Video: Matterport ShopTalk #12: Matterport Workshop Deep Dive | Video courtesy of Matterport YouTube Channel | 18 November 2020

Hi All,

Below is the transcript for the Matterport ShopTalk Webinar #12 | Matterport Workshop Deep Dive (video above).

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Transcript (Video Above)

Amir Frank:
Welcome Matterporters, thank you so much for joining us in another session of ShopTalk. Today, we are going to be talking all about Workshop and all the tools that you have available to you to customize your models and make them that much more enjoyable for your visitors and communicative, to whoever it is you're collaborating with. And for today's ShopTalk session, we've got Volkie with us again. So thanks to Volkie for joining us and taking the time to help us out and answering the questions. And we also have Linda with us who will be helping us out with questions as we go through the presentation, as well as at the end in the Q&A. So let's go ahead and get started. In today's session, as I mentioned, we'll be talking all about Workshop. So we're going to be talking about the start location, the 3D Scans tool, 360 Views and so on and so forth.

Amir Frank:
And then at the very end, we'll just open it up to Q&A. So if you haven't already, check out the Q&A panel at the bottom and you can go ahead and ask your question at any time during the presentation. And if we can't answer it throughout the presentation, we'll definitely try our best to answer it at the end. Moving on, the first tool is the start location. Start location just as it says basically is setting the start location for your visitors. One thing that a lot of people may not understand fully when they're out there scanning is that when you're out there scanning the property, the structure of the building that you want to make into a 3D model, you're not creating a guided tour. What you're doing is flushing out a 3D model.

Amir Frank:
And there's a difference, this being one of them. What you don't necessarily want to do, for example, in the case of residential real estate is start outside the home in a short walkway, for example, that leads into the house because that's where you want to start your guided tour, outside the house. What you do want to do when you're scanning is darker scan at the lowest level possible inside. On one corner of the structure on that floor, scan a path around, completely flush out that entire floor and then go to the stairs if it is a multi-story structure. Scan up the stairs and repeat that on the second floor. Then once all that model has done processing, you take it into Workshop. You go into your start location, and you set the outside scan, may have been captured scan 20 or 50 or whatever.

Amir Frank:
And then you set that as your start location. So the first scan that you capture into the model data is not necessarily going to be your first scan for the visitors when they come in. So this is where you set that in a very, very important tool. As we mentioned here in the use cases, this helps shape your user's experience by setting that start location in your 3D model, the first step of creating your guided tour really. Again, when you're out there scanning, you're creating a 3D model and not the guided tour as well as serving as the hero image for your for your model. So right now, the way it works is the start location is going to be the thumbnail for your model. If your model is embedded in a landing page or anything like that, that's what they're going to see prior to hitting that load button or play button. So that's it.

Amir Frank:
3D scans. So this tool, it just allows you to kind of navigate to all the different 3D scans that you have captured in your model. You can use this tool to hide them, you can use this still to rename the floors, like many other tools that organize the different things that you're looking at. In this case of the 3D scans that are organized by floors, you can rename the floors as well with this tool. And that allows your visitors, if you are on a multi floor structure to see those renamed floors in the bottom in the floor selector. So that's another thing that you can do here. That's about it. We'll try and go into these, and I'll show you an example of all this after we kind of get through all this.

Volkie:
We started getting questions, but we'll get to those at the end.

Amir Frank:
Sounds good. 360 views. So these are the 360 views, most of you already know that you not only have the option of scanning a 3D scan, which kind of adds to and builds out the dollhouse view. This is the actual 3D model, the structure of your space. But you also have the ability of capturing 360 views. These do not have 3D data associated with them, it's just a panorama. These are really great for outdoors, for example. So this tool allows you to position those and place them where they belong outside relative to the 3D model so your visitors can kind of, I guess, work or move or navigate to the 360 view and back from the 360 view into the normal 3D view.

Amir Frank:
Photos. This is great, super helpful. This is what you use to extract assets 2D and panorama assets from your model. Basically just go to this tool, go to whatever you want to capture, scan position even images of the dollhouse itself or floor plan and just click the little button, and it takes a snapshot. You can download that in several different resolution options, use that in your highlight reel. Anything you want is pretty high resolution, so you can use it in again, marketing material and things like that. With the photos tool, you can also include, this is kind of hidden in the top right corner, there's a little settings button that you can choose to include things like measurements and tags in your photos. So if you grab a measurement and you want to kind of show somebody, you're collaborating with somebody and you want to show them the length of that measurement, you can choose to include that measurement in that snapshot, that photo that you capture.

Amir Frank:
Labels, these are also very helpful. Just another added bit of information for your models. Basically this allows you from the floor plan view only to label rooms and areas and things like that. So again, you can use this to residential real estate, you can use it to label bedrooms and any room, I guess. And if it's larger structures like schools, hotels, you can use these to label those rooms as well, which makes it really, really great for visitors who want to familiarize themselves with the structure before getting there. So if I'm a new student at a school and I've never been there before, and I want to familiarize myself with that school and know which classroom I want to go to, just as an example. I know that I need to go to room 112, and so I can very easily find that in your model if you've got room 112 labeled with a label. That's it. Did I miss anything there, Volkie?

