Scene Properties Background Images

hvaughan-2540 · March 17, 2020

Has anyone got any advice about the use of scene properties background images. Alot of scenes will use 360 images or videos direct from the 360 cameras but on menu screens this may not apply and I'm wondering how to create equirectangular images.

If I create a normal flat 2D image in Photoshop, save as a jpg and import the image isn't a true 360 image.

t_johnb · March 17, 2020

Creating equirectangular images generally requires some knowledge of a 3D platform like 3DS Max or Maya. Microsoft has a new (free!) program, Sketch 360, which might be worth looking at.

However the simplest option is likely using Stock 360 photos from your favorite stock photo site, such as:

Adobe

https://stock.adobe.com/search?load_type=search&native_visual_search=&similar_content_id=&is_recent_search=&search_type=usertyped&k=equirectangular

iStockPhoto

https://www.istockphoto.com/photos/equirectangular?phrase=equirectangular&sort=mostpopular

or 360 cities:

https://www.360cities.net/

There's lots of options out there.

hvaughan-2540 · October 30, 2020

Is there a way of adding a counter to track how many scenes a user has visited? For example I have a floor plan menu scene with 5 buttons, linking to 5 different rooms. At the top I want to display some text saying 'Rooms visited: x/5'.

I can easily add a counter variable and every time a floor plan room hotspot is clicked increment, but the problem I have is the rooms are interlinked. So users can bypass the menu to navigate. They can click room 1 hotspot then go to all of the rooms and when they return to the menu it displays 'Rooms visited: 1/5' when it should read 'Rooms visited: 5/5'.

I tried using the inbuilt 'HasBeenVisited' condition but it doesn't work.

t_johnb · October 30, 2020

I would think you could use an action on the "On Show" trigger for each scene to increment the value for a counter variable. As you enter each room, you increment the variable.

If you allow users to go into scenes more than once, you'll need to also put in a check to not increment the counter if the scene has already been counted, likely by using a variable for each scene. This way you could dynamically show the count as it was going. Kind of like how in the Office Safety example (in the public area) we count the number of questions that has been answered and show it to the user at all times.

If you just need to show the number at the end of the sequence, you could use the "Has been visited" check, but use it once when the number of scenes is being calculated. Basically it would be a single set of actions on either the scene "On Show" or on some action that will show the count.

Set the count to zero
Increment the count if scene 1 has been visited
Increment the count if scene 2 has been visited
Increment the count if scene 3 has been visited
Increment the count if scene 4 has been visited
Increment the count if scene 5 has been visited
Display the count of scenes

hvaughan-2540 · October 30, 2020

Thanks, I've got it working. I created 16 room visited variables. On show for each scene I set to 1. On the menu page I cleared the totalvisited variable and then checked if each room visited and incremented if it equaled 1. The actions area now has 50 actions in!

carlfink · November 2, 2020

Hey, John: how would you display the count? I can't find any way to display the contents of a variable.

Is there a list of "system" or reserved variables? I might find it useful to know the current time of a scene (say, "5 seconds from start").

johnb · November 16, 2020

Variables are displayed and/or used anywhere you use text by using variable substitution, which is done just by using the name of the variable enclosed by the percent sign. Just use %name of variable% anywhere in your text and that will be substituted with the variable. You can use it for info cards, questions, even setting other variables.

You can watch this CenarioVR help video for more information about using variables: