WGAN-TV Podcast: How Was this 3D Tour Created? www.HamptonTour.com

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	WGAN-TV \| Multimedia Case Study: Visit Hampton Virginia 3D Digital Twin Tour (www.HamptonTour.com \| Guests: Home3D.us 3D/360º Virtual Tour Creation and Consultant Kevin Dole (@Home3D); Home3D.us 3D/360º Virtual Tour and Aerial Content Creator Eric Dole; and Hampton Convention & Visitor Bureau Director Mary Fugere \| Thursday, 8 August 20245 \| Episode: 223 \| www.Home3D.us \| www.HamptonTour.com \| www.VisitHampton.com Transcript (video above) - www.HamptonTour.com - - How was this 3D digital twin created? - - How is the Hampton, Virginia Convention and Visitor Bureau using this tour? - - How did this project even come about? Stay tuned. Hi, all, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com]. Today is Thursday, August 8th, 2024. You're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5: a podcast for digital twin creators shaping the future of real estate today. We have an awesome show for you. Multimedia Case Study: Visit Hampton, Virginia 3D Digital Twin Tour. Our subject matter experts today are: Home3D.us 3D/360 Virtual Tour Creation and Consultant, Kevin Dole; also from [www.Home3D.us], 3D/360 Virtual Tour and Aerial Content Creator, Eric Dole, and Hampton Convention and Visitor Bureau Director, Mary Fugere. Kevin, Eric and Mary, thank you for being my guests on the show. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Kevin, before we dive into today's topic, please tell us about Home3D.us. - Okay, we are, thanks, Dan. Appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Home3D, after several decades working in the film industry, about 10 years ago, I got into doing residential real estate photography videos since video had been in my background. And when Matterport came along, within a year or so, I acquired Matterport cameras and that, of course, led me into virtual tours. From there, we started working with 360 cameras and realizing both the power, but as well as limitations of where we started there, we worked out, we expanded into other kinds of technology in order to do larger sites, and that's where our major interest rest today is how far can you push virtual tours to make virtual travel possible. - And in addition to Hampton, Virginia Convention and Visitor Bureau, what are some of the other kinds of clients or categories of clients? - Well, Hampton is the largest tour we've completed to date. Roughly at the same time, we completed the second largest tour, which is for Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles, a 50 acre, 80-year-old cemetery. That's at: HillsideTour.com And we've also done several school campuses. We've done everything from private homes, of course, up to larger estates sitting on five, six acres or more. Some of these are rendered with 3D modeling like we've done Hampton and Hillside and using other techniques, 360 processes and so forth. - Based in the greater Los Angeles area, but obviously not limited to geography, given that you've been working with Hampton, Virginia Convention and Visitor Bureau, and I believe you have some other clients across the United States? - Correct. Yeah, we worked in partnership with other clients in about six states now. - Great. And Mary, please tell us about the mission of the Hampton, Virginia Convention and Visitor Bureau. - Well, the Hampton CVB is a department of the city of Hampton, Virginia. And we are the marketing team to generate tourism for the city. And ultimately all of our work results in revenue and quality of life services for Hampton residents. But Hampton is a 400-year-old city, so it has a great amount of history and many historical attractions. We're a very active; active city during all of our nation's history from the colonial period forward. So, we have civil war fortresses and we have ... we're the founding site for the Nations Space Program, the first NASA site. And we are the founding site for seafood pasteurization. So, incredible seafood here, great water recreation. And ultimately we are the marketing organization for the Hampton Roads Convention Center; the Hampton Coliseum; the Hampton, Virginia Aquaplex, and other group venues in the city. Our job is to fill those venues and to fill the hotels all at the same time. - So, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's both generating tourism to the Hampton, VA area as well as would it be business development for the convention center and other hotels? - It is in that we are marketing the city to groups that will visit here and fill those hotels, fill those venues. Ultimately, the venues have their own teams for regional business. We're focusing nationally. So, our goal is to market Hampton to the nation and have all of those wonderful groups visit our city and fill our venues and hopefully return for their leisure vacations as well. - And so, your website is www.VisitHampton.com and now also: www.HamptonTour.com - Right, the tour that has been developed is: HamptonTour.com VisitHampton.com is our primary website, but we do also market the venue websites: www.theHRcc.com ... www.HamptonAquaplex.com ... and of course, as we're a city department: www.Hampton.gov - Okay, great, Kevin, for context for today's show, how about giving us a tour of: www.HamptonTour.com - Okay. Okay, you can see the screen? Dan? - Yes. - Oh, you can, okay, good. So, when Hampton Tour launches, it takes a few seconds to fully load because of the complexity of the tour. So, you get a brief loading screen, and then it comes up, click to launch, and you click on that and the Hampton City site is revealed. This is a 3D model, which can be rotated, moved around, you can zoom in and study different areas, so forth. But it's a new development in virtual tours to be able to launch a tour to a 3D model as opposed to aerial panoramas, that sort of thing. Just a couple quick things in the tour, you can see that the three primary buildings that the Hampton Convention and Visitor Bureau wanted to promote, the Hampton Coliseum, which I think was the first building on the site, and it's a, I'm guessing here Mary would correct me, but I think it's seats 16,000 / 18,000 people, something like that. - A few less, but nearly there. - It's big, definitely, the Hampton Hampton Roads Convention Center, which is a much newer facility down here, has exhibit halls and they have conference rooms, meeting rooms, all different opportunities for groups to get together. as a convention center normally has, and the Hampton Aquaplex is a new swimming, fantastic swimming building, opened about a year, year and a half ago. It has a huge swimming pool, 50 meters, I think it is, swimming thing here and a smaller 25 meter pool over here. And it's used for hosting all kinds of major swimming events because it's such a lavish facility. Yeah, outdoors for the enjoyment of the younger set. In Hampton, they built their own waterpark here, which is really great too. So, we made the tour so that you could kind of get an idea of the relationship of these buildings to each other. It's all obviously quite close and walkable. There is one commercial structure on the site, which is the [Embassy Suites