Video: Post-Production: Zillow 3D Home Tour App Editing Tutorial | Video courtesy of Hopscotch Interactive YouTube Channel | 25 April 2020

Hi All,

From Hopscotch Interactive YouTube Channel (WGAN Member @Hopscotch Founder Emily Olman) ...

Video: How to Edit a Zillow 3D Home Tour (Post Production) Tutorial (above, transcript below)

Please see this related WGAN Forum discussion:

✓ Video: How to Create a Zillow 3D Home Virtual Tour App Tutorial by Hopscotch Interactive Founder Emily Olman

Got a tip to share about creating a [b]Zillow 3D Home Tour? Please post below.

Got a recent example of a Zillow 3D Home Tour? Please post below.[/b]

In addition to being a Matterport Service Provider (Hopscotch Interactive), Emily Olman is the CEO & Co-Founder of SpatialFirst.

Best,

Dan

Transcript (video above)


- Hi, guys.

It's Emily again, from Hopscotch Interactive, and I am going to now walk you through Part Two of the virtual tour DIY for the Zillow 3D Home Tour app.

So, the first thing we're going to do is we're going to pull up the Zillow 3D Home Tour dashboard. That is something you can find here on the Zillow website.

And if you come here, it's a little bit hard to find at first, but you click on that link and it will take you to your dashboard here. This is the property that I just shot today, and we see that it's unpublished, and that's fine.

The others are completed tours, and we're going to go first into Edit Tour by clicking on the three dots menu. So, now you can see that I've got this thing in the left-hand corner. It's sort of like the View mode and the Edit mode, and I can toggle back and forth.

And when I shoot, which I explained in a previous video, I always like to start in the foyer. So, I sort of follow the path and just sort of naturally take the easiest path through this property.

But what I want to tell you first is that every time you add or change an arrow, you kind of need to go through this process where you do it in both directions.

So, down here we've got the foyer, it's connected to the hallway. I know that because there's no plus sign here, which means it's already been connected.

And so what I want to do is make sure that the next one that I connect to is the front porch. So I hit the blue button, the plus sign, and over here it says, Add Connection. You're just going to save that. And it'll take me out to the front.

We'll go out here, and you can see that it's sort of, it has some AI in the system, so it kind of places these pretty randomly, I would say. But it definitely does place some of them. It takes some of the hard work out of the process for you.

What I notice with this one, though, is that the orientation was really wrong. You know, it opened up facing the street, which is not how I had saved it in the app. So I'm going to change the default view, which was that little click over there on the right, and it says, "Set this panorama at default view?"

And the answer to that is "Yes", I want to set this as the default view. Then I can go back the direction that I came, go in the front door. But, as you can see, that connection back to the foyer is missing, so I'm going to add that here.

And a lot of people may put different, kind of, connections. I always have that front door open. It's just a thing, the way that I like to do it.

And here, hallway connector, but I want to get people into the kitchen when they come in the house. So, as you can see, when I place it that way it kind of connects me into the kitchen.

And let's also change that orientation. So, there's a breakfast nook behind me, but I want to focus on the big story here, which is the kitchen.

So we're going to set the default view. We're going to double-check that the direction that we came there is still something, and that was this hallway, this first hallway.

Sometimes you can rename them and say "Hallway One" or "Hallway Two", but I'm not going to get into that just yet. And then the next place on our list is the dining room.

Now, I have multiple dining room shots here, but the first one is going to be the first dining room shot.

And again, this is doing this thing where I totally reset these default views before I publish the tour, but it likes to change them on me, which I find to be pretty annoying. But it's okay. You can get over it . Here we see that it's connecting to another dining room shot.

So I am currently on a dining room shot, and so that's going to take me, I think, to the next dining room shot. So let's double-check.

And it is, but again, it's sort of pointed the wrong way to be called Dining Room, so we're going to reorient it, set that default view, and we can see that the connection is there between dining room and dining room.

So you have to be able to either write it down or remember what it is that is your connection. And then this Hallway One, now, I didn't rename them.

