A few weeks ago we published a short tip showing you how to extract a patch from the panorama and then retouching it in Photoshop CS or Elements with the Content Aware Fill tool.
We also just published a very much requested tip; how to make a clickable nadir logo using point hotspots and Skin-IDs. We show how to do this in both Pano2VR and Pano2VR pro with a multi-node tour.
These are the last tips of the year and we hope you find them useful!
We would like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday season! And as they say here in Austria, “einen Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!”
Here are some Gnome highlights from 2014:
We had a wonderful year but are really quite excited about all the new features we will be offering in 2015!
Best wishes from all of us at Garden Gnome Software!
Sometimes your client and/or project requires not only an offline project, but also one that doesn’t require a web browser when outputting to HTML5.
So, here’s a tip that helps tremendously with these situations. It utilizes a JavaScript platform, called NW.js and just using a bit of code, you can turn your project into a stand-alone player that will work on all system platforms. Don’t worry, it’s painless.
We’ve got a tutorial for Windows…
And one for Mac:
The basic steps:
Learn more:
We just released Pano2VR 4.5.2. This is a bugfix release where we addressed smaller issues. Here is the list of changes:
You can find the full list in our bug tracker.
You can download the new version at our download page.
For this “in the wild” post we have aerials!
We’d like to highlight the projects created by Aerial Sphere. These guys are taking high altitude panoramas the old fashioned way…with helicopters.
Aerial Sphere is based in Phoenix, Arizona, which by default, provides them with plenty of photographic inspiration.
One project is a tour of the surrounding airports.
An airport that struck my fancy was the Pegasus Airpark (5AZ23). I didn’t know that there are neighborhoods designed for private jet use. Check out these homes; they park their planes in a driveway/apron that connects directly to the taxiway!
Here’s another fascinating sphere.
Altitude: 1000 feet/305 meters above ground level.
If you’re unfamiliar with the American Southwest, it is mostly a hot and arid climate. Phoenix, Arizona is located in the Sonoran Desert. So, if you don’t own a private plane perhaps you have a boat. And if so, you can have a private dock…in the desert! What I found interesting are all the swimming pools and their varying shades of turquoise.
Perhaps you’re thinking about attending the University of Arizona’s Tempe Campus. If so, this might be your home for a few years. Get acquainted.
Altitude: 800 feet/244 meters above ground level.
I should point out, that we really like what Aerial Sphere has done with their skins. They are simple and elegant and are great examples of what can be done in a skin.
I’ll stop now and let you explore for yourself. There’s a lot to see!
We just released 4.5.3. This is a bugfix release for a bug introduced in 4.5.2 that prevented interaction with panoramas on older iOS Devices (iOS 7 and earlier).
You can find the full list in our bug tracker.
You can download the new version at our download page.
We welcome the spring weather with a Hopki Tip!
Have you ever wanted to switch between two panoramas that show a before and after scene or the change in seasons? Yeah? So have we.
Hopki shows us exactly how to do this in his latest tip. In his example he shows us how to change a day scene to a night scene using a simple button. This can be built in both Pano2VR and Pano2VR pro.
The basic steps:
Learn more:
Are you going?
In a few weeks we’ll be at the 2015 edition of the IVRPA Conference and man, are we looking forward to it!
If you haven’t already heard, we will be presenting Pano2VR version 5!Version 5 will come packed with a lot of new features and we can’t wait to show you. Our presentation is scheduled for Tuesday June 2nd at 10:45 and soon afterwards we will provide you with more details about the release.
If you’ll be at the conference, don’t hesitate to stop by our table or just come on up and say hello!
Every year, we sponsor the Epson International Pano Awards and this year is no different. The competition is now open and early-bird entries are open until July 12th 2015.
This year, there is a huge prize pool, including the Jeff Mitchum Fine Art Prize and the Epson Digital Art Prize which will offer $5000 and $1000 cash for first place, respectively.
For inspiration, check out last year’s winners.
So, go ahead and enter! If you enter before July 12th, you can enter 5 images for the price of 4 ($12 per image).
Good luck from all of us at Garden Gnome Software!
It’s been incubating for a while now, but finally, it is here … Pano2VR 5 (beta)!
We are more excited than usual with this release because it is the biggest update we’ve done since moving from Pano2QTVR. We hope that you’ll find this news also exciting.
This is just the shortlist of what’s new:
There’s a lot to check out and learn so, we’ve put together a feature overview for you:
You will find a few more videos to help introduce you to the new workflow in this playlist.
There’s also all new documentation (also in Beta) to help you out.
The Beta is available for download here. If you have a previous version of Pano2VR, log in to your account and check your upgrade options.