Volkie:
No. I think it's great for wayfinding, especially in complex structures or multi-floors. And so this is a feature that is used quite often and very helpful. Just that you need to be in the floor plan view to benefit from it as Amir said. So just keep that in mind.

Amir Frank:
Fantastic. Measurements, this is incredibly powerful. I can't even begin to explain how amazing measurements is. Not only is measurements actually something that's available to you in Workshop, but it is also available to your visitors in Showcase. And that is actually something that you have control over if you want to make it available to them or not. So basically measurements is exactly what it says it is, allows you to take a tape measure, a virtual tape measure and just draw a line and see exactly how long something is. This is used a ton all the time in things like construction and insurance and even in real estate. You want to measure the length and width of a room. You want to measure the doorway to make sure that it's compliant with ADA or anything, for example. It's really endless what you might need to measure it for, but that's basically what it does.

Amir Frank:
So you can grab that measurements. And the nice thing is as the account owner, the person editing the model, the measurements that you draw, you can leave them there, again, also as collaborative tools to work with others, to show them the measurements that you've captured. But also once your visitors go into the measurements mode, if you've allowed them to do that, they can see what you have put there. And that's also an option, you don't have to have that. But if you want to pre capture those measurements for your visitors so as soon as they click that button they just see everything already there maybe to capture something that was missed or anything else, whatever, that is available. So that's measurements.

Volkie:
Yeah, it's a very powerful feature used millions and millions of times since we introduced it. It's definitely a strong differentiator for Matterport and for you because of the dimensional accuracy that we provide with Pro2 cameras and other cameras that we support. There are many use cases, obviously as Amir pointed out. One real estate use cases as he said is used quite common is measuring dimensions before moving in, for example, or a tenant renter, or it could be a prospective buyer. They may want to just get a better sense of the space, and this really helps them without stepping their foot in, especially in times of pandemic. It's a pretty powerful tool that I recommend you use it available from us.

Amir Frank:
MatterTags, this is another one that is absolutely huge. MatterTags is a way for you to kind of place a pin over anything that is 3D in your model. And you can include things, titles, descriptions, embed images, link to other websites and forms and whatnot, embed PDFs even. You can even embed entire models into the MatterTag, and I can actually show you an example of that if we get to it later on. But basically imagine yourself walking down the hallway of a hotel or apartment complex, and one of the doors has a MatterTag on it. And inside the MatterTag is an embed of the model on the other side of the door if it wasn't able to be capture it at the same time or for whatever reason. So that's just an example, but you can embed everything in there. And it's just an incredibly useful tool to share so much more information with your visitors.

Amir Frank:
Highlight Reel, this is really, really great. Not only can the highlight reel be used for I guess the more typical use case, which is kind of that video highlight reel of the real estate agents kind of walking their clients through the model. But you can also use the highlight reel just as a way to navigate and more easily and quickly navigate through your model. So you can place little highlights of areas in the model, 360 views, 3D scans, certain areas. If it's in construction, you want to point something out that needs to be corrected. You can throw that in the highlight, give it a name, a title so somebody can know to go there. And it'll just bring them exactly to what you want them to look at. You may even want to point out the MatterTag, for example, so you can have the highlight kind of looking straight at the MatterTags so they can more easily find that and aggregate right to it. And then again, gather that additional level of information from the tag. Did I miss anything there, Volkie?

Volkie:
No, that's one thing that we did was we have an updated version of it in beta, so please give it a try. It was powerful, but we made it also easy as it's powerful for you to put together a tour. You can adjust the speed of the tour, the panning of the tour. So it's very powerful, not only for real estate, I think for a lot of different verticals and industry use cases, wherever you want to guide your visitors to the space that they may not know the delicacies or the details of Matterport. Just have them go to the space where you want them to and really highlight the aspects that you want them to see. It's pretty powerful. And once they are more familiar with the concept of a 3D, then they may wander on on their own, but this is also a good kind of intro tool for those who may not be very familiar.

Amir Frank:
Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, it doesn't just have to be hit play and sit back as you watch it go by, that's certainly an option. And in fact, you can even have it auto start if you're sending out a model to visitors and collaborators. But it can just be used as a way of quickly selecting something, highlight and just jumping to it. So again, it assists with navigation. And lastly is VR. So VR is actually something that is slowly being phased out of Workshop, to be honest. And that is because the VR headsets that take advantage of this tool or that require you using this are also being phased out. So things like Google Cardboard and the like, the old, what was it, the Oculus Gear VR. Those aren't as popular anymore.