by Hilton Hampton Convention Center], a 10-story facility and quite nice. And you'll also see little flag labels around places because Hampton has five large various sizes, but the five large parcels open for future development of other attractions, destinations to the city. That would all be within a walking distance of these major destinations that people come into Hampton to enjoy. - And how would I know where those parcels are? - Well, number one, you can just see them. In terms of outlines, if you click on the parcels tab, it takes you to an aerial panorama looking from the other side, south of the coliseum. And as you mouse over, you can see all the different parcels light up so that you can see the dimensions of all the parcels here, and- - I'll ask Mary about that later, about those parcels. Let's maybe, perhaps you can go, show us where the other hotel properties are. - Yeah, going back to the start here, there is, I'll point out one thing in this primary view, you'll see floating sort of a transparent cloud icon. And any time you click on that, it transitions to an aerial panorama in that position from which you can look around the entire city of Hampton for as far as you can see, there's the ocean out there, there are others, you can see these other cloud icons around. And this one is labeled, Hotels View. Clicking on that takes you over to the largest assemblance of different hotels. There's seven right here next to the Aquaplex and the Embassy Suites over here. And there's a few more hotels that are further away, two of them over here and one over here, which you can get to by clicking on other clouds. And we built this up so that if you want to get information about the Hyatt, you can just click on that. It takes you to their reservations page, so forth. And the Hampton actually, - If I wanted to go inside, - Has a view inside. - Going into the Embassy Suites, for example. - Yeah, this was by far the largest hotel in the general vicinity of the coliseum. And we have some nice views inside because it is very pleasant and kind of dramatic as well. So, you can move around and take a look at that, it'll take us back to that view. - Okay, and it's perhaps to go into the convention space? - Yeah, there's a couple ways you navigate the basic tour, for example, any of these little pulsing dots on the ground. And in the 3D view, you may have noticed that there were yellow and blue spheres. I'm going to go back to that view for a minute. Those pulsing dots in the aerial view are the same as the positions of these yellow and blue dots. And clicking on these takes you to that particular location where you can see things. And the blue ones are twilight views, so that you get some views of some of the Hampton's major structures as they look in the evening. This is like Google Street View in the sense that you can navigate anywhere, to go around between the buildings. And so, I'll go right up ... and you can walk into buildings essentially right through the door. The interiors were done using 3D modeling. And once you're inside, you can just walk any place you want to in the building. If you want to see the convention center halls and so forth. You can just walk upstairs, downstairs, through the ballroom, anywhere. You also have the option, if I'm going to go back to the 3D view once again, you also have the option of looking at these buildings by way of fly-through videos. This is, just show just part of one here as you see the approach. So, if you don't feel like clicking around, you can just get a general sense of the building from traveling around this way. I'm going to jump forward a little. - Yeah, that's okay. You mentioned I think nearly 16,000 seat arena. Could we see the arena? - Yes, yes. This is not, it's great seeing it from the on the fly through video. This is inside of the Hampton Coliseum set up with, currently set up in this view for end stage performances. You can see at one end of the place there's a stage set up. - And is there another space that I would think of as an exhibit space within the same building? - In the coliseum? - Yeah. - The coliseum does- - Oh, oh, so that would be the other building that would be, - Yeah. - Yeah, okay. - And we've constructed this left menu over here for navigation. For example, you've got the three main buildings, the Convention Center, Coliseum and Aquaplex. This, this, and this over here. The Convention Center has many, many different rooms and capabilities. So, you can go for example, the grand ballroom can be configured many different ways. It's a huge room that has walls that come up so that if you just want to use, if you need 50,000 square feet or if you need whatever size, the room can be configured in different ways. This is, I'll click on A, B, C, D, E, F, G, because that's all portions of the ballroom open. This is the entire ballroom and the largest configuration. And you can kind of see up here, there are tracks where walls come in and subdivide the room. But it's a gorgeous facility. And in the 3D model, you can walk through this, you can also just go out and go down the halls and so forth. But you also have the option of seeing what, just ballroom B by itself, for example, when the walls are slid out and it's broken down because you, that's the size you need for some meeting. We developed this so that any size configuration could be seen and explored. And the same is true for the exhibit halls. I'll just click one more here. The is all three of the exhibit halls connected together with their dividing walls opened for large convention shows. - All right, great, so, I see the menu on the left, I see the icons on the right, to walk around the space, either going from cloud-to-cloud or the 3D model, or to click on. - Yeah, this is 3D, this was the aerial panos like you saw, the 3D model. This just hides the icons if you don't want to see them, if you wanted to just kind of explore the 3D model without them. - Is there - - And that's a help menu. - Yeah, Kevin, before I go to Mary, is there anything else that you wanted to point out? We'll do a deeper dive in the technology, but just seeing ... I think in our show prep we talked about that there were 200 acres of space that you can actually see either from the clouds or from the ground. - I think it's a, yeah, I don't remember the exact figure, Mary would perhaps have it, but I think it's a little under 200 acres, the entire 3D model area that you're looking at. - Okay, so, Mary, how is the Hampton, Virginia Convention and Visitor Bureau using: www.HamptonTour.com - Well, the original purpose of HamptonTour.com, was to support the Hampton Economic Development Department in their pursuit of a second full service hotel for the property and their pursuit of restaurants and entertainment that visitors can enjoy while attending events there on the campus. Ultimately, we want to see a very active, vibrant campus. And it is when we have groups, of course, occupying the venues, but those groups, they want to dine, they want to enjoy the beautiful view of the water. They want more, and we want to provide that to them. So, the Hampton, VA Convention and Visitor Bureau received an ARPA grant, American Rescue Plan Act grant, and