Transcripts
1. Class Trailer: Lucky for us photographers, VR walkthroughs are an incredibly high demand in the real estate industry. And in this course will teach you how to succeed in the budding 3D home tour industry, will show you how to set up a new matter port account, will show you how to select the 360 camera. That's right for you. We'll go over how to prep the location for the scan and we'll go in depth step-by-step how to scan a property. We'll also cover how to take traditional real estate boat is with the 360 cameras. And I'll show you how to edit your 3D rendering and learn the matter port digital interface will even cover some business tips like marketing your 3-6 walkthroughs to industry professionals. So if you're curious about 3D home tours, let's get started.
2. Matterport Account, Website Layout, and Storage Plans: Okay, so let's go ahead and get started with a matter port account here. So we want to go to matter port.com. From Here we go to their homepage up at the top here, this big black boxes get started for free. You click on it and then go ahead and fill in your credentials. The next step, and that's for any kind of industry ties or business accounts or anything like that. If it's just you, you can just type in your name here. You don't have to use a company. Go ahead and fill out your industry. For most of you, I'm going to assume it's going to be photography services. And take a second right here and look at the industries. This is a good thing to note for later. These are different industries that find this tool valuable. So these are people that you can market your skill to. But again, for most of us, photography surfaces. And then from there we create our account. Account created now you can capture your first space with any supported camera or iPhone. From here it welcomes this into matter port. And we have a free account subscription, so that allows us to do one space. Now if we did want to change this account subscription from free to a more professional count, we can go to our settings here. So once we were on this tab, we can go to billing. And then from billing, we can change our plants. So as you can see right now, we're allowed one user and one active space. But if we change our plan, we can up at two phi spaces for $10 a month, a more professional plan, 25 spaces for about $70 a month, and so on and so forth. But again, for now, we'll go ahead and stay on the free version. And then we'll move over to the mobile app to capture our space.
3. 360 Camera Options: So let's go over our camera options. Metaphor allows a lot of different cameras and it's continuing to expand its selection. But the basic options that we have for these 3D scans are for the iPhone, for the Rico 360 cameras, and then for higher end matter port has their own camera, and then the Leica camera as well. So for the iPhone capture, you can actually do all the scanning with an iPhone, kind of spinning it around. Like you're taking a panoramic shot. You follow in line your iPhone to the target and continue in a 360 manner. You don't need a tripod for this. You don't need any ancillary equipment for this. So while the images are not quite as pristine as some of the other 360 cameras, it's a lot more easy to do it on the go. So as you can see, they have the list of supported iPhones and it's basically every iPhone. And it appears that this list was done at the time of the iPhone 11. So any newer iPhones, I would imagine, would work as well. Now they have a few sample spaces with the iPhones done on iPhones. So you can see the image quality of these iPhones. And it gets the idea across. It's definitely in the shadows. You see a lot of noise and grain. So the quality of the pictures is definitely not as high as the other cameras. But starting out, this is a great option. Now next we have the Rico 360 cameras. The rico has the theta V and the theta z1. And with these 360 cameras, they've also introduced these instead of three sixties as well. So this basically goes in order of quality, image quality. So the instant 3-6 cameras and then the theta v And then the theta z1. Now these you will need some sort of tripod for, but the image quality is really your best bang for your buck, the matter port camera and the Leica camera are thousands of dollars, whereas these, I believe the Ricoh theta z1 tops out at 1000. But everything else is, is maybe around $400 and up. So let's check out a space that they've used with the inset 3-6 1X. And as you can see, the quality is similar to the iPhone really. I don't believe that we've improved upon the quality that much for buying a separate camera. Now let's look at one of the higher end 360 cameras, the, the Rica z1. And as you can see, this has a much cleaner image. And the shadows, we're not getting noise, we're not losing detail. This is really nice. So again, this is the higher end Z1, higher in 360 camera, but still affordable for a professional device that we're using on a commercial basis. Now the theta V is the mid-priced theta. And as you can see, the qualities is very good. This is outdoors, so we're getting a whole lot of light. So this is easier, I would assume for the V indoors, we're gonna see a tiny bit of noise in the shadows outside. It looks really nice. But again, the quality of this is going to be somewhere in the middle between the institute three sixties and then the theta z1. But these are all very good options, especially for starting out. Now we have matter ports camera itself and now these cameras do have the depth scanning as well. So as you can see, it's accurate within 1%, you could actually create very accurate blueprints of a space. So this is much better for any kind of architectural thing. And let's look at this old church. So this is what the pro two. And as you can imagine, this, the high-end camera. And it looks great. It's sharp or it needs to be sharp. There's no noise in the shadows. I mean, this is very nice. It registers the light well. So if you are ready to dive in headfirst, if you already have connections. In the commercial architecture world. This might be the camera that you want. I would recommend if you're starting out and you don't know the business end quite as well. Go for one of the cheaper cameras first. But this camera is incredible quality. Now this camera is also pretty big and cumbersome. So you do need some good tripod support. Now it also will be more difficult to login and logout to places. So instead of maybe being in and out in an hour, hour and a half, it might take a little over two. If you have the money, if you have the connections, if you have the commercial infrastructure setup, this is a incredible option. Now the Laika is the cream of the crop here, it's the most precise point, as you can see, the dimensions within 0.1%. So again, if you're doing any kind of architecture, blueprints, anything like that, any high-end commercial, super professional for large companies, this is what you want. And I believe this goes for around 3 thousand. It looks really nice. Now i was seeing a little bit of noise and the shadows, which is interesting for camera this price. But as you can see, the quality, the sharpness, the the images is extremely nice. Especially we get all these windows, so we're getting a lot of light. So it's much easier to get a good image with a lot of light and a registers through the windows pretty well. So we're seeing outside, which is really nice. Now if we were to go into these more shadowy areas, these darker areas. No, it still looks really nice. It's a nice little event space. So this is the highest end camera currently. And again, if you have the connections, if you have the, the commercial infrastructure and you're ready to hit the ground running. This is a very good option. As you can see, very clean registering the light to dark, not a lot of noise in the shadows. This looks really nice. So these are the Camera options that we have. Again, just starting out. You definitely want to go with one of the more affordable cameras if you're curious about this, but you're not ready to dive in. If you have an iPhone, you're ready to go. So there's no need to spend any money on any of these cameras. If you're just curious about this, if you just want to dip your toes in and see if this is for you. Now, these ins to 360 cameras. I don't know if I would recommend the quality that you get versus an iPhone that's likely in your pocket already. Not a huge difference. The theta z1 is a great bang for your buck camera. And then these professional guys, obviously if you're doing high-end stuff for big businesses, these guys are what you're going to impress clients with when you walk in the door.