Amir Frank:
And so now with the new Oculus Quest and the Oculus Go, you don't need this. You actually navigate VR using those goggles the same way you would navigate Showcase, just by pointing at a little circle on the ground and going there. We have information about this. Happy to answer anybody's questions about this. But just so you know, this is getting old and probably won't be around for that much longer. So maybe another year or two.

Volkie:
Just to clarify, we are supporting VR. We will support it going forward, obviously. Oculus Quest is where we are optimized for for the best VR experience, but we also support Oculus Go. Cardboard as Amir is showing, but also Android phones with Google Cardboard. So we are supporting them, but it's less of a comfortable experience. So if you're really into it, I recommend Oculus Quest as the tool for best VR experience.

Amir Frank:
Yeah, exactly. So that's all the tools that are available to you in Workshop. And we can look at your questions and go over in detail. I'll open up a model, and we can actually play around with it. But before we get to the QA, just wanted to point out that we have a support page. So basically if you go to matterport.com and look under the resources tab, support is the first option there. Just click on that and you get to kind of the support hub that has everything you could possibly need that is support related. So if we're not able to answer your questions today, please go ahead and check that out. It's got frequently asked questions on that page. If you scroll down, you can get to the phone number that is right for you. What you're seeing on the screen right now, this 408 number is good for anybody in the US. But if you're outside the US, the phone number that is correct for your location is available on this page. And you'll see it there.

Amir Frank:
If you want to reach out to us via email, you can reach us at support@matterport.com. We also have a chat function if you go to support.matterport.com. There's a little help window, a yellow help window kind of a bubble icon in the bottom right corner. And click on that, search for what you need. And as long as it's during support hours, then you can choose support and just chat with any live agent. That's about it for support. Always, just to run this out there, confirm and just make sure that your information on your account is up to date if you haven't or maybe not sure if things have changed, that's how we get ahold of you. If we need to send out any kind of notification regarding your account or anything, we send it to the email on file. If you don't get it, that could be a problem. So please update. And lastly, Volkie, you wanted to talk to us about updates and-

Volkie:
Yes. Let's do that quickly. So few things from the product side. And so Capture 4.0.5 is now available, via TestFlight. So if you want to play the TestFlight, beta testers, just go ahead and download it and check it out. It's got some bug fixes, stability improvements, and few new features. So I'm not going to go into detail, but you can find out on our beta page. One of the things I like about this one is if you are a smartphone capture user, we are introducing two rotation capture mode. iPhone 11, 12, and iPad Pro, wide field of view cameras. You can use this mode versus 3D to still quickly go around and capture the space with the full details in the upper side and the lower side.

Volkie:
This is I think maybe an improvement from what we had for those who are using those phones and capturing places in the phones and creating models from their phones. The other one is, I came and talked last Shop Talk around Android. So we are very excited that our Android capture app is now out in the wild. So it's in open beta. What's new is we have a new version, which is better, version 1.131, and it's in Google Play Store. So give it a try if you have an Android phone, and you have one of the supported cameras. This is not smartphone capture, so it's to connect to cameras that are supported such as 360 cameras or Pro2. Give it a try, let us know how it goes. We will be working on Androids in the next couple of months in terms of general availability and smartphone capture. So stay tuned for news.

Volkie:
New guided tours, I mentioned they are here in beta. So please check it out. Any testing [inaudible 00:20:33] part is as we built our outlets for ordering, working with value [inaudible 00:20:42], et cetera. We now are on Amazon, so you can buy a Pro2 camera out of Amazon in the United States. So we're happy to share those news. Customer newsletter is a project that I worked on for a while with a broader team here at Matterport. We published our first issue last month, and the second one is about to go out. So please watch for it. We got some really great feedback about it. You can subscribe to it through our subscription center. As Amir is showing, go.matterpot.com/email-preferences. You may opt-in just for the newsletter, you don't need to opt-in for other emails from us.

Volkie:
But I think you can catch a lot of these news in that newsletter, so it could be very useful for you. One last thing before we go back to our question and answer section is DEV program. And so DEV program meaning DEV tools like API and SDK, which I'm personally working on is really interesting, and it will be groundbreaking. So pretty shortly here, we will announce these tools being in general availability versus beta as well as some new features. So please stay tuned for some blog posts and social media posts from us as well as the newsletter will have more details coming out at the end of the month. So in a nutshell, those are things going on in my world, wanted to share with you.

Amir Frank:
Sounds good. And just to let everybody know, this is being recorded, we'll have the recording available. All the links to this stuff that you see on the screen right now will be included in an email that should be sent out no later than tomorrow. So don't worry if you're not able to find this, we'll get you a link. Lastly, Facebook. Check us out on Facebook, our corporate Facebook page is facebook.com/matterport. We try and update Facebook as much as possible. And obviously, it's a great place to familiarize yourself with Matterport and kind of keep your finger on the pulse on everything that we do around here, updates and notifications, they all go out to Facebook.

