360 virtual tours mistakes to avoid in real estate photography
Based on our extensive experience and research conducted with the biggest real estate listing portal in Australia – RealEstate.com.au we are bringing you a series of videos that will help to point out to your team how to:
- properly position the camera in the property while taking 360 photos for your 360 virtual tours of real estate
- take photos of hallways
- avoid adding too many hot spots in your tours so that they don’t look messy and crowded with description
And many more examples live from our customers VR tours.
We hope this will help to take your 360 virtual tours to the next level
Hey guys, this is Tom from Virtual Tours Creator. Welcome to part three of the Most Common Mistakes in Virtual Reality Tours. Today I’ve prepared 15 virtual tours that we gonna talk about. This time we gonna talk more about putting the tours together, using hotspots, setting up the initial view, and setting up a start panorama.
Because I can see that those features aren’t used by you guys to the fullest. I would like you to be aware that VTC allows you to do a bit more than just add the photos and combine them into virtual tours. So let’s have a look at it today. I hope you are still safe; as you can see, I’m at home. Let’s have some fun, and let’s make those tours better.
Okay, tour number one. You can see it opens up but we don’t really see the full view of the house that we are trying to sell. So if somebody sends you a photo to upload and to add to the tour, please pay a bit of attention if the composition of this photo can be changed because it’s as easy as dragging it down a bit and viewing the roof of the house, it’ll look so much better. And then, you have to use the option where you have to right-click and set the initial view. I’m gonna show it to you on a different tour where I have access to the editor. And in here, let’s say you can’t see the fan on the ceiling, and if you and want to see it, you drag it down just like so you right-click and you choose the option set initial view. Okay? And from now on, every time you open the photo, you’re gonna see the ceiling fan. Same over here with that house.
Let’s go to tour number two. This is a beautiful house, but somebody added way too many hotspots everywhere. So we don’t need the hotspot to go to the kitchen. We don’t need the hotspot to go to the balcony. You wouldn’t jump to the balcony from the hallway if you were walking. I know you can, but we want to have as little hotspots as possible because you have to remember that if somebody’s gonna open it on mobile, and that’s gonna be 90% of the viewers, those hotspots are gonna get squashed and this tour is going to look quite bad. Okay? So remove the kitchen, remove the balcony, and then go to dining. And then when you’re gonna be in dining, you’re gonna go to the balcony or to the kitchen. Okay, now looking here also, I would remove the hallway hotspot because first, you’re going to walk down to this spot on those stairs, which you called stairs to the second floor, and from there, you’re gonna go to the hallway. So too many hospitals on this tour.
Tour number three, again, too many hotspots, beautiful house. One, the descriptions are pretty long. I wouldn’t call it a second-floor hallway, I’ll just call it a hallway. And in here, kitchen lounge, dining view, just call it entry one, entry two. But I want to tell you that you should remove these hotspots. You will go there from the kitchen and lounge and dining. So you’re gonna walk here, and from here, you’re going to walk up the stairs. Okay? Now let’s jump into the kitchen. Similar thing, if we look here to the left, you don’t need the main entrance hallway hotspot. You just want to take your viewers here. So you step out from the kitchen, and if you want, then you’re gonna go to the entrance or you’re gonna go upstairs.