4. Supplementary Gear: The first thing you're gonna wanna have is a tripod. Now again, this is for all the cameras except for your iPhone. Your iPhone you don't need a tripod for. And honestly, if you're using a matter port or a Leica, those are heavier cameras and I recommend a more heavy duty tripod for. But if you're using a rico or an instance 360, this is a great option. Now a few things to look for when selecting a tripod. One, you want to select a tripod where the legs can extend at different lengths. And that's because if you go to a house that has stairs, you want to be able to have that tripod go up the stairs if you're using a basic light stand or another type of tripod where all the legs go out to the same length. You're going to have troubles with the stairs and that's gonna give you difficulties in linking the space. So definitely have a tripod that the legs can extend to different links. Now secondly, you want to look at the height of the tripod. The rule of thumb is that the 360 cameras need to be at about eye level, about five foot three or four. This is kind of basic I level averaged between men and women. If the camera itself gives a few inches of height, you might be okay with the tripod that extends to 60 inches. But I recommend having something a little higher to just give yourself a little bit of leeway, especially with any kind of change in elevation or stairs or anything like that. So this tripod, 67 inches, different length legs. This is a great option. And if you even want to use it for your iPhone, it does have a clamp that you can use for smartphones as well. So this is a great little option, affordable. Lot of reviews, a lot of high reviews. So this is a good option. Secondly, I like to use an iPad because of the size. It's just a little bit easier to navigate than an iPhone. It just allows me to see the space a little bit better. Now, on matter ports website, it shows you a list of the iPads that are supported and which ones are not. So the old, old models, the first minis iPad for earlier, not supported. These are the ones that are, I don't know if it's worth spending the extra money for a recommended versus minimum, you're probably getting about the same thing. But whatever you're comfortable with, I have this nice iPad Air two refurbished. It was under $300. And you can use it for other things as well. So this is a really nice addition. Next, it's great to have a carrying case. Now this camera, this lens is the Moneymaker. You don't wanna scratch this guy up. So having it in a safe carrying case is definitely the way to go and these are very affordable. Now within the carrying case, what I do is I like to have one of these microfiber lens cloth around the body of my camera. And these are nice because these are not just normal square lens cloths. These are designed for a camera lens to go inside of. And so basically I have my camera wrapped in one of these lens cloths inside the case so it keeps it safe, it keeps it from scratching, and it's a nice, cheap little setup to protect this, this expensive investment. Now, the worst thing that could happen is you show up to a site and you realize that you don't have the battery life in your camera to make this whole scan happen. And this has happened to me before. And thankfully, I had a power bank. The batteries in the institute, three sixties and the Rico's are notorious for draining very quickly, depending upon the size of the house. Even if I show up with a camera that's fully charged, I might not have enough juice to scan the whole thing. So having a power bank like this is very important. I always bring it to the property with me and even if I don't use it, I have it as a backup. So I definitely, definitely recommend a power bank. And with the power bank, you have to get a cable. So you can either do a USB-C or a, with this one, you know, a more traditional USB. Now, one thing to note about the size of the cable is I like to get a longer cable because the setup that I like to do is I actually like to tape the battery bank to the tripod. I tape it up really well. I wrap it around a few times so it's very secure from there. I have the cable running from the battery bank, the camera and making sure that there's no tension on the cable. I don't want to damage the bank. I don't want to damage the camera. So I will have a battery bank that's taped to my tripod leg here. Again, you want to wrap it up really? Well. You don't want it to slip. And then from there I run the cable to the camera. So just make sure that you have cable size that is going to work for you. And this is everything that I have. So I go from a tripod, an iPad, a case with a lens cloth, and then a battery charger, and subsequent cables and tape. If you're ready to make the shift from exploring this, make having a FUN kind of a side project to doing something where you're actually making money with this in a commercial capacity, you definitely want all of this ancillary gear. You know, it's great if you spend all this money on a matter port Pro to camera. But then if you show up to set and the battery dies, or if you show up to set and don't have a great tripod, it's easy to fall right on your face. And again, if you have a higher end heavier camera on a tripod like this will not suffice. You're gonna have to purchase a more expensive Manfrotto or something like that.