Amir Frank:
So if you want to stay in the know, that's a good place to do it. And nominating your model, if you haven't ever done this, this is really great. You go to go.matterport.com/nominate-short-space as you see on the screen. What you can do if you've got a great model and you want to share it and put it in our virtual tour gallery, our 3D model gallery, that's how it's done basically. We love seeing the models that you guys capture and then sharing them with as many people as possible. So if that's something that you're interested in, that's how you get to do that. And I believe with that we can go to questions. Linda is going to help us out with Q&A. Yes, absolutely. What have we got today?

Linda:
We have a few questions that I'd like to pose to you two. So the first is from Melanie Daily. And she asks, does it matter which direction you start your scan in as it relates to the hero image? For example, should you have the camera facing out to the room or does it matter?

Amir Frank:
Great question. Nope, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all where the camera is facing. So when you set your start location ... Right now, I believe this is something that we're working on. But right now, your start location is the thumbnail for your model. So if you want the thumbnail to be anything else, unfortunately today it's not possible. But it's well requested, and I believe we're working on it. When the start location can be any scan position, it doesn't matter where you started it. In fact, let me just show you what I mean by that.

Linda:
Yeah, Amir, there was one comment around maybe showing Workshop on your screen so that people can visualize what we were talking about.

Amir Frank:
So you can see I'm in this model here. I have no idea where the camera was first started its rotation in this scan, for example. But I can point it anywhere I want and go up here to my start location and just hit set. And so it takes a second and now that becomes my start location so that when I refresh and hit play, we'll spin around and go right into that location. So that's the start location. Where the camera was positioned, I actually have no idea where the camera was facing when the scan started. But that's it, it shouldn't make a difference though.

Linda:
Great. Thanks, Melanie. Next question is from Steven Stahle, regarding equipment, I understand that the iPhone 12 is as capable as a Matterport Pro2. Is there any places where either is best to use?

Amir Frank:
Okay. Good question. So whether it's as capable or not is actually still unknown, there's a lot of testing that needs to be done with the the iPhone 12. It does have a sort of LIDAR, it's a little different than what the Pro2 uses maybe for the better, maybe not. We still honestly have no idea. So there's just a lot more testing to work out. The thought right now is that it will do better outside because the frequency of light that it uses should not conflict with the sun's infrared lights in the same way that the Matterport Pro2 does. So hopefully if everything gets dialed in and it is as amazing as we all expect it to be and would like it to be, then it would probably be better suited outdoors. Still just a lot of work to do on that, maybe we're not 100%.

Volkie:
It is comparable. One thing I should add is iPhone's LIDAR range is five meters as far as I remember. So it has a pretty short range LIDAR, so it won't be able to capture a lot of distant objects in your scan. But as Amir said, we are testing it, the LIDAR capabilities. The match quality will be high, that's for sure. But with the iPhone, you need to still keep it pretty stable during the scan. The reciprocal camera rotating on a stable tripod. So I think there are some differences there for sure in terms of resolution, images resolution, et cetera. So we are testing, we are working on it, please stay tuned for updates from us. But we are supporting iPhone 12 in regard to LIDAR on our latest releases. So you can use it and rely on our cortex to create a 3D scan. And since it's the wide field of view, it will create a great model with it.

Linda:
And perhaps for smaller spaces versus larger spaces because the iPhones or any smart smartphone, it would just be more tedious.

Volkie:
Good point. You have to do multiple rotations in a given scan points whereas a Pro2 with a single touch of a button, it rotates by itself in 16 seconds and captures the space. There's also ease of use elements when comparing these two.

Linda:
Thanks. Next question. I've made a scan of my room, how can I add a next room to a captured place? There's a couple of ways of answering that question probably, Amir, for Peter Hoffman.

Amir Frank:
Basically I'm going to assume for a second here, Peter, that you want all of that to be in the same model, in the same 3D model. And if that's the case, then what you would need to do is actually scan your path out of one room and into the other room. Assuming they're relatively close together, that should not be a problem. Sometimes though if you need to go outside or if they are super far apart, then it might not be possible. In which case, you can capture both as individual models and then have a mattertag that actually links to the other model. And then from the other model back to the first model. Those are two ways either by linking via mattertags or embedding, as I mentioned before. Or ideally they are relatively close in the same structure, then you can just scan your way from one to the other. The way the system works to have everything included in the same dollhouse, it all has to be scanned in together.

Amir Frank:
The system aligns by stitching one scan to previously scanned positions. So you can't just pick up a camera, go into another room, scan away and expect it to align because it doesn't know where you are in relation to previously scammed positions. You need to scan that path all the way into the next room.

Linda:
Amir, I think your answer may have answered Megan Murray's question, which is, if I want to redo one single scan spot in an uploaded Matterport after I leave the space, can I go back to the space and re-shoot the one scan without having to do it all over?

