2013年4月25日星期四

Easypano revised its EP-Sky, there are a lot of free VR elements here. Some Introduction

EP-Sky, a newly revised platform by Easypano, provides you with FREE virtual tour elements for Easypano virtual tour product, Tourweaver and the panoramic community to upload and share your own panoramic images and virtual tours. The New EP-SKY integrated ieasypano and previous EP-SKY together and starts the redeem credits system. Now, you can not only download virtual tour elements as before, you may also share panorama and virtual tour at Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. You can post your favorite panorama as you want, find and follow other friends with common interests. Besides, you can exchange your accumulated credits for more Easypano virtual reality products.

On the new EP-sky, you can download virtual tour elements, such as Skins, Buttons, Hotspots, Loading bars, Thumbnails, and upload and share panoramic images and virtual tours. With the help of all these free services, you will find it is much easier and more time saving to create your own fantastic virtual tour with the low learning curve virtual tour product.

About how to exchange products with redeemed credits, please refer to Credits Exchange rules
About how to make and upload skin, please refer to How to make virtual tour skin
How to use virtual tour elements; please refer to virtual tour elements video tutorial

It would be highly appreciated to tell us what you feel and what you think of using this new service. We will take all your suggestions seriously and do our best in providing all the virtual tour lovers with the best free services.

In the same sky, we create, share, talk about, comments on the same virtual tour, which makes our worlds a wonderland.
http://sky.easypano.com/

What is panoramic software?

Panoramic software refers to applications which creates panoramic images.

What is Panoramic Image?

Panoramic image is a kind of image with elongated fields of view, which is obtained using specialised equipment and panoramic software. A panoramic image covers a field of view of, approximately, or greater than, that of the human eye - about 160° by 75°. This means that a panoramic image generally has an aspect ratio of 2:1 or larger, or the width is at least twice as its height. Some panoramic images have aspect ratios of 4:1 and sometimes 10:1, covering fields of view of up to 360 degrees in horizontal line. Both the aspect ratio and coverage of field are important factors in defining a true panoramic image.

How to use panoramic software to get a panoramic image?

Wide angle lens, fisheye lens are generally used for panoramic photography. To cover about 360 degrees field of view, wide angle lens and fisheye lens can make the panoramic photography much easier than that with normal lens, because much less images need to be taken.
There are also one-shot optic that can be mounted on digital cameras, which can obtain 360 degree field of view panoramic image easily with only "one shot" and a special software unwrapping software. However, quality of the panoramic image obtained through this optic is low.
Therefore, to get a high quality panoramic imge, wide angle lens and fisheye lens are recommended. A panoramic image with 360° by 180° can be easily created with the help of photo stitch software Panoweaver, the following fisheye images and wide angle images are easily stitched into either spherical(360° by 180°) or cylindrical(360° by less than 180°) panoramic image

Use Panoramic Software to Publish Panoramic Images for Web Use.

The above panoramic images can be printed or post to websites as panoramic photos. To view them immersively, you need to publish the image in formats that are based on other players, like Flash player, QuickTime player and Java player. Panoweaver can convert panoramic images to full screen Flash, QuickTime and Java viewer. See following Flash panorama sample:

View other panoramic image outputs in Gallery.

2013年4月23日星期二

360° panoramic photo

360° photo

What can a 360 degree photo do?

A 360° photo offers a 360 degree view. It is often used to show 360 view of tourist sites, buildings, events and etc.

How to get a 360 degree photo?

In order to get a 360 degree image, you need to use digital camera, pano head and tripod. Fisheye lens is recommended in order to get 360*180 degree panorama pictures, but normal lens is also OK. Refer to Panorama Photography and compatible equipment list.

Digital camera with high resolution can offer great details. Fisheye lens offers greater field of view, for example, Sigma 8mm F4 EX DG Fisheye lens has a 183 degree angle of view. So, only 4 images are needed to cover 360 * 180 degree. The above spherical 360 picture was stitched from fisheye photos taken by Nikon D70 & Sigma 8mm Fisheye lens. Visit how to take fisheye photos page to get detailed instructions before shooting with your fisheye lens.

If you have no professional equipment for taking fisheye pictures, you may use standard digital camera to take continuous series of pictures and stitch with Panoweaver to get a 360 panorama like the above cylindrical one. To take normal digital pictures, a pano head and a tripod are also needed in order to get high quality 360 degree panoramic pictures. Visit how to take normal photos page to get detailed instructions before shooting with your camera.

After taking photos, stitch them into 360 degree photos with photo stitch software Panoweaver. Fisheye photos can be stitched into 360*180 degree spherical panoramas and normal digital photos can be stitched into cylindrical panoramas.