5. Getting Started with the Matterport App: Okay, so now that we've signed up for matter part on our computer, we can dive into our iPad or iPhone and take it from there. So the very first thing you need to do is open up the app store and download the matter port Capture app. So they matter port Capture app is going to be the one with the red matter port logo there. So go ahead and download that. And from there you'll open up the app. Now if you haven't started anything, it'll be blank. If you already have projects in there, it'll show those. And then from there we'll open up the storage and firmware and makes sure that 3D conversion is slid over and turned on. The iPhone and the Rico cameras do not have active depth sensors. And so this needs to be switched on so that they can do their thing. So if you have the high-end matter port camera or the like OK, like a camera. Those will have active depth sensors, but for Rico's and iPhones they will not. So just make sure this is switched on and make sure your firmware is up to date. And then from there, we will connect with the camera. Now if you're using one of the Rico cameras, the z1 or the V, The way to connect to the camera is those cameras actually send out a small Wi-Fi signal. So you'll turn on the camera. And then the Wi-Fi password is actually the serial number on the bottom of the camera. So go ahead and boot up your camera. So once the camera is up and running, you can open up your settings. And in settings go to Wi-Fi. And you'll look at the networks. And you'll see one that says theta with a bunch of letters after it, and you click on that. And your password again is the serial number on the bottom of your camera. This does scare me sometimes when I forget that, I always wonder if I've set a password that I've forgotten. So just keep in mind. Wi-fi password for the theta is on the bottom of the camera. So once you're connected to that Wi-Fi, lets go back to our matter port Capture app. And then from there, go ahead and hit plus. So we are creating a new space. And you can always adjust these details later. So if you just want to give it a one word or two word description so you know what it is and then it'll say your scans will appear here. So if you want to test out a picture, just click on the big circle on the right side. The camera will do its thing. It has all of its settings automatically. They're connected to the matter port app. It will scan the space. And now you'll see something roughly like this that shows the scan of your room there. Now if you want to see the image that it took, you can actually just click on that number one there, that blue number one. And it will show you the 360 photo that I took of your space that it used to create the scan. So you are on your way to get started. And further down the line, we'll go ahead and dive into everything you need to know about the actual scanning process. This was just how to set up your Matterhorn account and link it to the app. And everything moves smoothly.
6. Prep the Location: So before we start the process of scanning the property, once we show up to the location, we need to make sure that the location is prepped. And for these scans, What does that mean? Well, first off, we need to turn on all the lights in the house. The brighter, the better. Now for the windows, I like having the blinds about two-thirds of the way open, so it allows a lot of light through. And we can still see through the windows, but it's not so bright that it overpowers the inside light. And then finally, we want to make sure all the fans are turned off. The shutter speed that these 360 cameras use is not high enough to capture a crisp fan if the fan is on and it just looks a little bit amateur to have the fans blurred out. We wanna make sure that the house is clean, that everything is organized well. Everything is placed well, if there's any sort of trash or clutter or anything like that, that's a non-negotiable that you have to get that taking care of. Now, you can if you want to move clutter from one room to another, so it's out of the sight of the camera. However, it's sometimes easy to accidentally get clutter when you take a picture through a door, These 360 cameras capture everything so you have to make sure that you cover all angles. So definitely take care of clutter if there are little Chomsky's placed on tables, just make sure that they're organized well and they look good for display. But the basics of prepping the location or makes sure everything is clean and everything is bright.
7. The Process of Scanning the Property: Okay, so we've just got to our location. We powered up our camera, we connect it to our iPad, and we prepped or location. So the prepping three things. One, turn all the lights to turn off, all the fans, and then three, make sure the doors are actually open. Pretty fall. So now we're completely prepped and we can go ahead and get started. So we open up our app and to do our first scan, we wanna make sure that we are hiding from the 360 camera. So this is in all directions. So this is what you do. You go hide around the corner, you press the button. It takes the scan, you come back and move it. So you'll be scanning the entire place. And basically what you're trying to do is you're moving the camera about six feet from where it is and make sure that it's in the same line of sight. So if you move at six feet where you're moving it from around a door, that's no good. So there's three different types of photos that you're taking. One, you're taking photos to capture all the space, to just scan the space. This is just for information for the app to build the models. The second one that you're taking is actually spots that people will use to walk through the space. So you might scan, you might scan 50 or 60 times in a house, but you're only using 15 to 20 of those for people to navigate through the walkthrough. So those are the main two types. One is just scanning, get all the, getting all the information. And that's really you want to do that as many times as possible. The second one is just the path that people are taking. So you really only want maybe one or two Hero shots per room. So and you usually want to do those in the corner. Because when you take a shot from the middle of the room, when you go to look at that, the room seems really small. But if you put it all the way in the corner, now you're seeing a wider version of that room. So for those shots, I like putting those in the corners. And then you also wanna make sure that any walkway or doorway you're covering really well. Because at that point this scanner is getting a lot of information there. It's used to seeing one room. And then when it moves to another room, getting so much more information that if you, if you jump ahead too far, it's not gonna be able to connect those points. So anytime you do a doorway or a walkway, you wanna make sure you're only putting it maybe two or three feet. And I'll show you that here in a second. And then the final type of photo that you're taking are beautiful Real Estate photos. So this is after you've done the whole walkthrough, you've got, you've captured the entire space, you have your model. I go through a second time and take photos just with the idea of those still two-dimensional, traditional real estate photos in mind. And now typically the 360 camera for my scanning for the main portion of this. It's about eye level a little lower than I level. If you're a male, if you're a female or shorter, maybe a little above eye level. So really we're hitting at probably this is maybe 5253. It'll be a little bit different for everyone, but I basically put it in my nose and I feel like that's ok. Now when I'm doing those real estate photos, I lower it down to about here to just below my chest. And that way those lower angle photos actually take better photos when you see the