Amir Frank:
Yes, assuming that not so much in that room has changed. So if it's just a matter of going back to scan because it's a different time of day and previously the sun was shining on the floor creating all these little black holes, yeah, no problem. Come back, put this camera down a different time of day, capture it, it'll just fill in that area. In that specific scenario, you don't even have to delete the old scan. If you've gone through a remodel, for example, what you want to do is delete all the scan positions of that room, like say a kitchen, for example, that was recently remodeled. Just delete all of those and start back in an area that has not changed. And then scan your way and reintroduce new scans of the new kitchen, if that makes sense.

Amir Frank:
You could also not delete all of those as long as you start where things have not changed. It can identify where it is in relation to the other scans because all the stuff in that area is unchanged, and you can start there. And as long as you don't move too much between scan positions, what's going to happen is it will align with previously scan position and you can get your way into the kitchen without any problems and have kind of both versions. But that honestly makes navigation a little confusing, so I don't recommend that. I would recommend having two separate models, one before and one after.

Linda:
So making a copy first and then delete the scan points in the kitchen and then re-shoot the kitchen?

Amir Frank:
You can definitely make a copy if you want. Yeah, definitely if you want to maintain the original model data in capture without deleting that, then definitely make a copy of your model. And from the copy, delete the scan positions that see the old kitchen and then start from, again, a location that is unchanged and fill in that area of the kitchen with the new kitchen. Upload that, now you've got two models in your account, one with the old kitchen, one with the new kitchen.

Linda:
And Nicole Levinson, thank you, Nicole. She said she just want to make a note that the doors have to be open to scan rooms together.

Amir Frank:
Yes, very good point. I do see this a lot especially when doors automatically close, garage doors, for example, or if it's a corporate type construction where they have like fire doors that just automatically close all the time. If you're out there scanning, it is absolutely a good idea to have a small bag of doorstops with you. You don't understand how many times I've seen somebody in the shot kind of reaching behind trying to prop the door open with their hand or getting something to put in place, or unfortunately having to scan the door closed and open because they just can't be there to hold the door open or there isn't anything there to hold the door open. And that's not a good idea. So getting the door both closed and open will introduce a mesh in 3D geometry in the doorway, and that could prevent navigation through the doorway. So you don't want that to happen. Always have the doors open. Definitely a good idea.

Linda:
Great. Corey Holt asked about how to change the thumbnail. And I don't know if you want to demo that, Amir. Maybe while you're pulling that up for Volkie, how do you add Google View to a mattertag? And is that the only place you can add it? So I think it might be a Google Street View question-

Volkie:
Is it a Google Street View question? I wasn't sure about that.

Amir Frank:
Well, I'll go ahead and talk about the thumbnail. So the thumbnail that you see-

Volkie:
Sorry about that, Amir. Cindy, if you want to write up another, maybe amendment to your question to clarify, that will be helpful. Thank you, Amir.

Amir Frank:
I assume you can still see my screen here. So the thumbnail, the way I see the thumbnail is this view when you're looking at the model before it has been loaded. This is the view of the thumbnail, right? So if I go and edit and set a start location. Oh, I forgot to mention, we set this as our start location. The reason why you don't see it as the thumbnail view right now is because I haven't published yet. Any changes you make in Workshop, you can see yourself because you're logged in as the admin, you're making those edits. I can see them right now, I can hit preview right here to see all those changes.

Amir Frank:
And if I don't want those changes or undo any of those, I can go back prior to hitting publish. Once you hit publish, that's it, you've saved it so everybody can see it. So as soon as I hit publish here should be able to refresh. And now the thumbnail image that I see here is of my start location. So when I hit play, I'll go to this location not the previous start location. That's the only thing that wasn't updated the last time I did that. That may have been a little bit confusing, I apologize. But basically, that thumbnail view that you just saw back there is set by the start location, by clicking the start location.

Amir Frank:
You can also if you have photos that you have captured. So if I exit out of here and go into my photos tab, I have all these pictures that I've captured. Let's just go to the dollhouse. I want that to be my start location, I can just choose this photo. And I can hit the set start location button right here. So this is another way to set that start location, and then I can X out of here. So now this is my start location. You can see it's got the little start location icon. And that's about it, [inaudible 00:37:39].

Linda:
Megan's question is if the tripod is not completely straight and even will the scan look lopsided?

Amir Frank:
Most likely not. So the software does make up for up to 17 degrees off level, which is a lot. You can easily eyeball 17 degrees. So as long as your floor of where you're scanning is pretty flat, what I like to do, and I don't recommend using things like ball heads and pan tilt heads, especially not pan tilt heads because they got that arm that sticks out. That will get in your shot, so don't use those. But even with ball heads to try and get the camera perfectly level, it's just not necessary. What we recommend is just having a quick release clamp only because threading the tripod onto the bottom of the camera on and off every time is kind of a pain, to be honest. And it's just kind of weird and awkward to get that done.

