How to use the Virtual Tour feature

What is Virtual Tour?

Virtual Tour can offer an immersive experience of your design. Clients can conveniently visit the virtual space on a PC/mobile device through the D5 Showreel link you share, thus gaining an immersive view of your architectural/interior designs.

Two types of projects for [Virtual Tour]

D5 supports two types of Virtual Tour:

1. Basic Tour: composited directly by the browser, not containing spatial information, only supporting basic panorama browsing and location switching

2. Space Tour: must be uploaded after creating the project in the client, containing spatial information and supporting advanced features such as 3D displacement, spatial hotspot, measurement, etc.

Space Tour

Create a space tour project

1. First, log in to your Teams account. Click on the 'Tour' icon at the top right corner to access the project list on the right sidebar. Hit '+' at the top right to initiate a new project.

2. Then, click 'Edit' to start editing the virtual tour from the current environment.

Edit a space tour project

1. Please note that upon entering the virtual tour editing mode,

• Adjustments to models, materials, and environments will be disabled.

• The perspective view and the Fly mode will be auto-activated. You can navigate the scene using the shortcut keys AWSDQE.

• Effects including Auto Exposure, Depth of Field, Bloom, Vignetting, and Chromatic Aberration will be switched off.

1. You can click on 'Add Position' to add a view point. The starting viewpoint will be auto-set once you add the first camera position.

1. Since each camera has a point on the ground that's vertically aligned with it as its counterpart, you can switch between the physical position and the ground position as you like.

• Ground position (Default)

• Physical position

Right-click to switch between the physical position and the ground position

1. Once you've established all the viewpoints, select 'Done' to transition into preview mode, where the camera automatically reverts to the starting viewpoint.

1. When the preview mode is activated, you can click in the scene to navigate through the different viewpoints. Please note that only set viewpoints are accessible in a virtual tour.

Render the Virtual Tour

1. With all steps completed, you can export your virtual tour by clicking on the ''Render'' icon.

2. Specify the storage path, select your desired resolution, and click ''Render''.

3. When the rendering is completed, you will get a local web folder containing panoramas, JS files and other resources.

You can preview the virtual tour on a web page by choosing 'Open in browser' followed by 'Open in local server'.

3D Dollhouse

In version 2.8.1.0731 and later, the virtual tours rendered in D5 support 3D Dollhouse mode by default, without any additional setup required.

In the panorama gallery, users can switch to the 3D panorama view via a button.

Demo: DEMO_3D Dollhouse

For [Space Tour] rendered in D5 Renderer Client after version 2.10, its 3d dollhouse file will take a new sampling effect. The latest version of the 3d dollhouse file:

1. Optimized the severe wire drawing animation effect when switching between two panorama points

2. Compressed the file size and improved the performance when accessing on mobile and web.

Previous Effect↓

New Effect↓

-How to use Dollhouse Pinpointing:

1.Using a sphere as an example, to ensure complete reconstruction of the sphere, all the geometric information of the sphere must be captured in the panorama. The minimum number of required points is 2:

1 at the front of the sphere

1 at the back of the sphere

When creating the Dollhouse, all the geometric information of the points is consolidated. With the two points mentioned above, the complete sphere can be reconstructed.

2.Using a top-down view of a single floor plan with 3 rooms as an example:

By placing a single point in the left room, the visibility and coverage captured would be:

By placing a single point in the upper room, the visibility and coverage captured would be:

With only these two points, a portion of the bottom-right room remains uncovered:

For a full coverage, an additional point is required within the bottom-right room.

One point in per room is often sufficient to adequately capture a room's geometry. However, in scenarios with more complex room layouts or objects, additional points may be necessary, to ensure a higher fidelity and completeness in the final result.

How to share the virtual tours

D5 offers two ways to share virtual tours:

• Share Online

• Share EXE files

Share via D5 Showreel

1. Navigate to the 'Export' menu and select 'Publish to D5 Cloud'.

2. You'll be guided to associate your virtual tour with a cloud project. At this juncture, you can either link it to a new project or integrate it with one that's already in progress.

1. After uploading is completed, you can open the cloud project.

1. On the D5 Showreel platform, you can find the uploaded virtual tour in the corresponding cloud project.

• A cloud project could contain multiple virtual tours.

• You can share virtual tours by link or QR code.

Each upload to a D5 cloud project creates a new tour file, preserving your past work.

1. In the Showreel platform, you can find your uploaded roaming panorama files in the corresponding cloud project.

• Multiple roaming panorama files can be uploaded in one cloud project.

• Users can copy the sharing link or generate a QRCode poster to send to their clients or share on social media.

Note: Every time the client publishes to the D5 Cloud, a new roaming file will be generated, without overwriting the previous one.

• Long link: the url of the panorama itself when opened in the browser.

• Short link: In the share button of the panorama, click [ Share Link ], it will support to generate a short link. If you use this short link to share with others, you can still open the panorama. However, since the shortchain is configured with the Open Graph parameter, it can show a preview image and project profile when sharing on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, WeChat, etc.).

Share via EXE files

1. Rendered virtual tours can be converted into standalone exe files for secure and offline viewing.

2. Both Mac and Windows compatible exe files can be created.

1. Check the desired formats and click Export to create a zip archive in the specified storage folder.

2. After unzipping the package, it contains a Resource folder and an executable file (D5VirtualTour).

3. Click on the executable file, select the Resource folder in the same directory, and a local virtual tour web page will pop up.

Basic Tour

Create a [Basic Tour] project and upload panoramas

1. Under the [Tour] tab in the cloud project, click to create a ‘Basic Tour’.

1. After completing the naming of the project name and clicking Create to confirm, an empty panorama sequence will be created and the user needs to manually upload the panoramas in the browser (panorama files output in D5 or other renderers).

1. After successful uploading, the system will automatically convert the spherical image into a format that can be viewed with a 720° rotation, and support for uploading multiple images.

Edit a basic tour project

Most of the editing operations of [Basic Tour] are the same as those of [Space Tour], and the differences between the two are as follows ↓:

1. [Basic Tour] supports adding panoramas to the gallery, [Space Tour] does not support adding panoramas to the gallery.

2. [Basic Tour] does not support depth information, the normal cursor cannot be displayed by the mouse.

3. [Basic Tour] does not support to enable 3D shift.

4. [Basic Tour] does not support the setting of ground camera and flight camera.

5. [Basic Tour] 's hotspots added under a certain panorama location are only visible under that location.