Hello, my name is Stephen Cleary and I’m the Web Multimedia Developer at Newport University. In 2011 I created virtual tours of our brand new City Campus and our Caerleon Campus. They are an extremely effective way of giving prospective students an idea of the University and its location before visiting. Upon researching 360 degree virtual tours (VTs) it was clear that we could produce a high quality tour in house for a similar cost to out sourcing, and then we would own the equipment to update it whenever necessary.
There are two main ways to shoot a VT. The quickest and easiest method (used by estate agents) is the one shot lens such as the GoPano Plus. This captures the full 360 image without the need for stitching multiple images together. It’s fast and can be 360 video or a 360 image, but the quality is not fantastic.
The other option is to use a DSLR camera with a circular fish eye lens and a panoramic tripod. With this method you take several high quality images at different angles from the same point, and then align or stitch them together using software such as Photoshop or Autopano Pro. This produces a high quality high detail virtual tour, but at first it can be difficult to perfectly stitch the images together.
We chose the second option in order to have full screen high detail tours on our website. It is time intensive compared to the single shot option but the results are impressive. We used a Nikon D5100 with a Sigma fisheye lens.
Each of our panoramas is three stitched images shot at 120 degrees. On location I shot the 360 six times, so a total of 18 images for each scene, and I then chose the best set. I processed the images in Photoshop, removing any shadows and then stitched it in Autopano Pro. I then arranged and exported the virtual tour to Flash using Panotour Pro. The flat jpeg panoramas are impressive in themselves, and we have used them in our new prospectuses.
All the best,
Stephen
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