Amir Frank:
So having a quick release clamp is recommended, you just slide the camera on there, clamp it down when you're done. It does not allow you to level, and it provides us the most stable tripod you can get, keep in mind, this thing is vibrating and moving and things like that. So stability is very, very important. But putting a bubble level on your top of the camera so you can make sure that it's perfectly level, not necessary, you don't need to worry about that. What I do is I'll just grab the camera, kind of look at the top of the camera and just kind of move it back and forth a little bit to make sure that it's level in both directions. And if it looks level, you'll be fine.

Linda:
Okay, great. Peter Hoffman asked a question, if we have a recommendation for a special tripod for the iPhone 11 Pro?

Amir Frank:
Good question. I don't have anything unless Volkie, you've got something. I can't think of anything.

Volkie:
No, we don't. We haven't officially endorsed any special tripod. We are testing main ones. My recommendation will be depending on your need. For example, if you're doing just a wandering one rotation, then there are many monopods, even monopods or tripods out there that rotates on a 90 degree angle, any one of those will do it. If you are more doing a full capture or a complete ... What was the name, Amir? Complete 2D rotation or 3D rotation that I recommend to get one that tends to tilt up and down because a lot of them don't. They're static, so they only rotate, but they don't tilt up and down. So pay attention as you order one, get one that tilts up or down if you are rotating full 3D or 2D rings. That will be my recommendation.

Amir Frank:
We recently actually put out a blog post with someone, John who did a really, really amazing scan with his iPhone. And he was using a tripod, and he had a pan tilt head. And that's the one capture device actually where you can and probably should use a pan tilt head because you are capturing six or more images, and you're always kind of behind it. So it's okay to have that arm. One thing I will say with tripods and the iPhone is that even more so with things like the iPad because the center of the iPad and the lens are even further apart. With the iPhone, it's not as dramatic of a difference.

Amir Frank:
But ideally, you have the center post of your tripod, and this is kind of the pivot point. You have that be directly under the lens of your phone. So the way you clamp your phone, whatever tool you use to clamp your phone onto the tripod, just kind of slide the iPhone over a little bit so that the lens is centered with your center post and your tripod, and then you can move around behind it. Look out for mirrors in those situations.

Volkie:
One last thing, we kind of I think answered this pretty well. But I was checking with Kirk Stromberg [inaudible 00:42:10] product on the site. So he's saying monopod is the most convenient since it anchors the phone in one spot, and it's faster to move around than a tripod. So you recommend a monopod, and I did myself. It's much easier to move around fast and it anchors into one point.

Amir Frank:
Yeah, certainly. Depends on what works best for you. But I like Volkie was saying, monopods having that kind of center pivot point allows you to kind of move quickly around and then onto the next position.

Linda:
We have 11 more questions, so maybe we can be a little more concise with our answers so we can answer them all. I'm doing my best, but some I cannot. I'm not the experts like you too. So Steven asked, when scanning an area of a smaller home where there are multiple doors in smaller areas that are difficult to navigate, what is the best way to position doors to a basement versus doors to the rooms and closets?

Amir Frank:
Got it. Doorways that you need to navigate through. Some of these older, smaller structures that have very narrow hallways, and like you said, the door to a basement. If the doorway is open or the door is open, you might be blocking the path leading into another room. So in those cases, it's advised to have the door at sort of a 45-degree angle so that the camera has direct line of sight with both doorways so you can kind of get around it. One thing you could do with those little tiny doorstops, put one on either side to kind of fix the door at 45 degrees. And then you can see the doorway. Coming down the hallway, you would see the doorway leading downstairs, and you can also capture it going kind of around the door, if that makes sense.

Linda:
Melanie, is there any way to do a quick demo of how to mark out your scan after it has been uploaded? I just started, and my first scan seems to be showing a bit of the exterior walls in the dollhouse view, for example.

Amir Frank:
I think I understand, if I go in here. If you're in the dollhouse view and you're seeing exterior walls like I would see here. So what this does is I can't really see inside of that like I would be from this side. What that is is unfortunately not something that you can really fix, but that's because this area was scanned in 3D outside. So all these walls, I'm not going to be able to see through this wall into this room back here because there are no 3D scan positions out here that capture this wall. I could try and put a trim marking and capture right along here. So I would draw a trim marking right here to remove this wall from the scan positions so all these scan positions are able to see it.

Amir Frank:
Basically the way to get around that is to not scan in 3D outside. Outside scans as a 360, the same way this one is done allows you to see the house from that position. But it doesn't actually include that data as part of the 3D structure in the dollhouse. And I can just navigate to the inside view using these portals and then back to the 360 using this portal. So that's how you can navigate in and out of 360 views. But a scan like this ... And you can have them around, you don't want to have too many of them the same way you do with 3D scans like here. This would be way too much for 360, you don't need this much. You can have one here and then another one in the yard. But yeah, that's about it. So because these were 3D scans that capture this wall, and it fills it in. And therefore, I can't see through that. And I hope that answers the question.