ceiling, it makes the space feel bigger. So those more traditional two-dimensional real estate photos are taken at a lower level. So I basically spend an hour, hour and a half walking through your whole place, scanning the entire place at this level. And then I'll go through and pick about six or seven choice spots at a lower level than I'm taking the, the traditional real estate Photos app. So now we've gone ahead and we've scanned one location. So I'm basically going to pick this up and move it somewhere else in the room so it can gather more data. And typically you're going again for corners. You're going for corners. You move it, you hide, you hit the button. And you're basically referencing the app the whole time. So anytime you're still seeing black dark space in a corner of that room, it doesn't have that information yet. And so I'm just doing this in my 700 square foot apartment. And so for me, you know, maybe three or four, maybe five scans in this space is going to be fine. Again, hit all the corners. And as you can notice on the app, it will look a little scattered and frantic in certain points. Once you save the scan and export it and upload it to the cloud, matter port does a really good job of combining it all together and making it look a lot smoother than it currently looks. So if it looks really weird and wonky right now on your iPad, that's totally fine. But again, the more scans you get, the more information you're giving to the program. And so if it does have something in space there, but it does look a little jittery and a little off. Feel free to just add another scan to it. Now, a really good spot for a scan is where the camera filming me currently is. I'll go ahead and try to put one back there, but it's going to look and feel a little strange. So again, you want to have one pass for scanning. And then you want to have in mind also where do you want to be standing as a viewer to enjoy the space? And as you might notice, this drains the battery incredibly fast. I did start with the pretty low battery, only about 30%, but we're already down below 20%. And it's just been about five minutes or so. So you definitely want to make sure that you have that power bank available to you. If I think I've done a good job of scanning my location. And I want to go ahead and get a angle for a nice traditional 2D real estate photo. I can go ahead and do that. And so I look at the space and I think that this kind of living room area with the wood wall here might be a good spot. Now it takes these fairly wide. I'm gonna go ahead and position myself here. And remember, for these you go head and lower it down. So I recommend doing this as a completely separate past. So you've done one pass to scan, the second pass as the real, traditional real estate photos. And that's just because you don't want to be raising and lowering the tripod all the time. And then go ahead and line it up. So one lens is facing a completely both lenses pretty much take the same photo, so don't worry about which lens. And for this one, since it's just a traditional 2D, if you want, you can still stand in the space. So you basically do this process for every single room in the house, both first four ands seconds for it to get to a second floor at the bottom of the app in the bottom right-hand corner, you can click on layers and then you can go ahead and add a new floor. So that's how you have a stacked floor there. Okay, so real quick, let's cover doorways and walkways. Now this is where the camera might actually get lost and connecting the spaces. And so a best practice is basically take one photo on one side of the doorway, try and take one directly in the middle and then take one on the other side. And they're just allows the camera to connect the spaces. It's also a good idea to keep the camera lens face the same way. So if you have a pointed this way, you don't want to rotate it, to move it again. It can still work when you rotate it, but if it's more inlined, it'll, it'll register it a little bit better. So let's go ahead and try that. And when you're going through doorways and other thing to note is that it might be a little harder to find a spot to hide. So we've done one spot on the first side of the room that we've already taken. All the scans of taking a little bit of time aligning. This was I was talking about that it can't have trouble. Okay. Great. So it has those new scans. So now we're going to bring it in to the middle here so it's able to get both sides. And so this scan right here is a good example of a scan. That's just, just, we're just taking this picture for the app to get more information. So we probably wouldn't use all three of these in the walk-through would use either one or two, but we wouldn't use all three, especially in such a closed space together. Okay? And then now third, we take this one and this introduces more into the new space. And then from here, we would repeat the same process. We'd cover the room. And, you know, about three scans PER small room, as long as it's just kind of a open basic room is totally fine. We kinda Hill the corners mostly and then move on. So a basic 1500 square foot house is probably going to be about 50 scans or so. And again, remember three types of scans. One, just to get information to build the model, to used as the walkthrough that also gives you the information, and those are about eye level. And then a third scan, once you have completely gone through, lower it down and get nice traditional real estate shots.
8. Matterport account and website interface: So real quick, I just wanna show you guys how matter port lays out all of your project information. So this is not editing the project, this is just kind of the layout of all the information. So you have a page that looks like this. It has divided up into media details, statistics, and apps. And on the media tab it starts with the showcase. So the showcase is your interactive showcase here that you can switch between doll house, you can look at the floor plan. You can interact with the 3D space. So this is actually kind of the interactive VR walkthrough that you would give to clients. So this is kind of a view of that. From there, you can look at your photos that you've taken and you can organize the photos there. You click on them and download them if you want, rename them, whatever you need to do here. So this is all your photos in one space and then your videos under that. Now these videos are auto created and there are only four ADP, so they're not high-quality. I don't really recommend doing much with the videos here, really the showcase and the photos are what you want to be focused on. From there, you'd go to the Details tab and the details just tells you everything about the property. So when you're working with builders or agents, you can have their company name, website, more contact information here you can put in a specific address and that address can be full, fully visible. Or you can just have the city and state. You can also attach MLS listings to these projects, which is really nice. And then the player options you can essentially turn on and off VR sharing. And then the matter port labs is that place for beta testing and certain features that are not fully approved yet, but might be interesting from the Details tab we can go to statistics. It just tells us how many impressions and visits we've gotten. We can see the apps. So we can publish this to Google Street View, realtor or to VRBO or HomeAway. And this is especially important when doing any kind of commercial project. These are offerings that you can charge for that are very seamless to integrate. And then when you're ready to share the project with the client, you can click on share here. You can get a shareable link that either anyone can view private only to me or private with a password, depending on how you want to share.