That could be problematic, because it could this hallway or it could be this hallway, but I can see that this one is the one that's around this corner, and it's actually already been connected here automatically by Zillow. So that is incorrect.

I don't want that there. So I'm going to hit Edit Arrows, and then it says "Click an arrow below to edit". So I'm going to click this one. And this does not belong here, so we're going to delete it. Okay, so that deleted that, and that's good.

But I can still see a case there. Living room, dining room. And living room is here. That's all good. From living room, then I'm totally fine to go to the hallway, but I want to make sure that this hallway kind of arrow is a little bit further that direction.

And I want to also make sure that I can get to the outside again, because this is the back door here, and so I want to get onto that patio so that I can navigate people to the back yard.

And so let's turn the orientation on that one, because it popped me in in a strange way, which it does for least 50% of your images. Like, you can set it as many times as you want, but it still ends up being wacky. And then, side yard goes here, because that's the next one that I did.

And I always like to grab the side yards, if I can, because I think it really helps people understand the property and the orientation of everything.

And that's also the beauty of the Zillow 3D Home Tour, is that it's pano-to-pano, so you can kind of just navigate all the way around a property without having to, sort of, go back into the dollhouse view, which is common with other virtual tours. And let's see. We've also got, this is the alley.

And I call it the alley, it's sort of like this second street behind the property. But I think that the sellers may not like that I called it the alley. And I'm going to change the orientation. So let's call this something else. We're going to set the default view, but then we want to edit the details of the pano that we're looking at.

And so, instead of calling it "Alley", we're going to call it "Garage and Back Entrance", okay. And I think that makes a lot more sense. But it's definitely not where we're entering into the property, or it's not with the, like, the front door, but it is another way to get into the property. So, going back in the same direction. Patio.

And I already reset this default view, but it doesn't seem to like it. Let's just peek over at side yard, because I didn't make sure that that orientation was proper.

And that's pretty good, I think we're okay with that. But we do need to get back into our, like, hallway, or living room. So I am going to go back all the way over here and place us back in the hallway, to get back inside the house.

You might want to, you know, if you were adding a lot of different scenes here, or different panos, you might call it something else, like "Back Door" would be another good one.

And then let's also put that patio one back in there, because it is not there. In fact, I think that I kind of messed that up. So I don't want to go just straight from the side yard to the hallway, so I'm going to delete this one, and just go back to the patio.

And then from the patio we'll go back into the house. So, patio, and then hallway. That'll be just fine. This'll put us here.

And as you can see, we've got dining room, there's all sorts of mess happening in this one.

And that's why, you know, even though there is some amount of AI and I was told at one point that, you know, there is a person that goes and checks and makes sure that all of these connections and navigation points are corrected, I have only seen, I've done at least a hundred tours, and I've only seen one time where it was, like, flawless, and I hadn't even touched it.

And it was like, "Oh, my god, maybe they fixed it. "Maybe they have this, like, incredible AI."

And that was not the case. Oh! And then this is this thing that it does, where it... Don't get frustrated, because I'm trying not to get frustrated. But it is frustrating that you're trying to click on something and they're kind of placed on top of each other. So let's see if we can edit arrows, not the living room one, the dining room one. Okay, I got it. Thank you.

So now I can go back that way, it should be good. It can go into the master bedroom and do the same thing. Master bedroom, I'm just going to take you all the way through, because I really think it's important for you to see how this is done.

So, Master Bedroom One, Master Bedroom Two. The only thing I'd like to do here is kind of break these up. They're a little close together. So let's just peel that guy this direction. And move into the bathroom and see what's going on.

Okay, so, Master Bathroom. Editing in that arrow. Let's see what this takes us to. Yup. That takes us kind of to the bath, this toilet area. So we're going to do that. That's fine. Orientation is all wonky. I think it's not so great to even end up looking at the toilet anyway, so let's set that default view like this.

And we need to add the closet, and that is not in here yet, so go back to the main area. Then we're going to add the closet.