this was provided through the state tourism office, we had our choice of how to dedicate those funds. And we decided the best thing to do would be to invest those dollars into supporting really our primary need. And that is to activate that campus. We felt the best way to do that would be to showcase those parcels. We want to showcase the venues, of course we want to showcase the hotels and everything that's around them, but ultimately we want to showcase the opportunities for developers to base their businesses or their headquarters on this site. And so, our goal is to not only utilize HamptonTour.com, to sell the site, but also to brand it and to make it a primary destination not only for our groups that we wish to bring to the city, but also for development and restaurants. We want this to be a hotspot that is very much in demand. And so, as we were looking at potential tour producing companies, 360 tour producing companies and the technology that was available, I was somewhat aware of some of the technology. I had 360 tours developed of the Hampton Roads Convention Center previously, as well as the Hampton Coliseum, but Aquaplex was new. And ultimately I wanted to show the connection between all of these venues, the close proximity and the great opportunity that existed. And I was so impressed with Home3D's enthusiasm. I mean, Kevin's enthusiasm for this project, and the fact that he provided a great demo, even in his initial proposal, was a real selling factor for me. So, from here, now that we have this magnificent tour, we'll be utilizing that. Our economic development department will be utilizing it, the CVB, all of the venues. We had an advertisement developed, a print ad as well as digital ads. And so, all of this will come into play in determining the success of the campus. - So, the primary use case is bringing hotels and restaurants to those five empty tracks of land. And this HamptonTour.com helps visualize where those lots are in relation to the existing facilities. - That's correct, Dan. - So, beyond using it for helping get new hotels and restaurants, what other ways is the Hampton Convention and Visitor Bureau or related entities within the Hampton sphere using HamptonTour.com? - Well, our guest, first of all, when we bring a convention to the Hampton Roads Convention Center, they're able to use the tour to determine what's around them, to determine the close proximity of the hotels that they may have reserved with, to identify sites where they'd like to go while they're visiting. The Aquaplex ... the beautiful tour of the Aquaplex provides a magnificent first impression, and it's a brand new facility. So, many athletes and organizations are unfamiliar with it. It's a great chance for them to see how it's configured and to imagine their swim meet and aquatic competitions in that site. Same with the Hampton Roads Convention Center. Meeting planners are able to look at that space and determine ... and in some cases we've photographed the setup, we have it set up for a reception or for a banquet, but they're able to envision what their setup may look like and what their group may experience while they're in the facility. The Hampton Coliseum, while it's an arena venue and we're showing it in its empty state, it's still wonderful to see the very intimate possibility of a limited space venue. We have it shot where it's just a partial configuration of the overall facility as well as the full venue, and then the concourses that surround it so that they're able to see public space as well. Concert promoters are able to take a look at that facility, get an idea of what the green room may look like, and get an idea of what the load-in capability may be. And so, all of these factors into just a very invaluable tool for us to promote the City of Hampton and its wonderful opportunities. - I know HamptonTour.com is somewhat new. Is it too soon to ask you what the feedback has been from those that you've shared it with to help them plan events? - Feedback has been very positive, but I have to say largely that has been from our partners, that's been from government leaders in the city, that's been from our venue partners. And so, for the most part we're just getting very excited feedback and response. And Kevin's tour that he's recently developed, he has not only developed this overall tour product, but he developed a familiarization video and that makes it super-easy for anyone who wants to go to HamptonTour.com to understand how to fully explore the site, the parcels, the opportunities. And when I shared that information just this past week, boy, I had incredible feedback. - Was that on HamptonTour.com or on the video about HamptonTour.com? - Well, both, first HamptonTour.com, our government leaders, our economic development department couldn't have been more excited. Then most recently, this past week, the tutorial video really just ... because when you're visiting HamptonTour.com, you really have to click and explore and it's all on you. When you're seeing the tutorial video, you're able to just look at everything that it's capable of. And it's just really incredible. It's awesome to imagine that this technology, number one, was applied in this way and really I couldn't have asked for a better tool. - Awesome. My impression is you don't really need the training video in order to use the tour. There's a menu on the left, there's a menu on the right, there's dots that light up and you click on it. That said, I've watched the video that you've described, which I would describe as: 35 Pro Tips for using HamptonTour.com" And we have a short link for our viewers who would like to see that video: www.WGAN.info/HamptonTourVideo Mary, many of our audience are photographers in this space and would be super-curious about this, the process of how you put a proposal out there. Was there a request for a proposal? Could you elaborate a little bit on how you ended up finding Kevin? - Sure, well, we are required to go through the Virginia State procurement process and to follow Virginia Procurement law. So, we did issue an RFP. and of course the American Rescue Plan Act grant requires a dedicated RFP as well. So, the RFP process was used, we knew of a few companies, but ultimately it's listed on government sites. It was listed on the state of Virginia's procurement opportunity site, as well as EVA and many other procurement opportunity sites. The RFP was also posted, I believe, in the newspaper, and therefore it might have been available online. - And this was something like a 60-page document of some sort outlining what your vision was for this project? - Well, my vision for the project probably took two pages out of that 60-page document, but yeah, so, 60-page documents. So, honestly ... It's a very structured RFP and it takes you through the process. And if you include everything, not saying that you need a 60-page proposal, you just need to touch on each of those points that are mentioned in the document. But ultimately pay attention to the scope of work. The scope of work is the key. And so, if you have the technology, the capability, the experience that needs to be expressed, and that's really what can get you that business. - So, would