Tour number four, is a classic example, of somebody not taking one extra photo of the hallway. You must take a photo in front of any doorways in such a long hallway because, at the moment, I kind of assume the bathroom you see. But bedroom two, is it behind this wall on the left, or is it past the living room? Completely have no idea what the layout of the house is. So whoever is taking photos, please take one extra photo always in front of any crossroads so you can see where you came from and where you’re gonna go. Cause if you’re gonna go to bedroom two, now you can spin around. I can see that there is a hallway, but I have no idea what it is. And if I want to step out from the bedroom too, it takes me all the way back to the main entrance and I would like to be standing over there and then go to the living room
Tour number five, clean your lens. Do you see those little spots? Just get a lens curve, and before you start shooting photos, give it a wipe. Otherwise, those tours are gonna look as they do. Now, in here again, we’re missing a photo of those stairs or the hallway upstairs or the landing. There’s bedroom two and bedroom one where I’m gonna go. But when I’m leaving, I can’t stand in here. And you should have put the camera somewhere in that spot and taken one extra photo because the only way to go now is either to bedroom one directly and then back to bedroom two to get out to go downstairs; people can get easily lost. So please take one more photo. Somewhere upstairs, next door. Again, somebody that’s creating the tours is adding too many hotspots. Yes, I know you can, but you should. You can just have one clean hotspot in the kitchen. You don’t need entry and no external entry that’s outside. You would have to fly from the lounge. Okay? So you click on kitchen and from the kitchen, you will go to the entry. Also, here, we don’t need the external hotspot again, so please remove it. Similar story over here. Beautiful house, and a nice tour, but the kitchen is not needed. Lounge definitely not needed. The only thing needed is the dining room. You click on the dining room and now I’m here. And from here I can decide I’m gonna go to kitchen lounge, or I’m gonna go back to hallway in here. Again, you don’t need the hotspot to the office. We don’t even know where it is. We should first go to the family room. And then from the family room, I assume we would go to the office. So remove the office because on mobile this area might look really crowded. Okay, enough of hotspots.
Now, something for the camera positioning in the mirrors, as you can see, there’s a camera reflection. You almost did it right. All you have to do is move this tripod between this vanity and the towels, just 20 centimeters to the left, and you wouldn’t see the camera in the reflection. This one heavily overexposed photo. It’s not the fault of the camera, it’s not the fault of the software. Yeah, you must be aware that your camera has an exposure setting. The moment you see so much glare coming out from any of the lights and the windows, it means it’s overexposed. All you have to do is go to your settings and change the exposure to minus health, minus one, maybe minus two because this house is so well-lit. So remember, check the exposure setting on the camera before you start shooting. That’s why you have the preview on your phone. You can see how the forest is gonna look like before you even start taking photos. This one, this is very bad if somebody’s gonna open it on mobile, all those hotspots are gonna sit on top of each other. They may not even have the option of clicking on it. You don’t need bedroom two, don’t need laundry, don’t need bathroom. All you need is the downstairs area. You click on it. And from here, look, you’ve got beautifully added hotspots. Bedroom, laundry, bathroom. That’s all you need, eh, remove those three hotspots.
Now this is an interesting one again, just to show you one more feature of Virtual Tours Creator features. You can set the start panorama, I assume nobody would like to start the tour in a tiny bathroom. So all you have to do is go to the spot where you want to start the tour. Let’s say it’s the passage. So from the passage, you can go to any of those bedrooms or bathrooms, move around the house, just stand in that photo and again, right-click to open the menu. And on this example, I’m gonna go hallway and you just right-click anywhere and you choose the first option set as a start Panorama. This means the tour will start from the hallway.
And the same in this example. If you’re gonna do it, your tour is gonna start from here. You’ll see it in the preview. And to finish off, I just want to show you that it’s not all bad, and somebody’s doing a great job and listening to my tutorials. Let’s go in. So we’re walking in and there’s a gigantic hallway with so many doors on the right and the left. Somebody’s taking the photos really nice. So put it in front of the bedroom so you can see there’s a bedroom there. Then we go in one step forward and then there’s bedroom two in the garage. You could have put the camera right in the middle of those doors because if you turn around, you are still gonna see the entrance, so you don’t have to be here. But then somebody took a photo of another crossroad on the same hallway that takes us to the bathroom and another one to the toilet and bedroom three again, I could have moved the camera here. And from here, we are going to the beautiful living room with you in the kitchen. We understand completely the layout of the house.
We don’t have a messy virtual tour. And that’s how I want you guys to create those tours. I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you very much for your time, and I’ll see you soon in a month or two. Bye.