Right back here, behind this door. That's the other thing that I really like about this is that, you know, there is no problem with things being obscured by things like closet doors. We can peek behind them.

We just add a different connector. And then you can, you know, get into this other view without having any problems like you get when you scan and you have a door closed and then a door open. So, let's go back into Master Bathroom from here.

I think that's this one. You can kind of, actually, add both in this case because that'll get us out of here if we're like, "I'm outta here, "I don't want to be in this room anymore."

And I want see what this one is. So I'm clicking on it once. Yes, it's all right. It's a little confusing. Let's go back into the bathroom, and let's look here.

And I think that this arrow needs to be in this corner. So what I'm going to do is... See how it twists it all the way in the wrong direction? We're going to point it to that back wall. That is more accurate and it is going to help people. In this one, same thing.

I'm going to point that this direction, towards that door, so that when people are here, they're actually going to go in the right direction. The thing that you're trying to achieve is having people, you know, be able to navigate without getting lost.

And that's all we're trying to do here, it's just not get people lost in the house when we're trying to sell it . Okay, so back in the hallway. Back in the living room.

Dining room. Now, some people would be like, "Well, why don't you just, like, allow them to jump around "a little bit faster, "and why even have this many for each of the tours?"

And to that I would add, you know, I just think that the more navigation you have, like, you have to kind of balance it out.

And I'm going to set default view here, so that we can look in this direction. You have to balance it out so that people are not confused, and that they understand the connectivity between rooms. And that's kind of what I was trying to emphasize in the previous video, which was that, look, you're trying to give people an understanding of your space.

These tours are great. They are going to help people, you know, get a very good first impression of flow of your property. This is not like high-end marketing material, just because the image quality is okay and there's almost nothing you can do about it in post to fix it if you wanted to.

So it's really there as this illustrative tool to help people understand the flow. And that's pretty much it. And I would say that, you know, there's a lot other benefits to it, like the boost that you get on.... Okay, that's this other bedroom.

The boost that you get on Zillow for a week if it's a new listing. And that's amazing. I also think it looks totally awesome and sticky on mobile, in the mobile app, because then people get into spinning it around. So, the bathroom. I think I just did one bathroom one here. And then we're going to go back onto the hallway.

Yes, so it's just a very sticky, very easy tour to make. There is not a lot that is being asked of you, so it's a great way to either DIY a virtual tour, and I also think I only shot one pano in this bedroom, because there was kind of nowhere else that was great to stand. So, let's just kind of line this up as a corner shot.

And then we can head back out this way. And I can see that there's a hallway-hallway situation. So let's edit the arrows, and I think that the one I want to edit is that back one. Nope. That's one's good. It's the one next to it. Oh, man. Okay, hold on, we got to go back.

I guess it doesn't make that much of a difference if people get connected to the wrong one, but I think we were here in the bedroom, and we need to choose the right one to edit. So, Edit arrows. And the one that was on top, let's hope that this is the right one.

Yes, this is the right one. So this one we're going to delete. I mean, it's really tricky with the AI.

I wish that there was a way to just delete all the connections that they automatically create for you, because sometimes I feel like they make a bigger headache than they are worth. So, in my tour I actually already, like, I didn't mess up this time and all the panos were on the correct floor, but if you do need to change the floor, it is possible to change the floor of the pano, so that it's technically on, like, the second floor.

And you do that by going into, I think, Edit Details, and then you just switch here. You could even save it if it's an amenity, or if it's a basement. So it's really possible to rename them and save them, or to make it the first panorama.

We're going to get into that in just one sec. We're almost done here. The next thing we're going to do is we forgot to go down this little hallway here. So we need to go on the first floor to this hallway. So I did add another hallway here. For a second there I was like, "Oh, no, did I not shoot that?"

But I did, I shot it. So, okay. Two bedroom shots at the beginning. We definitely don't want both of them. I'm guessing that this one here is the one I want to save for later. And it's not. It's going to be this one.

