MYP - present your school on the schools website

3D Walk Through?

Here is one of those typical questions that land on the desk of the ICT-do-it-all-guy. We want to have a virtual tour through the school building on our website, can we have it? Or, a clickable map, with 360 degree photos. Or  . . .  And, can we have that by tomorrow?

Sure.

Check out

http://www.blendernation.com/2010/06/07/realworks-studios-walk-through-video/

All made with Blender, open-source. A team of 6 people, working 2 months or so . . .

There must be easier ways to accomplish the task . . . . 

A nice example, using a map, pop-up windows and 360degree photos can be seen here at the Int. School of Paris  http://www.asparis.org/page.cfm?p=1500
or here at a school in Singapore http://www.ais.com.sg/OurSchool/Facilities.aspx

So, how did they create those 360 degree ones? Without stitching 20+ photos together, of course, all in one shot.

You would need some very special hardware, obvious. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/%7Ekostas/omni.html shows what's out there, looks like a gadget shop on Mars.

http://gardengnomesoftware.com/pano2vr_download.php is software (not free) that allows to create the famous QuickTime Virtual Reality pictures. All you need to do before, is stitch your photos together.

Could we use Google Sketch maybe?

It's possible to apply textures to the outside of a building, using real photographs, so yes, why not trying the same for the building inside.

So what's the plan? I have turned this into a Grade9 MYP service learning exercise. (Smart, right!)
One student is trying the Google Sketch route, having lots of Google Sketch experience.

Some other students have started to use Prezi. They shoot photos, and decide themselves how to present. One student discovered that Prezi allows to 'stitch' photos together, just by placing them on the right spot in a sequence. Wow, it is all promising. When ready, I will post the link here . . . .

UPDATE:
here is the link:   http://www.ise.edu.ee/taketour.html
You can see 4 virtual tours of the school, they take a little time to load, but then come out really well (and in great detail). Next time, students should resize the images a bit smaller, so the view will be faster.
This was an excellent in-service learning project at our school!