Linda:
If you have certain areas labeled, can you show a quick way to get to those spaces? So that could be floor plan view.

Amir Frank:
If I have certain areas labeled, can I show how to get there?

Linda:
If you have certain areas labeled, can you show a quick way to get to those spaces? I think labels are a great way to mark rooms and then people know what room is what, and then they can just simply click in that room and get to it.

Amir Frank:
So when I go into labels and I want to label a room, so I can do it like that. And then I can add another one right there, and then I'll just get out of here and hit publish. I don't believe you can click on them. So what they're going to do is they'll show you this, let me preview this. You'll see the labels when you're in the floor plan view. So if I go to the floor plan view here, I can see these labels, but there's no way to click on them. What I can do is just click on the room, and then it'll just zip me in there. The label itself isn't clickable, if that makes sense, but I can click what I want around it.

Linda:
So this works whether you have a label in it or not, this is just a great way to navigate as floor plan view.

Amir Frank:
Yeah, floor plan view, which you can access down here. For anybody hanging out and who likes quickies and keyboard commands as much as I do, dollhouse view is down here. Inside view to see this from from the 3D is right here, but you can also use your keyboard. So if I press the number one on my keyboard, it'll zip me inside view. And number two gets me to the dollhouse view, and number three gets me to the floor plan view, just a quick tip.

Linda:
Nice, I didn't even know that. Thanks, Amir. Next question, I do fire damage assessments, this is Patrick, where close-up photography is preferred to show soot, char, and ash impaction. How close will the Matterport Pro get me into zooming in?

Amir Frank:
The Pro2 is very high resolution, you can actually zoom in quite a bit and not lose a detail. Let's see here. If I go up, and let me go back into edit and scan position. To see how far I am going, I'm going to go into measurements and draw a little measurement line from here to here. That's about three feet eight inches to the stove. And so let me just get into this position, get out of this view. And I can go in here, and I can still see that this says set clock and temp and clear and enter, and I can see these numbers. So I can zoom in pretty well from about three feet eight inches away. I could place the camera closer. You want to be careful when placing the camera closer if you want that scan position to be part of your 3D structure because the 3D sensors will not see something that is closer than about one and a half to two feet.

Amir Frank:
You need to be a little bit further away from your objects if you want the 3D sensors to pick it up. But if you've captured everything in 3D and you just want to go back and include some scan positions just to have it a part of the data so people can navigate to them, the 2D, cameras will see it. You may introduce a little bit of stitching artifacts, but we'll be able to see them, you should not have a problem. But again, zooming in, it's very high resolution, so that's also an option.

Linda:
Thank you. Cindy asks, is there an optimal level for the tripod for filming? I've heard eye level, door knob, height, and everywhere in between.

Amir Frank:
I have not heard a doorknob height as an ideal level. But maybe something that you want to use again if you want to have that scan position pretty much for the sole purpose of either filling in mesh data and geometry because the lower camera position or to capture a photo to use in data and things like that. But ideally chest height is really good. Four and a half to five and a half feet for the center lens is fine. You're not going to run into any problems if you stick to that.

Linda:
Yeah. Steven still mentioned, although the training on the Matterport recommends a certain height of the camera on the tripod with the post raised to allow for him length. Are there any advantages or disadvantages of elevating a camera?

Amir Frank:
No, just keep in mind that the camera's position is what I'm seeing here. So if I as a visitor to this model kind of keep going up and down every time the camera is moved around, it makes for a little challenging navigation. I shouldn't say challenge navigation, but the navigation experience is a little awkward just to do that. If I want to look underneath something, if you want to come under here and look underneath the sink, so you want to have one of the scan positions with those cabinet doors open and then have a scan position that's very low so I can see that, that's one thing. But to move the camera too much may be a bit confusing to your visitors. So just kind of keep that in mind that visitors see this scan from where the camera is positioned, up and down, left to right, all that.

Linda:
Rollercoaster ride. Okay. Thank you. Peter Hoffman asks, is it possible to download higher resolution 360 photos? The resolution of the 2D can be set but not possible for 360, and the resolution is not sufficient.

Amir Frank:
I have not actually heard officially that it's something that is being worked on. I do hope that it is something that we're working on. There's just a lot of development going on. And unfortunately, that feature is kind of in the back burner. That feature to download the full panorama was initially created so that you would have an asset to put into Facebook. That was the scope of the feature, and that's why the resolution is a little bit lower with the full panoramas. Hopefully we'll be able to make it so that you can download the full resolution, but that is still TBD.

Linda:
Thank you. Corey asks, if someone's sharing point isn't very interesting, is there a way to not have the thumbnail be the starting point?

Amir Frank:
Yeah. There was a long time ago, but that unfortunately is irrelevant to you because today ... It was a bug that people took advantage of to make it possible for the thumbnail to be one thing and for the start location to be another thing. I wish it was still possible, it's something that I know is definitely being looked at and will be a thing. But right now since that bug was fixed, it's just not possible. As soon as you hit publish, your start location is your thumbnail.