it be fair to say your description of the project was a two-page, here's your vision statement for what you were looking for? - Yes. - How close did Home3D come to what your vision was? - Oh, they exceeded my vision. They exceeded my expectations. They nailed the vision, but I wasn't really clear on how realistic I was envisioning it. And so, they fully met my expectations and exceeded them. It was really a fantastic job done. - What was the part that exceeded your expectations? - I think the fact that Kevin went above and beyond to create the tutorial video as well, the guide, to using the site because, and I understand that your audience is fully knowledgeable in this technology, but I am not, and most of our clients are not. So, having that tool is very, very helpful for the general public when they're exploring a site like this. So, Kevin, not only, I have to say that, I mentioned this earlier from the get go, they created a mock 360 page. They created that mock 360 homepage and when they did that, I knew they knew exactly what I wanted from this tour. But truly they went above and beyond and fully captured all of the opportunities that are on the campus through the sidebar menu and identifying the parcels and the water in close proximity. They really captured the essence of this campus and the campuses in the center of this coastal Virginia region. So, it was truly beautifully done. And I was beyond excited about it. - Was it hard to choose among the vendors that responded to your RFP? - There were two vendors that were very closely capable of doing the work, and honestly, it's because of that going above and beyond and the initial proposal and presentation, that's what captured it. I mean, that I knew, and the enthusiasm that I heard during the initial interview, what we do typically is we receive those proposals and then we interviewed each of those vendors to hear about their capabilities so that I was truly clear on what they were capable of doing and not capable of doing. And I could tell that this was going to be a great match and it certainly was. - Awesome. Kevin, can you pick it up from there? You get this request for a proposal. - Yeah. - Seems for our audience of photographers, they're going, wow, this seems like a lot of ... where do you want to begin in terms of how you responded. - I'll add a little bit of entertainment here. Mary, everything Mary said about how it came about and what she wanted and so forth, resulted in the public in a little post that was on the internet, says the city of Hampton, Virginia, is looking for a virtual tour for this site: these three buildings and this land site. And I knew … [www.WeGetAroundNetworkForum.com] … know that this technology is constantly evolving and what you can do today, some of those things you couldn't do 12 months ago. I mean, it's changing all the time. And also I'm very aware that when you go beyond a single building and you want to do an entire site, indoors and out, a lot of people don't even know what's possible. I mean, we do it and we barely know what's possible because it's evolving. - Let me do this, without showing us the model. Let's ... Let's visit. Let me kind of jump ahead and say, tell us as photographers all the different techniques and services that you used in order to put this 3D tour together. - Okay, and I'll add one thing. One night ... Just a day or two after Mary put up the RFP, my wife couldn't sleep at 3 am. And she got up and went to her computer and was just randomly poking around, typing in: "virtual tour proposals" ... And she found this just random, just randomly. We had never looked for these things. I didn't even know they existed. But she found that and that's how it all started and we went after putting it together. - Awesome, tell me about the technology. - We know we on [www.WGANForum.com] know what you can do with Matterport, which is kind of confined to the interiors of buildings a little bit outside and- - How many Matterport tours are part of this? - There are about 30 that are inside this and you can count- - How about outside? - Well, outside there's no Matterport, outside is... Outside, both in the air and on the ground are about 200, 360 spherical panos that allow you to Google Street View style, walk around the entire property. - And what gear did you use to shoot those? - Well, we used a number of different things. We used of course aerial drones that can capture sets of photos that can be stitched into aerial panoramas. And we did that for the demo that we pitched along, that we sent to Mary, along with the actual printed proposal because we knew that it's hard to ... if a picture's worth a thousand words, when you get to virtual tours, it's 10,000 words. So, we wanted to show her some idea of what we had in mind, so we actually ... I got in contact with a drone cameraman in Hampton, VA. Send him a map, I said, go to these sites, go up to 400 feet and capture some panos on a nice day. Send them to me, he sent me the stills, I stitched them and all and put together a little rough tour so that when they evaluated our proposal, they could actually see what we were talking about. It wasn't just words on a printed page. - Mary, how important was that demo? It was not something that you asked for as part of the RFP process, as I understand it. How important was Kevin going the extra mile to give you a taste of what he was going to deliver? - It was very important. That's really what turned our heads. - Okay, awesome, Kevin going back to- - It sold us, it sold us. - Yeah, going back to those 360s, Okay, you used the drone to capture the 360s in the air. What about on the ground are you using- - On the ground we used. - Where you using a camera- - Yeah, we use a variety of things. In key locations, for example, such as the 360 panos the nighttime, the twilight, 360 panos of the coliseum and the convention center. I wanted those to be ... even though it's a lot more work, I wanted them to be really high resolution and beautifully color balanced and enhanced and everything. So, we did those using a Sony Mirrorless camera on Nodal Ninja head that you go around ... you shoot a bunch of photos and then stitch them, process and stitch them together and using HDR, the majority of the ground panos were done using Rico THETA Z1. And I think the Ricoh THETA X was used some of the time. Z1 is still my favorite camera for stills, one shot camera, and of course the drone panoramas. - And what about the 3D aspect of the tour? - Well, I think Eric should address that. - Okay. Eric? - I was muted. Yeah, so for the 3D model, we actually used a DJI Mini 2, and used Litchi for DJI drones to create a grid to ... and then just flew over the whole property in a grid and took a bunch of photos of, as I think it was about, I want to say it was about 1,400 pictures total if I recall correctly. - And then what was your workflow with those 1,400 pictures in order to convert it to a 3D model? - So, when we got back, I used Agisoft Metashape to construct the photogrammetry model and then in Metashape you also can trim it. And so, I worked on trimming, because if you don't trim it, then all the edges are jagged and all over the place. And then export from