So that's the one that I don't want right now. So let's go back to the hallway. And Edit arrows. Click that one and delete it, because it's from the far wall. So now if we go in. We're here. We're going to edit the arrows so that it's logical and not pointing at the corner and then somebody gets into the pano and then they're facing the wrong way.

So let's set the default view to here. Go in one direction, where you set that default view. We don't want the hallway here, because we're not there yet. So we're going to delete that. And if you noticed, there was a bedroom pano here, totally, completely facing the wrong way. That is not cool. Oh, and also, I use a sandbag. You can see it in the mirror here.

This the only shot where I, kind of, was like, "All right, I'll let this shot have the reflection "of that camera plus the sandbag there."

And I do it because it is a expensive camera and I have broken two of them because they fell over in the wind, or, I don't even remember. Yes, like, both times, like, wind and uneven surface.

And I was just going fast and I didn't mean to, but I had an accident with it falling over. And then it was just, it was a bummer. So, you know, I was able to send my camera in and get it replaced, you know, get the lens fixed. But, yes, it's just no fun.

It's no fun when you're stuff gets taken out of commission. And then that's the other reason, like, a super hot tip. I shoot the interior, except for this time did I make an exception?

Yes, this time I made an exception, but 99% of the time I shoot the interior first and the exterior last, because I'm like, "If the camera breaks, "at least I will've gotten the interior done first, "and then I can do the exterior."

Okay, so, we are still in the laundry room. We got to put this, we put a hallway connector here, just in case people want to get outta dodge.

And we're going to put the bathroom connector here, so that they can go into this bathroom. And we're so close to being done, but the bathroom setting is, like, looking at a really, raargh, I guess that's about as good as it can get, because there were a lot of mirrors in the property. We're going to go back out here to the hallway. Here we go.

And laundry room, we can go back there, where we came from. And that, I believe, is almost it. We got to go to this hallway shot. That'll take us this way. And then let's make sure we also have the option to let somebody go to that dining room shot, which was the first dining room shot when we first came in.

And that, I think, does it. Let's just do a quick scroll through everything and make sure we've placed everything.

And Master Bedroom, Master Bathroom. We've placed these all. Everything's been placed. Bathroom, curb-side, back yard, side yard, garage, stair landing, loft. And I think we might not have done the loft. No, we did the loft. Loft is there.

Hallway, bedroom, hallway, bathroom, bedroom. We're there! Yes, we've got it. We've got it in every direction.

So this tour, ladies and gentlemen, is finished. And the only thing now that I want to recommend for you is that you choose your opening shot. And, for us, with this property, that is definitely going to be curb-side, because this is a really nice shot and it turned out great.

The orientation is perfect. So, it's Floor One, and we choose this as the first panorama for this floor. What that's going to do, as our curb-side shot, is when we go back out of edit mode and we go back and we refresh, now that is our exterior shot.

And we are done. So, the only next thing to do, obviously, if you need to edit your address, you can click here to Edit your address. You can Share, you can Archive, you can Manage users by adding the realtor. This is where you grab your embed code.

This is where you grab your, you know, code for using on MLS or anything else. You can use that code to put it on your website or to share it with people, that link. And then, Publishing. So, the last thing you do is, of course, you publish it.

And when you publish it, it will be waiting for you, or for whoever is the listing agent. And then the listing agent, if it's a for sale property, should just have it waiting for them, and they can claim it when they log in.

And if it's a rental property, just the one thing you should note is that if it's a rental property that is now going to be listed for sale, you may need to ask Zillow Support to help you get it categorized properly, because sometimes, if it was a rental, it's not going to show up as a listing for, it's not going to let you add it properly when you first try to publish it, so you'll need to contact the Zillow Support line, or email them.

And then, otherwise, you can just publish it and it'll be waiting for them to claim it. And that is about it. If you have any questions let me know, but I hope that this was helpful.

And it just takes a lot of clicks and a lot of patience, and making sure that before you hit All Panoramas Complete when you are at the property, that you've quickly gone through and just checked to make sure that you have all the way points and navigation points that you need in order to have the tour flow properly.

So, thanks again, and I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.