Linda:
Nicole asks, the outdoor 3D scans are 360 photos converted to 3D? From my experience, 3D scans don't work outside.

Amir Frank:
Yes. 3D scans outside are not recommended, which is why we introduced the whole 360 capture ability, and that is because of infrared. Actually possibly two things, depending on what capture device you're using. But if you're using something like the Pro2, the sun's infrared light, and it does not have to be direct light, it can be ambient light, it can be through clouds, if there's just too much infrared light, whether it is direct or not, it can and will cause interference with the camera's infrared light. And so the camera can't identify what's its light, what's the sun's lights. It's basically blind, which makes it very, very difficult if not impossible in certain cases to align. So that's why outdoors it is recommended to use 360 views. If it's just a patio area and you really want it to be included as part of the dollhouse, you are going to run into this issue that we looked at before where I just wanted to capture this patio, but now my exterior walls are also a part of the model and you won't be able to see through that.

Amir Frank:
If you want to do that, the best time of day to do that is when the sun is just below the horizon. That's when you have the least amount of infrared light coming from the sun, and you should be able to scan outdoors. Again, you're going to want three_dimensional structures like these little islands and couches and tables and whatnot so the camera can see it. If it's just a big grassy field, it won't be able to align for other reasons.

Linda:
There was I think a follow-up question from Patrick, a few of them regarding the fire damage restoration. Will taking extra scans at a closer point, like you said, three feet, will that get you closer? Of course, I think so, right?

Amir Frank:
Yeah, you can take additional scans. I don't know if I have a good example in this model. But for scan positions when you're too close, a lot of times people will be able to scan ... This might be a good one. Scan right in the doorway and certain things. It's being a little bit nitpicky if you asked me, I hate to say it. But things like, I don't know if you can see that on your screen, but this little artifact here and this one right here. And these artifacts in the doors. These happen because of how the Pro2 stitches 2D images, and the way it does it is by relying on 3D data. So what I was saying before is that if you're just looking at something like this door straight in front of me, no problem, shouldn't have any issues, you can be as close as you want.

Amir Frank:
But if some things are at an angle to the camera when you're scanning, Patrick, then you may want to adjust the camera height to be able to grab that. And that's a good example of a scan position that you might want to include in the highlight reel. On the floor, the two scans might be really close to one another, and it might make navigating to that scan position to see that a little bit more difficult. So you can include it in the highlight reel so people can navigate to it more easily.

Linda:
We had a follow-up question and then I think we should close, and it's the last question as well. So when documenting water damage on flooring and lower cabinets where signs of material damage are more apparent, the closest to the floor and toe kick you get, how low should the Matterport Pro be set? Can it be taken off the tripod and sat on the floor?

Amir Frank:
You don't want to set it off the tripod because the camera the way it's weighted is going to lose balance as it's turning. So you definitely want to have it on the tripod. You can by all means have the tripod lower to as low as possible. Depending on the tripod, it's going to be a little different, but we use manned photos and recommend manned photos on our website. And you can bring it down to probably about two and a half feet, I think. So if that's not quite low enough, what I would recommend in the situation you want to document water damage in this area, I would recommend just grabbing some snapshots with your phone of the water damage and putting a mattertag and just embedding those images into the mattertag I think that's the best way to include water damage that the Pro2 might not be able to pick up because it's limited to the angles and closeness that it can get. Grab a shot with your phone and just embed it later on-

Linda:
Also if you have an iPhone, maybe even just scan with your iPhone that particular area and then embed it into the mattertag.

Amir Frank:
Absolutely. A single model can actually use several, any number of different cameras. A single model can be made up of BLK scans for outside, Pro2 scans for inside, and 360 or iPhone scans for low and hard to reach areas. That can all be put into the same model. As long as it aligns, you're good to go.

Linda:
Right. That's it, we've cleared all the questions.

Amir Frank:
Right, we did it. It's definitely the hour. Fantastic. Thank you very, very much to everybody. Thanks to Volkie who unfortunately wasn't able to stick with us to the end. But huge appreciate Volkie's efforts in this webinar. And thank you Linda for helping out with the question.

Linda:
And you'll all be getting a follow-up email with the link to this recording as well as some brand new how to videos in the description when you received the video, two new videos that Amir has created on each of these tools that you just saw.

Amir Frank:
Yes. Fantastic. So we'll have that available and much more. Like Linda just mentioned, we have had a lot of information in detail put into how to using each one of these tools. And we've got that on YouTube, so I'll do that for you. And hope to see you next time. We did this one a little bit early because next week holiday, so we won't be around next week. But I believe the week after, we'll be back. So check the schedule. If you go to matterport.com and go to that resources tab, you'll see events and webinars there so you can find us.

Linda:
Great. Thanks everybody.

Amir Frank:
All right. Thanks everybody. And take care. Have a great rest of the week. Bye-bye.