that and then plug that into 3DVista and the rest is on 3DVista - Was the export from Metashape, was that a .GJB file, a .GLTF file? - .GLB. - .GLB file. So you exported from Metashape, then you were able to import back ... import into 3DVista. And so Kevin, 3DVista is the container for the entire tour, which included Matterport, 360 aerial drone, fly through video, et cetera? - Right, yeah, it's a container for everything. The videos actually stream are based on Vimeo and stream through the tour. Vimeo's such a dependable streaming source and- - How about on the fly through video? Eric, your videos are amazing. These one-shot, fly-through of, well, in fact Mary, what was your reaction when you saw those videos? - Oh, I love them, I mean, they were just spectacular. The view of the venues, the Aquaplex, being able to see it fly through the facility and to really experience those venues in a shot like that. They were wonderful. - And you had those, Eric, how many of those videos did you shoot? Was it five? - One, two, three, four. - Four. - I believe four, yeah. - Four. Can you describe your workflow for shooting a one shot aerial fly through tour that's just amazing. - Yeah, so for those who are not aware, we used a FPV drone. So, FPV stands for First-Person View. And so, there's a camera on the front, like obviously, but that camera actually feeds video to a pair of goggles that I wear. And so, that's how I'm able to maneuver around objects in close proximity and to record. - When you're doing that, Eric, sometimes when you're flying through and you're flying through a space, the camera's actually looking back over to the left shoulder, for example, going through the water park, is your head motion for the motion of the drone, but you're doing something else to control the video or is the video shot is 360 and then you're editing the 360 video to the 2D view? - So, for recording uses GoPro and so, the, and the GoPro's fixed on the drone. And so any time that wherever the drone is heading, for instance, if I'm going sideways or a little backwards, I'm actually flying backwards so I can't see behind me. And so yeah, we record on GoPro and, and then after recording, after we get home, we put the footage through ReelSteady by GoPro, which is GoPro's stabilization software. And basically it just captures the, or it records gyro data. And so, that's how it's able to get a very smooth, almost floaty kind of feel. - The super-silky smooth. What was the First-Person View for flying a drone even available at the time that you were responding to the proposal, Kevin? - Yeah, that is, well, FPV video and that capability goes back a number of years. Eric probably knows the whole history of it. But Eric, got into it a number of years ago, but yes, it was available, because he's done these for several years. Fly through for buildings. But the 3D modeling part of this project was something that literally came up. It was a new capability of 3DVista after we were already starting on this project. And I had to go back and contact Mary, and said, we're at work planning this whole thing, but hey, I got something new to show you. - Mary, what was your reaction when Kevin came back and said, "hey, would you like this 3D modeling, it's now available? It wasn't available at the time that we quoted on your project, but we think it would add to your project. What do you think?" - Well, our grant was committed at that point. So, we were working with very limited funds, but economic development saw the value and this additional feature. And so, working together with another department's budget, we were able to make that happen. - And Kevin, this is a massive project, who actually created all these digital assets? - Well, of course we're based in Los Angeles, and Hampton, Virginia's not a short drive. So, we knew we were going to be flying across the country, taking all of our gear with us and so forth. And we also had, I think there's a, in the neighborhood of 30 Matterport models in the tour. And these are not small Matterport scans, they're huge, the coliseum and the exhibit halls and the convention center. So, I've worked for a number of years with another Virginia-based company, APS: Adaptive Property Solutions. And they specialize in doing Matterport. So, I decided that in this case, since we had so much to do, it would take Eric and I the better part of a week in Hampton just to do the other stuff. So, we decided to partner with APS and plan the whole thing together. APS is about a five hour drive, I think from Hampton. And several of their people came down with Matterport Pro3 Cameras and they just ... While Eric and I were doing all the drone stuff, the outdoors, the panos and the 3D modeling, capturing all the assets for that, they were at business. They were at work inside the venues doing the Matterport scanning. - And do you have any ... When you were working on this project, gee, how do you even begin to quote this project? Were you trying to figure out what every asset was? How long would it take with the Matterport Pro3 Camera? with the Ricoh THETA Z1 cameras, with the Sony Mirrorless camera, on a Nodal Ninja rotator. Did you actually have a spreadsheet to try and estimate the project? - Yeah, we did the best we could to estimate the number of days and hours and the people involved in the different things. And also estimates of the weeks of work in post-production, assembling the whole thing, which we all did back in California. And to a certain degree, we have lots of experience with Matterport; so we knew kind of how to calculate square footage versus time and so forth and we've done a lot of 360 panos and the finishing of them, so we could get a rough idea there. But there certainly was an element of, we know this is a calculated guess because we had never done a project at this scale before. And we really, we knew in our head what we could accomplish and how cool this tour could look. And we wanted to impress Mary and her team that we would be the best to do it. And we knew that as much as we knew about what we were intending to do, we knew that Mary and her team understand this stuff less than we do inherently. So, we wanted to present it with enough detail and breakdown that hopefully they could understand that we had conceived of it very carefully. - You and Eric were on site for a week? - Yeah. - And the Adaptive Property Solutions team, were they there the same week? - They were there the same, they did about, let me quantify, I think they did about 80% of the scanning during three days of the week that we were there. But there were some portions of certain buildings, like the exhibit halls and so forth, they were occupied, there were shows going on. So, they had to come back once or twice, weeks later to pick up the areas that weren't empty and available to scan previously. So, the total amount of time; there were two or three people that did scanning from APS simultaneously with different cameras. And I think considering all the trips they probably spent five or six days there as well. - Mary, from your standpoint, when I look at the tour, when I look at HamptonTour.com, everything is pristine. How did you manage to do that? - Well, it