360 photo of various places

360 views of tourist site:

360 pictures of Mount Huang:

360 degree images of historic buildings in south China:

360 degree photos of real estate properties:

Above 360 degree pictures have reached 360 degree horizontally and 180 degree vertically, and we call this kind of panorama "360 spherical panorama". When a panoramic picture has reached 360 degree in horizontal field of view, but less than 180 degree vertically, we call it "360 cylindrical panorama". See below cylindrical panorama.

360 * 65 degree

What players can be used to play 360 photo?

There are many players that can play 360 degree pictures in immersive views, for example, Flash player, QuickTime player and Java player. With these 360 players, you can view the panoramic image in real 360 degree.

Click following icons to view 360 tours based on the players.

In Panoweaver, photo stitching and panorama publishing are both supported. So the 360 degree images stitched with Panoweaver can easily be exported into single panorama tours based on above players. View 360 panorama gallery.

Be sure to install relevant plugin. Right click on the 360 photo and choose full screen display in Flash and Java player.

Panorama stitching software

The professional Panorama stitching software Panoweaver can creat 360 degree panoramas from digital photos. The source images, such as wide angle images, fisheye lens images, etc, can be stitched into spherical panorama, cylindrical panoram and cubic panorama. Besides, the ponarama can also be published into Flash virtual tour orHTML5 virtual tour with this panorama software. Thus, it can be viewed on PC, iPhone and iPad.

How to stitch spherical panoramas?

To create 360*180 degree spherical panoramas, it is recommended to shoot fisheye photos and then stitch with Panorama stitching software Panoweaver.

What is fisheye photo?

Fisheye photo is usually taken with fisheye lens, and there are three types of fisheye photos that can be stitched into 360*180 spherical panorama with photo stitching software Panoweaver.

Full circular fisheye photo
It has a 180° angle of view in all directions, Only 2 or 3 circular fisheye photos would be enough when stitched inphoto stitch software
Drum fisheye photo If you attach DSLR with Focal length multiplier>1 to Sigma 8mm f4 EX fisheye lens, the two margins in the final fisheye images will be cut. We call it drum fisheye image derived from its shape. 6 images in total, including the zenith and the nadir, would be enough when stitching panorama in our panorama stitching software.

Full circular fisheye photo

Drum fisheye image

Full frame fisheye photo

Full frame fisheye photo It has a 180° angle of view only on the diagonal line. To create a panorama with full frame fisheye photos, 8 images, including the zenith and the nadir, need to be processed in panorama stitching software.
Stitch full frame fisheye photos to panorama:
The stitched panoramic photo is a 360 degree spherical one.

How to stitch cylindrical panorama?

A cylindrical panoramic photo has 360 degree in the horizontal line, but less than 180 degree in the vertical line.

The following cylindrical panorama is stitched from the 12 digital photos:

How to stitch HDR panoramas?

Panoweaver supports HDR panorama stitching. There are two ways to get HDR panorama:

Bracket exposure

1. Using bracket exposure to shoot fisheye images.
2. Import the image groups into Panoweaver to get panoramas once for all.
3. Adjust on the created HDR to get a good-result LDR (normal panoramic image)

Using camera raw file

1. Shoot in RAW mode.
2. Import Camera RAW in Panorama stitching software Panoweaver to stitch panorama.
3. Simply stitch the RAW file in Panoweaver to get a nice panorama with appropriate exposure value.

2013年4月18日星期四

Museum Virtual Tour

About Museum Virtual Tours, more details about exhibits seem more important. Apart from the normal virtual tours inside and outside the pavilion, more exhibits can be perfectly shown in the way of 3D, plan image or Flash format, which combines the traditional exhibition and virtual tour together. You can see details of historical relics by clicking on images. Clicking 3D Object, you can view the shape, color and volume etc. of this handicraft article. Besides, you may link article with more multimedia. For example if you click on the dinosaur fossil in the museum, the video of Jurassic Park will pop up and play which will impress the visitors with a realistic sense. APP or virtual tour may also be uploaded to website for visitors, which is a better way for museum publicity that integrated the museum with internet.

http://www.easypano.com/gallery/tourweaver/museum/_auto/flash/TourWeaver_750-baoshan-1.html

created by software Tourweaver:http://www.easypano.com/virtual-tour-software.html
about Panorama creation: http://www.easypano.com/panorama-stitching-software.html

Crime Inspection Virtual tour - Virtual tour used by Police office

Crime Inspection Virtual tour

Through 360 degrees virtual tours, a more comprehensive record of the scene of the crime reappears. Compared with piecemeal plane photos, virtual tour is more helpful in protecting criminal site, recording site information and crime case investigation. In addition, virtual tour takes the viewer into an immersive criminal scene, which provides police clearer ideas to detect cases so that they can find more clues.

Through hot spots linked plan image and the marks at site, police may acquire more details of the scene, such as a person's height, the length of the lethal weapon. Through the map, they can also see the specific location, which is very helpful for criminal detection.

http://www.easypano.com/photo-stitching-software.html

http://www.easypano.com/virtual-tour-software.html

Features of Panorama Stitching Software