9. Troubleshooting: So let's quickly talk about troubleshooting Waller scanning our property. This more often than not happens in hallways and doorways. We either get an error message that says the app couldn't connect the image to the previous images. Or sometimes the matter port app will place the scan in a different room altogether. Now it is always a better idea to fix the problem right then and there than try to do it later on the matter port app at home. So go ahead and erase the scan that you just took that it was having troubles with and move the camera a little closer to the place of the previous scan. Continue scanning and moving the camera until you find a location that works out. Now if all fails and it's still having trouble reading the scan, you can continue with the walkthrough, but just know that when you're bringing this into your app later, I've sometimes had problems with AP thinking that there are walls there when there aren't, especially in doorways and hallways. So sometimes the points won't connect Exactly. So what's always less headache if you do it right then and there on the spot. Another approach is trying to enter that space from another door. And if the room has two entrances and one entrance is giving a trouble, try to start the scans from the other entrance. Windows and mirrors sometimes trick the camera as well. So if you have trouble filming these, again, just adjust the camera closer to the previous scan and continue from there. It's always a good idea to have too many scans than not enough.
10. The Post Process - Starting with Mobile: So once you have captured all of your scans, the post-process of how you turn all these 3-6 photos into this interactive VR model. The post-processing is about to fold. The first one is on your iPad or iPhone, and then the second one is actually on the computer. You can dive in a little bit deeper there. And so just to show you guys on the iPad here, scanned this whole property. And before I hit Upload, there's a few things that I need to do. Now in the bottom right-hand corner, there is this little line in-between the photo and the little stack there. And when I click on this line here, I can go ahead and add all windows and all mirrors. And as you can see, I've already done this on this property. And just to show you guys how it works, I can click on window here and I can just click anywhere and I can stretch it out as wide as I need it to be. And I can just add it like that. So it's pretty simple. You can rotate around and as long as you're pretty close, it doesn't have to be completely spot on, then that's okay. And if you want to delete these guys, just double-click on them and delete. It's easy as that. So this is to allow the cameras to register the light in a good way. And then also of course, mirrors are going to trip up these cameras and make them think that there's maybe more rooms and there actually are. So go ahead and spend a little bit time, add all the mirrors and add all of the windows. And if you want to take a room out, you can use that little trim, the little scissor. I did a property that had a room that was entirely filled with a bunch of clutter and junk. And because it was just for a friend showing them how this app worked, I went ahead and just cut that room out of the property so that's easy to do as well. So once you've added all the mirrors, you've added all the windows, you wanna go up to the right, top right, and hit upload. And then from there it will take these scans and upload them to the metaphor cloud. And then you can jump on your computer and continue the post-process. There.
11. The Post Process - Viewing Modes: So before we dive into the controls and everything that we can edit on the right side here. I'm going to show you guys just a few different ways that you can view the location. So right now, we're viewing it in this very interactive immersive sort of way. But if we click this floor plan, now are seeing it from a bird's eye view. And this is particularly helpful in architecture or anything like that. So now we can see the space from a bird's eye view. And this is kind of nice. We can actually save this as a photo later on. We can take it into Photoshop, clean it up a little bit. As you can see, it registers fans in kind of a funny way. And then we can give the blueprint as part of our deliverable. So that's kind of nice. We can also view this as a dollhouse. So the doll house, we can interact with it here. And as you can see, some of the edges and everything, not super clean. But this is a fun, interactive way to view your property, which is kind of specific to matter port. Not a whole lot of other companies allow you to view your property and this doll house way. And then we can go to the Mesh. And now suddenly we're in it. And if we click on Mesh again, it kind of shows a less polished kind of way. This is kind of what the software sees before. It interprets it as a nicer way. So we want to explore the 3D space is this little guy. And now suddenly it looks nice. So that's just a few ways for you to view the property here by using these left guys, bottom-left corner.