wasn't pristine from the initial completion, if you will, from the preliminary completion, we worked together identifying just a little, there were cones identifying a wet spot or a spill or there were ladders that had been left out. Inevitably when you're working with venues, you're going to find just something that isn't quite right that you really don't want in the video. And Kevin and Eric really worked together to identify solutions for those areas and it, in some cases it cost just a little bit more for those corrections, but it was worth it to us for that pristine outcome. And I have to say that there were, some of the images were stitched together It took some time to smooth that out and to perfect it. And these are two of the most patient individuals I have ever met because they never got frustrated when we came back and said, "oh, there was just this one little spot here," or "we've identified this other spot over here." They really wanted it to go very well for us and I'm very appreciative of that. - Ah, so, there's some Hollywood movie magic there, Kevin, that you have applied to some of the touching-up of spaces to remove some items that, - Yeah, one of the things that's wonderful about working with 360 panos, although they're stretched out and they're an odd form of photograph, is that you can take them into Affinity or Photoshop and clean up everything. And I do sometimes tell clients talking about proposed projects that the difference between Google Street View and what we deliver is that on Google Street View, the car drives down the street, just captures whatever's there. We pointedly set up the time of day to capture every single photograph, and then every single shot is carefully put through Photoshop to retouch. If there's a spot of gum on the pavement, we erase it, if there's an unsightly crack in the street, we smooth it out, we want it to look really beautiful and that, and we applied that principle to all 200 photos, whether they be aerials or on the ground. - Mary, I would imagine though, you still had a challenge of, well, how do you schedule the Aquaplex so that the water is not, no one has been in the pool for an hour and the water is perfectly still for Eric to do his fly through drone. - Somehow he did it. I mean, we were able to schedule that. The coliseum was nice, of course, because there are no windows, there are windows around the exterior concourse. But to shoot the arena, they were able to catch that overnight, the convention center, the exhibit hall, they were able to catch it at dark as well. The Aquaplex was a little trickier because it is a daytime venue for the most part, and you can see it when it's nighttime outside. But the teams at each of the venues were very cooperative and supportive in making sure that the spaces were available, that setups were as we requested, and that staff wasn't available in the shot. We wanted to make sure that it was a clean shot. And I have to say, you mentioned, or Kevin mentioned gum and, the Hampton Coliseum and is a 70-year-old venue. It is very dated. So, it's a very favorable venue, people love that venue. It's a classic venue, but it is not pristine. And this team really made it shine and the tour really projects very well. - Awesome. Kevin, before I ask you some more business related questions, some more technical things, can you speak to 3DVista's feature for creating sequences and how this was used? - Oh yeah, yeah. And yeah, Eric is even more versed in these things, but I've actually learned from him how the sequences work. But you have a, well, in fact, I'm going to share a screen for this part if I can. - Let's not share the screen. - No? Okay. - Let's just talk. - Just talk through it? Okay. - Yep. - When you have... Sequences is a dimension of 3DVista's new 3D capabilities. When you have a 3D model, such as I was showing at the beginning of a site, one of the settings within 3DVista is camera and that is a way of locking and predetermining a view of the 3D model. So, for example, in the wide view, you're seeing the whole site, but then at one point, early in this show, I tapped on the logo name of the coliseum and the camera flew down closer to the coliseum aimed at the front. - So, those are similar- - Those are cameras, yeah, those are camera positions. And a sequence is going from the wide view camera position to the Hampton Coliseum closeup position. So, moving between different positions is called sequences. - So, for example, for the hotels, I believe when you click on one of the clouds, it shows you one of the hotels, but then maybe it pulls back and it shows you all the hotels off to the left side. - That's moving between aerial panoramas, when I showed you the hotel's view and so forth. Within 3DVista, sequences are a function of how you move through 3D models. So, literally referring to 3DVista sequences pertains only to the 3D model view at the beginning of Hampton. - Okay, good, thank you for that clarification. So, some members in the We Get Around Network Forum had some questions: @Ron0987. "How did you balance the content size 3D model and video so as not to have any issues on 3DVista bandwidth? What size 3D model and settings in 3DVista to achieve this good resolution on the final product? The final file size of the completed model?" I imagine you had some limitations in terms of how much digital assets that you could include versus how long it would take to load the model at the beginning. - Yeah, Eric, you want to address the question of compression of 3D models for 3DVista. - Yeah, so, in Metashape, one of the things you can do is [decimate] ... I'm forgetting what the term is, I don't know why, but just reduce the number of faces and vertices, because the 3D model is basically a mesh. So there's, so, even if a face looks like it's a wall of solid, there's actually a bunch of triangles or like in polygons in there and decimate, what it's called. So, decimate- - So, decimate or you make a trade off between quality and ability to load? - So, when you decimate it, the more you decimate it, the smaller the file size gets to put it simply. And so, basically I just decimated it as much as I could until it really started to look noticeably like lower resolution. - So, that was the trade off that you didn't want to go decimate it so much that the quality of the digital assets would look flawed. - Yeah, and actually another thing I did was if you look at the model, you'll notice that some of the trees are flattened. And the reason I did that is just because yeah, with photogrammetry trees and foliage can basically just look like lumps and they're kind of ugly if you don't get enough coverage. But, so, for a lot of the trees, because they were just floating artifacts basically of green blobs, I just decided to take those out and then just flatten the area just to also make the buildings stand out more. And so that also reduced the amount of geometry in the model, and- - Was it the file size at the end that you had to get it to a certain size in order for this to actually load in the timeframe that it does? - Yeah, the final file size was about 90 megs, 90 megabytes. And also you're actually able to decimate the model quite a bit, even