Pano2VR 5 got lots of new powerful features and I bet there’s one you may have seen and been wondering about: variables. You’ll find them in the Skin Editor and they have plenty of uses. In fact, too many to write in one post or even a single tutorial.
But you’re in luck, because Martin created three thorough tutorials for you; one for each type of variable:
Using the true/false variable:
Using the text variable:
Using the number variable:
So go ahead and learn and then don’t forget to play and show us what you’ve done with these things. It’s likely you’ll find a use for them that we haven’t!
PS: The videos have been added to a playlist for your viewing enjoyment.
Pano2VR 5 beta 2 is out and it’s version 5’s first bug fix release.
We’ve fixed the most annoying bugs:
We also added a new feature for the Animation output:
Thank you to everyone for reporting and now we have to get back to work to squash more bugs…
There are a lot of new features in Pano2VR 5 and we want to help you learn about them, of course.
To start, did you know that in version 5, you can animate your panorama? That means you can automate the movement (pan, tilt, zoom) through the panorama. The Animation Editor has a timeline (similar to other graphics and video editors) and on that timeline you use keyframes to change the view of the panorama.
You can then use that animation as your autorotation in the HTML5 output or you can export the panorama as a movie file to import in to your video editor or to simply upload to YouTube. If you have a tour (a group of panoramas), you can add each panorama as a clip and automate the movement through the tour. Here’s an example:
Martin has already created a tutorial to quickly introduce you to this feature. Be sure to check it out:
Oh and be warned this feature is a lot of fun.
Today, we’ve got a getting started tutorial that we hope will help you to quickly get up and running with version 5.
In the tutorial we cover basic workflows for both Pano2VR and Pano2VR pro. In Pano2VR we add hotspots and patches. We also fine-tune the leveling on a Theta image. For Pano2VR pro, we create a simple tour using the Automatic Linking feature.
In case you’re more curious, check out all the current version 5 tutorials and the documentation.
If you’ve been following our posts since June 2015, you may have noticed that we launched the beta version of Pano2VR 5. There are so many new features that we are constantly adding tips and tutorials so you can learn how to use them.
One of the features is the ability to easily add a Google Map to your project so users can see exactly where the panorama was taken. If you’re a pro user and have a tour, you can add multiple nodes to the map. Martin has created two tips to show how this can be done.
The first one is an introduction and will show you how to set the location (if there is no location information in the image) and then how to add the map to the project.
The second one is a continuation of the first and is quite advanced. In this one you’ll learn to create custom map markers.
Little Planets are so much fun! Here’s one of mine, taken recently at Arches National Part with the Ricoh Theta:
Watch Martin’s recent tip and learn how to make your own in Pano2VR 5.
We are happy to release a new beta of Pano2VR 5.
New features/changes in the this version:
You can download the latest version from the Pano2VR page.
Martin has prepared more tips for Pano2VR 5! He’s a tip-producing machine!
If you work with a lot of custom skins, you might be happy to learn about the Color Tool found in the Skin Editor. The little but mighty tool lets you quickly and easily change the color theme of skin or even individual SVG elements within the skin.
Learn how it works:
This tip is short and sweet…and fun! Martin shows us how to include a clickable logo in the panoramas’s right-click context menu.
It has been way too long since our last“in the Wild” post!
So, without further ado, we’d like to introduce you to this project by Harald Joergens.
Harald created a virtual tour of the President narrow steamboat that was used to deliver goods on the canals between central England and London in the beginning of the 20th century.
The tour makes use of information pop-ups, sound and video making it a very interactive tour. The info boxes are found throughout the tour giving us interesting bits of information.
In the engine room there are lots of sounds! You can start the Ignitor for instance or hear the Signal Bell ring. Also in the engine room is an embedded video showing how the engine is started.
We also like the thumbnail navigator he’s added to the project. It’s a great way for jumping through the tour and to see what panoramas you’ve visited. In Pano2VR 5 we’ve added this navigator as a component for easy implementation. Learn more about the Component Toolbox.
This tour is a nice example of some of the many elements you can add to your tours to create more interactivity and we hope it inspires you!
If you’re getting a Ricoh Theta this holiday, then here are a couple of Pano2VR 5 tips to add to the fun.
The second explores some of the features found in Pano2VR 5 that help in building good-looking tours. It also goes over features like automatic and manual leveling as well as the fine-tuning of the geolocation of each node of the tour.
The first tip shows how to convert the Theta’s video output to an amusing Little Planet video using Droplets and an image editor like Photoshop.
Today, we are releasing a new beta version of Pano2VR 5. We are getting much closer to the final release, but first we would like to get a few more things fixed:
You can download the latest version from the Pano2VR page.