12. The Post Process - Finishing with Desktop: So once you have scanned your space, we've gone in the app, you've cleaned it up, you've added the windows and the mirrors and everything like that. You've uploaded it. Now you go to your computer and you sign into matter port, and you can come down here to latest edits are newest spaces until you see your project, you go ahead and click on your project and it opens it up a bit like this. Now from here, let's go ahead and jump into editing as we need to edit what we've just done. Okay, so the first thing that you do once you open up a project is you want to select which of the scans you'll be seeing in the walkthrough and which ones you won't. So to do that, let's click on 3D scans. And then as you can see in this property, we have 47 scans that we'll need to go through now. And now what I did on this property that I do with all my properties is I end on those traditional real estate photos. So I know that everything from around scan 38 or 39 down, I will not be using. So real quick, I'm just going to go through and see where I lowered the camera. And it looks like scan 40, the first one that I lowered the camera. And so I'm going to disable all of these. Now later when I go to take a picture from them, I'll have to turn them back on to take a picture. But we'll worry about that a little later. Right here, as you can see, scan 2839 are essentially the same place. And what you're going to do is you basically want your corners hit like this. 38 is better than this one. This one is in the middle of the room a little bit now, this is my starting location, so I can't disable it for now. So I know that 30 it will be good. So for now, why don't I just make 38 the starting location? Just temporarily. And now I can turn off one. So I've turned off one. If I were to go to this number two over here, as you can see, the space doesn't look quite as big because it's in the center of the room. But if I go to 38 over here, now suddenly this angle makes it seem like wide, very spacious. So when we're looking at the visuals, it's always a good idea to place them in the corners versus in the center of the room. We also want to place them where the room changes, where it, where hallways are, were doorways are. So if we go over here, we can now move down or hallway and we have a stop to turn to the bathroom. You know, this 13 might not be necessary, but I like having it at the entrance as well. To each room. We can come in here and see the space due on the corner. Again, the corners are nice because it makes everything feel spacious. Here were either six or 29. It appears. These are essentially the same scan. Now, one was with the door open into the fenced in patio. Now for this go around, I'm actually not going to worry about the Princeton patio. So I'm going to stick with six and for 29 I'm going to disable. So you're basically going to go through the entire place. And you're going to select which scans are important to view and which aren't. As you can see down this hallway, We have a lot 816. Neither of them do too much other than give more information to the software. So I'm going to disable those. And so he spend a little bit of time on which ones you want enabled and which ones you want disabled. And if you look at it from the bird's eye view here, it's a little bit easier to decide. 19 probably don't need. So the bird's eye view will help you a little bit. So that's the very first step you do once you open up your project. Now, I'm just gonna go over everything on the right-hand side for you guys so we understand how this works. So first off, very first one is the start location. And the start location is also going to be the thumbnail that you'll be using for your property. And so a lot of times, it makes sense, at least logically, to have your Start Location Be the front door. Now, if I was to use this space, the start location would be this. Right? This is not really enticing. If you show a client, this is, this is the first thing they see, right? This is the thumbnail. And they see this, they're gonna be like, oh, this isn't as interesting as I thought it was going to be. So I always set my starting location to an angle that shows off the best feature and the house, the most interesting feature in the house. And this very open, white clean space. These blue cabinets with the stove and everything like this. This is, this is interesting. And so I would set this to be the start location. Once you get the exact angle you want, you go ahead and set it, and then click Set. And now it's your start location, it's your thumbnail. So once we set our thumbnail, if we go to 3D scans, this guy on the right, we can see which of these scans were able to actually view when we want to play it for people, when we want people to interact with the location and which scans are not able to view. Now if we want to take a photo, that's how we do it over here. So we set the angle that we want and then we click on a photo. And then from there we can scale in or scale out on the photo. And it does a pretty good job of having these at the percentage you want. I mean, you could go out to 80 or so to make it even feel wider. But if you go any further than that, you're clearly cheating the space. And people are, are gonna be upset once they show up to the space and realize that it's not as massive as it appears in these fisheye angles. So I, you know, I think a 100 is a good practice. Again, I wouldn't go any. I mean, really 85 maybe I wouldn't go much wider than 85 or so. If you want, you can zoom in and you're gonna start your losing resolution. The image doesn't look quite as good either. So it does a pretty good job just at a 100. And then from there, you can just click here and take your picture. And it'll save that for later. And just to show you guys where those photos end up going on the main page of your property here you have the showcase, the photos, and the videos. So in the photos here, I have. As you can see, photos of the kitchen. I've also taken photos of the dollhouse view, of the blueprint view, and interesting spaces. So these are deliverables that I could give to the client as well. Nice standard real estate photos that this camera and the software does an incredible job at registering. It balances all the light temperature and just as a good job of producing high-quality real estate photos. So that's some of the functionality in the photos there. Now we can also add labels. So this is just something for you to interact with in the space. Now if you want to highlight the fact that maybe this place has a smart thermostat. Or you want to highlight the fact that these lights can change color. This AC unit is energy saving, just certain things you want to highlight about the space. You can also take measurements in the space. And when you want to do a measurement, it's always a good idea to get in somewhere in the space where you can see all the corners. If I wanted to measure this room, I could go in a corner here and now I can click measurements. And I could grab the measurement of this room. Check when you're done. And look at that. We can now see the dimensions of this bedroom. 139 by 115 for a highlight reel. That's essentially kind of a nice little slide show. So if people don't really have the time or desire to interact like a walk-through, you can just hit all the interesting parts. So you can add maybe one image of each room to your highlight and make a nice little slide show that way that we could add this view to our highlight. It saves him here. This nice wide room. Save this to the highlight. Maybe go to this bedroom over here, just see a sample bedroom. Now, this space has a little screen in porch area that I had difficulty connecting. So I had this but it does not connect, but this is something that we will want to have on our highlight reel here. So we add here. And now if someone wants to see the property, there's a nice little highlight reel that kinda pans around. It's still interactive, it's still moves. But it's a quick way to kind of see the space. And what it has to offer. Now on this bottom guy here, we can see our VR path. And depending on how accurate the scans are, how much trouble you had doing the scans. This shows you how everything is connected. So these white dots are parts of the main scan and this is how they are connected. So when you do an auto walk through it, we'll use these paths. Now as you can see, during this hallway, I had trouble connecting these guys. And so this is not connected, but since there's still white, this still means that are active in that path. These guys here in the screen in porch, because this is broken because of there was a door here. These are not included in that walk-through path, which is a bummer. If I was doing this for a paying client, I would have to go in and redo this. So as you can see, there was a door here. So I had trouble connecting the spaces.