more than you think, because most of the detail actually comes from the texture and the texture is basically the picture that is wrapped onto the mesh. And so, that's actually where most of the perceived detail comes from. And so, you can have like a, you can have a higher resolution texture with less geometry and it'll still look really, really detailed, if that makes sense. - "The load works on a smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop. Does it work on VR as well?" That's a question from @JamesG in the We Get Around Network Forum. - We didn't, we did, yeah, we haven't experimented with it much on VR to be quite honest, because it wasn't, principally going to be used that way. Anything, it can be looked at on a VR headset. It's not stereo of course it's mono oral optically, but it can be maneuvered just fine on a headset too. - Also, the thing with 3DVista and VR, the menu structure that we have is, as complex as it is, would not really work that well because if you view this on VR, the menu will not look the same. It's basically just like a little box. - Ah, it hasn't been optimized for VR, it wasn't part of the scope of the work. - This wasn't this, we were not anticipating making it optimized for VR. In order to do that, we'd have to make a simplified version, I think with a simpler menu. - Okay, I think- - And also- - One of the, yeah, I was going to say one of the things about VR at its current stage, because it's in development as well, is that on a computer you've got a mouse, a scroll wheel, click, left, click right to choose things, on an iPad, you've got your finger and you can tap on things and slide it back and forth, so forth. When you're wearing a headset, you kind of have to just turn your head around to activate things. So if you have a complex menu, it becomes kind of cumbersome to try to maneuver. - Okay. - And also- - We'll call it out of scope. Let me just move on to the topic. So, Mary, have you had any reactions from other conventions and visitor bureaus? Perhaps you've shared this or again, still too soon to know that? - I have not shared it with very many. We've talked about it, I've given presentations where I've referred to it and I've shared the address to the tour. But my goal is for [HamptonTour.com] to be part of a larger overarching landing page for all of these venues for the entire campus, with that campus brand and for this to be marketed heavily once we have that brand in hand. What I noticed as I was looking at the virtual tours, the 360 tours that were available out in the market, is that a lot of people don't market them well. They don't make ... they're not utilizing them to the extent that they should and could. And I feel like that's what we are doing right now, frankly. I mean, we really want this to launch, but at the same time, I want to be careful that I'm not launching before every other component of this project. And so, I want the tour to be utilized by all of our partners and by all of our clients immediately. But ultimately its impact will be mostly felt once we have that regional campus branded and we're marketing it to the extent that we should. - Awesome. "Kevin, I'm a director at a Convention and Visitor Bureau. I've just watched the show for an hour. My reaction is, I love it! How much?" You got a ballpark number for a CVB that's interested in this? - Obviously, everything that we do is bespoke, everything's custom. So, buildings are all different and venues and the land and everything are very different. That being said, the general ... to do something from scratch in another city that was roughly equivalent to HamptonTour.com probably in the neighborhood of $125,000 to $150,000, for doing a tour of this nature. - Okay, more or less it's a custom order. So, you really need to understand the scale and the scope and the number of buildings and all the digital assets. - Of course. - "I'm a Matterport Service Provider. I've been watching the show. I've been watching it for an hour and I go, 'well, that's awesome.' But way beyond my skill set." Is there an opportunity for Matterport Service Providers, other photographers in this space to collaborate with Home3D.us? - Well, absolutely, just as we did on this project. And we've done projects in I think about five or six states now working with different Matterport and 360 shooters. A lot of Matterport people also have Ricoh THETA and other cameras, some use Nodal Ninja, and so forth. And we're happy to talk about projects, working together with people. - Okay, Home3D.us is the website. And, I could imagine the photographer, the key thing for a photographer is probably three things: One, is they have the relationship with the client. Two, they want to create digital assets in the space. And, and three, they're looking to outsource the magic of taking all the digital assets and creating the tour. So, if they're prepared to shoot the digital assets and they have the relationship with the client, they should get in touch with: www.Home3D.us - Yeah, every one of these types of projects, these partnership projects that we've done someone's had, whether it's a school or some other kind of venue where they have a relationship and they want to do something much larger. We plan it together between ourselves, then we usually set up a Zoom and pitch it together to the potential client. because we can talk about the parts that they're not familiar with and then just, budget it out and go to work. We have done projects where someone locally has provided, according to a plan that we've made together, have provided all the assets. We've done other projects where some of the things they're not capable of doing. So, we'll fly in and do the parts that are beyond their scope of capabilities and then we do the assembly. - Awesome, Mary, back to you on, I could imagine when you worked on the scope of work, your vision, the RFP process, you had no idea that there was something called 3DVista or the jargon that Eric and Kevin have been using, .GLB files, Metashape, sequencing, first-person drone. Did you just have this vision for, I don't know how this is done, but I'm sure somebody ought to be able to create this as you've described it? - I had seen a Matterport video and I knew; I had a sense of what I wanted based on seeing that video, but I didn't know the right language to use. So, ultimately in our RFP meeting where people were able to ... vendors were able to ask questions. A lot of them ask questions like, "do you mean you want ..." And they would describe ... different facets of the project and I'd say yes, or I'd say no. And the vendors helped me reach the point where I was able to actually verbalize what we were looking for in the video. I had seen it, I just didn't know what the products were, I didn't know how to describe it from a production perspective. - And just for clarification, when you said you saw a Matterport video, you're describing a Matterport tour of walking through a space? - Yes, except this one was closer to what I was envisioning for this campus. - Okay. - I had seen it of a building, but I wanted the whole campus, I had seen- - Just for clarification for our audience, because I think this is an important thing