How to Shoot the Qualified Panoramas

Things You Should Well Prepare Before Shooting:

1. Fully charge the rotator and your phone:

• After continuously using the rotator for 1.5 hours, you should fully charge it until the red light turns off by itself.
• The rotation speed will be a little bit slower if the battery is low, and leads to the panos imperfection.

2. Clean the lens:

• Please clean your phone lens and Asteroom fisheye lens with a soft, dry cloth before shooting, or you might get blurred panos.

3. Clean the house:

• Please try your best to remove the garbage or the things that may let people feel uncomfortable, don't let them appear in your panos.

4. Shut the curtains:

• If the sunlight is too strong, you should consider shutting the curtains to prevent the blown-out window, and then turn on the room lights to balance the bright and dark areas, which will also make the viewers feel at home unintentionally.
• Always remember to enable the HDR function on the picture taken screen, that helps. (Consider disabling the HDR function if you feel the panos shot by the Samsung phones are too pale.)
  

5. Open all the room doors:

• Try to open the doors of all rooms, the hermetic spaces make people feel depressed and disoriented, viewers will have no idea at all about the layout and walk-flow of this house.
• If opening door A will cover the entrance of space B, please open door A halfway as appropriate so that the viewers can see the entrances of these two spaces at the same time.

Things You Must Follow While Shooting:

1. Put the camera in the center of the space:

• The camera lens height should be 50"~60".
• Always put the camera in the center of the space as possible as you can, don't put it at the door, corner, or against the wall, and it is not recommended to shorten the tripod to place the camera on the furniture like a table or bed. Attention to these details can greatly reduce the dollhouse distortion.

2. Remember the lens height:

• If you want to display the dimensions on the floor plan, please confirm the height of the lens from the ground, and make sure that the height is the same when shooting each pano, and then fill lens height in when you place the order of making the floor plan.

3. Make sure your camera is level:

• Tilt panos make people feel uncomfortable, so please tap the “Level” icon on the picture taken screen, you will see a bubble appears, your goal is to keep the bubble stay in the center no matter which direction the phone is facing.
• Make sure the tripod is level, then use the self-rotate button of the rotator to make a spin, and then adjust the phone position on the phone holder first if you found the level bubble is offset center when spinning halfway (maybe one side of the phone is lower), and then test again till the bubble is always centered.

• Plus, when carrying the tripod moving around, there is a chance that the tripod/ phone will become non-level, so please do gently move the whole set, and check the level again if needed.

4. Line of sight:

• Ensure that every location you place the tripod can view the entrance of the previous/next space.
• This can let you connect the panos with hotspots correctly, for the viewers to move around within the tour, and can prevent viewers from visiting other rooms by flying through the wall of the room, such a strange way of movement instead of walking to.

 

5. Sequence of shooting rooms:

• Shooting the rooms by sequence, or you will miss one or more locations.
• Plus, always remember to shoot the hallway and aisle; you won’t like to see there are void spaces in the dollhouse.

6. Take a complete shot of the entire space:

• When a room is an irregular space, placing the camera in the center of the space may not capture one of the corners (as shown in the figure below). At this time, you should consider placing the camera slightly off the center of the space to shoot a complete pano of the room as a priority, or even shoot an extra pano for that corner, and then contact us afterward to see if we will need to use it when making a dollhouse.

 

7. Divide the large space:

• It is not good to shoot just one pano for a large space; people can’t see the details and will feel the space is too wide.
• Divide a large/long or irregular space into two or even three rectangles, and take a pano for each of them. We usually shoot one pano for a 15~20 square meters space.

• For example, it's better to divide a basketball court into three spaces, and these three panos must be taken at symmetrical spots, do not place the camera randomly.

• For an “L” shaped space, don’t shoot at the corner, you should shoot one pano in the middle of the larger side, then shoot another in the middle of the smaller side.

• Unless the four corners of the larger side are covered when placing the camera at a corner, and the four corners of the smaller side area can also be covered, then it is acceptable.

• For a curved/ irregular space, such as a driveway, you may shoot them for two or even three panos, and remember to put the camera on the centerline of the hallway, don't offset too much.

• Shooting the panos correctly will help the Asteroom team create a pretty dollhouse, but don't shoot them too close because one of them will not be used.

8. Prevent the panos from getting out of focus:

• Put a chair or a plant next to a big white empty wall to let the camera have something to focus on to avoid the blurred images; afterward, contact us if you want to remove that item.
• Also, remember to start shooting from a direction with no strong light to avoid the glare affecting your shooting.

9. Check every pano before you save:

• Please take one more look before you save the pano, see if it has any tilt or weirdness.
•  Check again to make sure that you have shot for all the locations before you leave.

Things You Must Do After Shooting:

1. Upload all the panos onto the new tour:

• Make sure you have uploaded all the panos of this property onto the new tour.
• You can also export the panos from the Asteroom app album before uploading to back up in your Google Drive.

2. Use the web editor to assemble the virtual tour:

• Please use the web editor on the computer to check the results, and adjust the panos order by simply dragging them.
• You may need to rename some panos, and take notes if there are some small flaws that need Asteroom helps to correct; If the panos are not named correctly when shooting, remember to enter the correct names after uploading, or you will get the 2D floor plan full of incorrect labels.
• If you found the pano is perfect but the viewing angle is tilted, remember to use the “Straighten” function to adjust it.

• You can add various tags in the tour to enrich your it, like you can add some introductions to the paintings on the wall, or insert a sunset video at the terrace that faces the sea; also you can add the background music, and add a tripod overlay with your own logo.

3. Place the dollhouse order:

• Ordering a 3D dollhouse for the key property is strongly recommended.
• A pretty dollhouse can help people quickly understand its layout and how it actually looks like; it is definitely a great bonus for those who are interested in this property.