13. Pricing: So let's talk about pricing now. And this is my company's website right here. And as you can see, the pricing that we have starting out for homes to 25 communities, apartment complexes, 875 and then businesses 1200. Now, it's important to note also that these businesses we target a larger businesses. We don't target small mom and pop coffee shop type of businesses. If that were the case, we would probably reduce the starting price. So here's a more in-depth look at our pricing structure. And when it comes to pricing these tours, it's really important to think of the duration that the client will be using these files, right? If if we're doing just straight up homes buying and selling real estate type of stuff. We're typically looking in less than one month of this file being in use before the home gets bought or sold. Now if we're talking about short-term rentals such as VRBO, Airbnb. We're talking about apartment communities or businesses. We're typically talking about a longer term duration. And so that's why I think it's very important to be upfront with their client. Right now. Our deliverables include the 3d2 or file and six months of matter port hosting. So since you are the one paying for the matter for hosting, you need to be very clear to let your client know how long these files will be in use at the end of the six months, it's now on them to decide how they want to progress. So the way that we've broken up our homes and short-term rentals is we have a minimum base price of 225, but we definitely have it tied to square feet here. And that's just to prevent being in a situation where we show up and the houses 4 thousand square foot, and suddenly we're only making 200 bucks off of it. Now, $225 for a day's work of professional labor is not a ton of money. However, when you find yourself building relationships with these realtors, with these builders, you can find yourself in a situation where you're doing two, possibly three of these a day and for you to spend an hour and a half at each location, just listening to music or a podcast. As you kind of leisurely do this work. If you're talking about 400 to six hundred and seven hundred dollars a day for that kind of work. That's a great situation to be in. And we also do like to show our clients what other options are available. So even though the base prices to twenty-five twenty five dollars to published a verbal or a realtor when it is a very simple step of the process. But it is kind of an added value to your client. Definitely offer that. And then we also have oculus headset that we run out for $35. And this is in a situation that's a little bit more intimate when the client has like a one-on-one meeting with a prospective buyer, and they want to show them in a very tangible way the space, the VR headset rental is a great option, especially because these headsets cost maybe $200 and you're reading about for 35 a pop. So that's a good situation. And we also do a handful of other types of photography and videography. And honestly most of the time the clients are just looking for these VR tours. But every once in awhile they will add an additional photography package or something like that. So if you have this ability, if you have a drone, if you have this Capability. You definitely want to at least put it out there and it's not going to hurt you to put it out there and to show your client that you do offer more than just the 3D tours. And then we do a 10% off bulk pricing. And that's just to kind of help build relationships to help expand the work. If the client realizes they can get a kind of a better bang for the buck by doing it on a, a higher volume basis. That definitely helps. So I, I definitely advise having some kind of bulk pricing in there. So that's homes and short-term rentals. Or we've definitely debated breaking these out into two different sections, especially because the short-term rental is something that they do want on a long-term. So we've considered that, I think that conversation is absolutely valid, but as it stands now we've, we've still clump them together. So moving on to communities. This, these are apartment complexes with dozens and dozens of units. And so we have priced this at 875. And this includes one model unit, one shared space, and one additional space. So you're looking at basically three different spaces. It's priced at this because three different spaces is kind of all you can do in a day. You can maybe do a fourth if you timed it, right. So we did three and a day for about 900 bucks. We feel like that is a fair price. We also add the additional seventy-five dollars to publish to Google Street View verbal or realtor. And as you can see, it's three times what it would be for home. And that's just because you want to know your audience. And these apartment complexes have money. Whereas a lot of times these people are individual individuals versus a beer company. So we're just increase that because we know that they have money. And then same with all the additional photography packages. And then we've also added for an additional $175, you can scan additional spaces. So that's kinda nice. It's less than the 225 and it allows them to scale up there. We've done a twelv percent off bulk pricing. And this is kind of where we're at for our apartment complexes. And then we have businesses. And like I said before, this is definitely targeting larger businesses. This is not for your mom and pop, restaurant or a coffee shop. If you're in that situation, I definitely recommend scaling down because those are just normal people. Whereas we have a base price of $1200. And that's for businesses that make it a good chunk of change. And this amount of money is not a big deal to them. So we definitely have this tied to square feet. And that's just because you don't want to show up to a giant warehouse where you're supposed to be scanning and get stuck with a set price. So $1200 is the minimum base, and then we have it priced at $0.20 per square foot. So this is not $0.20 per square foot on top of the 1200. It basically starts at 1200 and then I guess what is that? 6 thousand maybe once you get over 6 thousand square feet, then it would start start increasing. And then we have the same kind of thing published to Street View verbal realtor. We have an aerial photography package, a $1200 photography package, and then a custom video package. So again, this is kinda priced for a urban area that is on the more expensive side. This is Austin, Texas that is continuing to grow. If you're living in the suburbs, if you're living in a place that is not experiencing rapid population growth, you probably want to scale these prices down a little bit and just kind of see what works for you. But this at least works as a jumping off point. You can see the tiered approach that we have, as well as the additional offerings that we provide.