to pick up because I had a client like that who said, "yeah, I'd like to have one of those Matterport videos" and I'm scratching my head wondering what that, what do you mean by video? Oh, it's the Matterport tour! So, you actually saw a Matterport tour of a large business, but your vision was, I don't want just the coliseum or the Aquaplex, I want the entire campus and I want to highlight those five parcels that are ready to be developed. - Right, right. And, but I didn't know exactly how to describe that. Ultimately, my goal was to market the campus, not just the buildings. So, yeah, capturing the entire acreage, available acreage was really important to me. So, next time I'll have a better, maybe I'll have a better handle on how to verbalize the need. But I was pretty sketchy initially, I have to say. - And I know I asked you this question at the top of the show, but I want to ask you again, now that you have the www.HamptonTour.com delivered by www.Home3D.us, how close was the deliverable to your vision? How happy are you with it? - Oh, 100%. It's 100% my vision. It is exactly, and as I said, it exceeded my expectations because not only is the tour … the tour's better than what I thought could be done, and I, but it definitely delivered on my desire. And Home3D.us went above and beyond with the tutorial video. So, it is truly going to be an incredible tool for us to utilize when we are talking about this campus and the potential for it. It really does a wonderful job of highlighting the potential for this site, the interstate access, the water, the venues, the open land that's available for development. It will be a well used tool as we go forward. And I'm very, as I said before, I'm very appreciative. And ultimately I want to encourage everyone, when you're bidding on a project like this, share your enthusiasm. Even if the project sounds like it's less than what you know you're capable of doing, share your capabilities because you could elevate that project from something pretty basic to something magnificent, just as Home3D did for us. - Kevin, how close was the www.HamptonTour.com to what your vision was of having read the RFP and responding? - Well, we had done some other larger, not this size, but larger area virtual tours. And up until that point, well, up until and through the point of bidding on this project, our intention was to launch aerial panoramas and be able to move around the general area, moving from pano to pano in the sky, and then pano to pano on the ground. And then of course, go into the buildings with the interiors, in this case rendered in Matterport. We knew that we could do it, because we had done a lot of exterior stuff like that before, the primary difference we did the project was that the scale was much bigger. I think that the largest one that we had done, the largest one that we had done up to that point was maybe 10 acres, something like that, and this was almost 200. So, but technologically, that's just scale. It's just, it's a bigger job to do, but we knew how to do it. - Mary, did that give you any angst that you're working with a vendor that hasn't done something as large as your vision was? - I don't think they said that, I don't, I don't think that was said during the proposal process, but I have to say, nobody had, nobody had done anything quite that large. I don't think anybody was doing that. And I think many of the vendors that I spoke to said, "oh, sure, we can do that." But then when it came down to sharing what they would do, it was very different from what I was envisioning. It was not at the resolution. It wasn't at the ... they weren't talking about the campus, they were talking about the buildings and seeing the big picture was really key to the outcome. - Otherwise, you might have just gotten a deliverable of, here are tours of the inside of every building. - Right, and as I mentioned, I had 360 tours of two of those buildings already. So, I knew 360 tours were important and great marketing tools, but at the same time, they weren't going to fill that campus with restaurants and hotels. - One last question ... I always have one last question, but just listening to Mary, Kevin, Eric, this is a very big undertaking and there's a lot of moving parts on it. It sounds like you all are still talking to each other and feeling pretty good about it. - Yeah. - Well, we have. - Go ahead. Go ahead. - We have continued to talk to one another. And I have to say, Kevin, he was never quite ready to leave it alone. He kept on making it better and better and better. He kept on improving. He must be a natural perfectionist, because he truly kept on trying to make it better so that it could be a better tool. And I adore and appreciate that so much, because ultimately, I have government officials who are very much in awe. Our economic development authority is going to see [WGAN.info/HamptonTourVideo] in the next couple days during their next meeting. And they're just going to be amazed. And that's going to be a gift for that economic development team, it really will. And it's been a long time coming for that team to be focused on this campus. There have been other projects in the city, and this is a tricky project, because there is so much to take place here and it's such an important campus for the city of Hampton. It is prime real estate and whatever goes in that space has to be right. And so, this has been ... this will provide them with the material and the tool that they need to make that happen. - Awesome. - I would say that Eric and I are innately both perfectionists and we do love what we do. And when we start this ... when we get an idea of something that could be added to make it better, we almost can't control ourselves. But I also want to thank you again publicly in this case, Mary, because Mary was fantastic to work with throughout this entire process, always responsive. She shares, as is obvious in this show, she has such an excitement for Hampton and for this site. And it's such a pleasure to have a client like that. - Thank you, Kevin. Thank you. - Awesome. Mary, thanks for being on the show today. - It is my pleasure, thank you so much, Dan. - Mary with the Hampton, Virginia Convention and Visitor Bureau, the Director, Mary Fugere. - Fugere, am I right. - Fugere, thank you, Kevin. - Fugere, that's correct. - Thank you. - Fugere. - And you can visit the Hampton, Virginia Convention and Visitor Bureau at www.VisitHampton.com as well as www.HamptonTour.com. And if you want to see that video: 35 Pro Tips on Using the wwww.HamptonTour.com to Walk Around the Space ... That's: www.WGAN.info/HamptonTourvideo And Kevin and Eric, thank you both for being back on the show. - It's always a pleasure, Dan. - Thanks, Dan. - And we've been visiting with www.Home3D.us 3D/360 Virtual Tour Creation and Consultant, Kevin Dole, and also www.Home3D.us 3D/360 Virtual Tour and Aerial Content Creator, Eric Dole. You can check out their website at www.Home3D.us For Mary, Kevin, and Eric, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. And you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.
	8 months ago	Post 2 • IP flag post

WGAN-TV Podcast: How Was this 3D Tour Created? www.HamptonTour.com20142