in order where it will make the vr. 
I'm not saying that you're the type that will make mistakes like I do, but should such a thing happen and you add in too many photos or you see that you didn't realize you had two the same, the software will let you delete your unwanted visitor. Simply click on the unwanted photo. The frame for that thumbnail will turn blue and you can click on the X in the toolbar below to delete it. Note: It is only deleting the photo from the row of thumbnails. It is NOT deleting it from your files. So, don't worry. Cool 360 has one very helpful option at this point that you might not notice. Underneath the thumbnails is a small slider box. By starting at the beginning and sliding it across a little quickly, you'll start to get a sense of how your vr will look. It provides you with an "instant" preview of your project. This is one of the fastest ways to see an "oops!" and correct it by deleting the thumbnail or by dragging it to rearrange it in the order. There are also a couple of other very valuable choices in that little toolbar beneath the thumbnails. One of them is the ability to rotate photos. Depending on how your camera anchored to the tripod (I'm hoping you were using one), you might have your photos turned 90 degrees the other way. The rotate button will let you change that. 
Notice that if you found you were missing a photo, you can also see your listing of photos, a preview window of any that you highlight (as in the picture below) and an option to add a single photo or more than one. Not that you're ever going to make this mistake like me, but if you accidentally hit Add All in a previous step and neglected to first select which photos you wanted and you end up with a pile of photos you don't need - Cool 360 has a handy button that lets you delete all and go at it again. I know you'll never use that button, but I confess that I have. Click Next to continue to the next stage once you have your photos in order. 
In this final stage, Cool 360 asks you to select the camera you used to take the pictures. It can make some fine-tuning adjustments if it has that information. I've used the Generic option and the 35 mm the most as I have several digital cameras that I work with and I haven't bothered to load specifications for the particular camera I was using at the time. Also, I might not remember which camera I used for a particular project. If you're into details, then get down to specifics here, otherwise, just go with Generic or 35 mm as most digital cameras get pretty close to that. I confess that I don't worry about details that aren't going to make that much of a difference to the final outcome of a project - not if I'm going to save a lot of time by ignoring it. Click Next and keep moving. 
You remembered to click next, right? If you did, the Creating Preview Image box pops up to let you know that it is working to create something for you to look at as a last check before finalizing the project. 
Cool 360 now goes back to the screen we saw at the beginning. We're now in Stage 2 of the project where we adjust any issues before exporting this as a movie. Notice the little white hand at the bottom of the preview picture in the frame. That's my mouse cursor moving one of the little gold buttons on the frame. You'll see another one of those buttons up on the top left. The one on the top let's you slide up and down the preview to see how far up and how far down you can see in your vr and the one on the bottom let's you cruise quickly through your entire panorama to check any issues. Very handy! Unfortunately, they're also so subtle that you might be like me and think they were simply decorations the first time I saw it. Of course, reading the manual would have helped a lot at the time - experimentation was the alternative. 
If you like what you see (and let's not get too picky here on your first attempt - give yourself a break), click on the the Finish button - #3, at the top of your screen. Cool 360 will now finalize your panorama. You'll see the Merging dialog box pop up on your screen. 
Once Cool 360 has finished merging the photos, you can use the slider bar at the bottom of the picture to move back and forth and see how things look. Again, don't worry about any little fuzzy areas on your first few vrs. Once you get comfortable with the process, you can go back and change those projects by playing with some of the other options built-in to the software. Remember: The key to avoiding those problems to begin with is keeping your tripod and your camera level when taking the photos. If you like what you've created (and I think you will!), you have several choices to the side. The one I'm going to tell you to be cautious about is E-mail. Depending on the size of your photos, the vr you've created could be HUGE. Sending it as an e-mail might take forever if you're on a dial-up connection or it might be a nightmare for the person receiving it to get the message. Think about the size before you start attaching it to anything. The best option is to save it. Save your final product and you can always decide how you will share it later. 
When you click on Save in the above picture, you will get the Save As dialog box. Give your vr a name and decide what folder it is going to go in. Then click save and let it go at it. 
To play your vr, you can click on the Cool 360 Viewer. However, I find it is faster to just double-click on the file on my computer and that will launch QuickTime which is actually the real viewer. You need QuickTime to see vr's, unless you have some different type of vr. QuickTime from Apple.com is really the main vr environment (she says with all confidence that somebody will e-mail and contradict). it is just simpler, has more features, it's free, and it works on both Macs and PCs. What more do you want?!! That's all there is to it. Of course, that's not all there is to the Cool 360 software. There are settings to consider and wide angle photos to think about, but we'll leave that for another page. There are two main drawbacks with Cool 360. First, you can't use the software on Macs and PCs. It only works on PCs as I write this in October of 2002. The final product runs on both platforms so that offsets some of the disadvantages. Second, you can't put hotspots in your vr's. Hotspots allow you to do some very cool things with vr's. Thing of Cool 360 as your first set of training wheels in learning to use vr. All vr software works pretty much the same and once you get the idea, you can always move up to something like VR Worx. One last advantage I should mention about Cool 360 is that most people have it somewhere. They just don't know it. Cool 360 comes as part of the software on an awful lot of digital cameras. Go and take a look in your box of cd's. I think there's a good chance you've had it all along and didn't know what to do with it. Have fun! |