14. Networking: I think with VR Tours, it's important to think what your possible clients could be. And with this type of work, you're actually covering a lot of bases. So one approach that you could do to network and try to find clients is to reach out to already established real estate photography companies. If people have successful real estate photography companies, whether they're doing aerial photography or real estate videography. And they don't offer VR tours yet. If you can show them that you can create a successful product, they already know all the people in the real estate world that are looking for photos, videos, and walkthroughs. So this is a good approach, especially initially, if you don't have any contacts in the real estate world. So you can look for local real estate photography companies. You can even go on Indeed and look for local companies that are looking to hire a real estate photographers. You can reach out to them and you can say, well, I'm not a real estate photographer. I do offer a VR tour experience and that might be something of use to you. Would you like to partner? So going the photography route is very viable. Another route is the real estate agent route. Real estate agents need real estate photography. And if you're able to convince them that a VR, a walkthrough will add value to their company, then you can strike a partnership there. There's also going the builder round. And especially if you have a 360 camera that has depth perception. If you have one of the higher end 3-6 cameras, this is more useful in the architecture world. So reaching out to builders and architectural firms might be an option as well. Now when you're first starting out, you definitely will have to build up a portfolio. So you'll have to get at least three or four samples under your belt. And these are basically tours that you're doing of friends, houses, of relatives, houses. You're not charging, and you're just trying to build your portfolio, you definitely have to spend a little bit of time doing that before you can successfully when any business. And besides the umbrellas of photography, real estate, and architecture. It's also possible to send out some cold emails to businesses, to apartment complexes. Maybe even two people on Airbnb or VRBO. Go on Airbnb or VRBO. Look at properties nearby that are renting out for a lot of money. And these people most likely have the money to spend on a VR2 or the thing with cold calls and cold emails are that your success rate is much lower, but it definitely is a good way to get your foot in the door and network and start building a business there. But just note that if you only send out four or five emails, you're probably not going to win any business. We're talking sending a 100 emails out and maybe, you know, five of them work out for you. But I think to sum up, the most important thing is to build a portfolio. And then from there, slowly one by one, you'll start gaining clients.
15. Oculus VR Headset: I do recommend picking up an oculus headset. Viewing the VR tours on the oculus is a different experience than watching them on a computer. When a real estate agent can hand a potential buyer a VR headset and they put it on and suddenly they are in the space. They're standing up and they feel like they're actually moving through. It's, it's a very tangible process. That's, is a lot more effective than just watching these tours on a computer screen and clicking through. So I would definitely consider picking up a headset.
16. Metareal Alternative: So matter port is definitely the brand name of the VR2 lawyers. But I did want to show you guys another option that is pretty good, that rivals matter port has a lot of the same functionality and it's just a different pricing structure essentially. And for some projects this is the way I go for other projects, I stick with matter port. One thing I do love about this company matter real is that their customer service is excellence. I think their audience is still fairly small and so they're very quick to respond. They have definitely fixed some of my projects that have had issues. And so the customer service, it is much better than on the matter port front. So what's nice about meta real is that matter port charges, monthly fees for cloud storage. And with meta real, you can pay a one time fee for your model. And what that means is if you are working for a business, if you're working for a short-term rental, something where you need the model up for months and months. And it's not just a buy and sell real estate situation. Meta real is a very good option. So just real quick, this is one of my projects here. And let's see, I believe I go here. And suddenly we're in the interactive tour. So similar space that we saw before. This is the meta real version and not the matter port version. So some of the creative advantages for doing material is the first one. You can actually add your logo underneath the camera. Or as matter, porn is just going to kind of be blurred out. Whereas material you can add your logo here. That's pretty nice. Another couple of things are this dollhouse view, as you can see, is really sharp matter port. There's a lot of like fragmenting around the edges here. But the dollhouse view and met a real, is definitely a superior product here at the walls. Nice and crisp. Everything is straight lines. So this actually is a better doll house than matter port. Now currently met a real and matter pour or kind of the only two companies out there that are doing the doll house. And I do think that material does a better job of it. Another nice thing with Meriel is that they actually give you a floor plan here. And so with dimensions. And so this is, again, this is really nice for architecture or anything like that. You see specific dimensions. And then the interaction here is a little bit nicer. So you can build floor plans with matter port, and depending on your camera, you'll get better results. But again, I'm using the Ricoh theta and that is not have 3D depth perception. But the material team is able to, I don't know if it's outsourcing, I don't know if it's deep learning. I'm not quite sure what the technology is behind it, but they're able to create these blueprints with very accurate dimensions. So here's how they divide their pricing up. Now, I am on the free version here, the creator version. So I pay 0 a month, but I pay $4 per scan. And so what that means is if I'm in a situation like this where I've done five scans in the location that this model here cost me $20. So this cost me $20. And it's a onetime fee. I don't have to spend any money hosting. So with matter poor, we're looking at $10 a month for just five locations. But once you scale up your business, you're going to need more than just five there. So this is definitely a great option. Anytime you are scanning a place, that longevity is key. If you're scanning it for a business that wants to use it for six to nine months. If you're scanning it for a short-term rental or anything like that, this approach is much more cost effective. Now, again, I do the free no dollars a month for scans. If you scaled your business up very large, you could be paying $10 or $40 a month and it would cause less per scan. But because I use matter port for half my stuff and the material for half my stuff. I just use it for these $4 scan onetime fee things. So again, this costs me $20 and I only did five scans. So instead of spending two hours doing the matter port version, I would be in and out in ten minutes, which is pretty crazy. So if you weren't a situation where time was valuable, if you did have a day where you had, your may be overwhelmed by the amount that you are responsible to capture. Going the metal real route definitely saves you time and in the long run saves you money. So I use both. And it's just kind of whatever the project calls for. If it's a short-term real estate buy and sell thing, then I usually use matter port. And if it's a longer duration that I would be concerned about the hosting costs. Going this route is definitely worth it.
Marshall Rimmer, Filmmaker
