Hi,

    If you're new to creating 360° photo spheres or partial panoramas, welcome. This tutorial will be brief and mostly consist of instructions for how to use this website.

New Updates!  March 23, 2024

I added some nice improvements to the service. These are the highlights.

• You can now upload regular photos to include in a tagged collection.
• You can hot spot from a 360 to a photo and there will be a back button to return to the same pitch and yaw for a gallery style navigation.
• I have better support for partial 360s or cylindrical panoramas. It will pad the remaining space with an estimated color.

Enjoy!

Sections

1. How to create a 360° photo sphere panorama.
2. How to share a single image with information hot spots.
3. How to share multiple images together with navigation hot spots (a tour).
4. Some other useful settings.
5. How to embed it in an existing page.

Let's get started.

1. How to create a 360° photo sphere panorama.

I would identify 3 ways to create these unique images.

1. The hardest of which is to use a regular digital camera and have a tripod setup to rotate the camera while maintaining the proper center to prevent a parallax effect. To sum this up, it is very difficult to get good results with the software the combines these images, unless you have almost zero parallax effect. For the casual user I wouldn't recommend this approach, but if you are interested search the internet for "creating a 360 with Hugin". Also you'll need to create a lens calibration file for your camera.
2. The method I use most right now, because I'm cheap and have a large family to support is the Camera app on my Google Pixel phone. Sadly, Google has discontinued this feature in their latest Pixel 8 model. If you currently have an older Pixel phone, go to the Camera app and select Photo Sphere. This is really easy, works great outside, and you can complete the shot and upload to this site while out in field if you want. This method doesn't work as well indoors do to the parallax issue mentioned in the camera method.
3. Then there is the easiest method these days if you have a little money to spend. You can buy a 360° camera starting as cheap as $125 for a old Samsung or you can spend $300+ for an Insta360 or a Ricoh Theta. I haven't used any of these, so I can't make a recommendation. If money was no option, I'd probably grab one that was closer to the 8k pixel mark than 4k. But currently with this site I'm only providing 4k image hosting.

2. How to share a single image with information hot spots.

Now to the fun and easy part if you have an image ready to go. If not, you can uploading any image you have to play with.

1. Go to 360.4ye.org/inve and sign in with a Google account. Sorry if you don't have a Google account. Later I plan to add other authentication methods, but for now it's Google accounts.
2. Once you've logged in you're ready to add your 360° photo sphere panorama image. While the Scene Title and Display Order fields are optional, I would try to give it a nice title. The image should be of the type equirectangular for this service to use it. Select Choose Image and find a file to upload. Click Submit to finish.
3. At this point, if all you wanted is a place to host your image. You're all done. A URL for sharing with others is provided in the SHARED LOCATIONS section. This location will not change while the image is hosted.
4. But lets make some information hot spots before we finish this. To do that, below the panorama viewing box we have the HOT SPOTS section. Click on the link that says Scene Information. A circle with an "i" will show on the panorama viewer. Now you can drag the panorama viewer to center the "i" spot where you'd like to place it. Once you find a nice spot, type some text in the Information Text box, and click Save Settings. Now you have your first hot spot. Add as many as you'd like. There is a Delete link for each hot spot in the HOT SPOTS section if you'd like to remove any. While additions show immediately, deletions won't remove until you reload the viewer.

3. How to share multiple images together with navigation hot spots (a tour).

Now that you've added an image, go ahead and add a second one. Let's link them together like it's a tour.

1. First thing to do is to tag your images with a common tag so that we know they are grouped. You can do this by clicking the Add Tag link on one of your images. Type a good group name for the images and click Submit.
2. Now go to a second image and do the same thing, but this time select the group name you already created and Submit. Now you have a group of 360° photo sphere panoramas that can be viewed together. The tagged images have an additional URL in the SHARED LOCATIONS section that will remain unless you delete the parent tag or delete the tag association listed in SHARED LOCATIONS.
3. At this point you can share the tag group URL. If you want to navigate between images with a hot spot you can create those by clicking the Scene Navigation link in the HOTS SPOTS section. Select a Group tag. Then select a Scene title you want to navigate to. This is why your images should have a Scene Title at a minimum. Select the icon you'd like to see as the hot spot. Now the final step is to set the position of entry into the target scene. When selecting a scene, the pitch and yaw settings default to that scene's initial view. You can now scroll up or down the page looking for the target scene. When you locate it, move the scene to the view you'd like for entry and go back to your scene navigation settings and click Get Target View. Now the pitch and yaw should have numbers that correlate to the other scenes view. To finish, click the Save Settings link.
   

4. Some other useful settings.

To edit the items listed in settings and the scene title, click Edit Settings. You can now edit the text in the blue boxes.

• Order - This number is the display order of the tagged group.
• Rotation - This number is the initial rotation speed if any. 0 is no rotation. A negative value turns to the right. A positive value turns to the left.
• Pitch - This floating number is the vertical angle of the initial view.
• Yaw - This floating number is the horizontal direction you are facing.
• H-FOV - This floating number is the horizontal field of view in degrees.

The Save Settings link will commit the changes. If you just want to change the Initial View section of SETTINGS to the current view, just click the Save as Initial View link and you don't have to click Edit Settings first.

5. How to embed it in an existing page.

If you'd like to embed any of these in an existing page you can use this code with one of the SHARE LOCATIONS in the src property of the iframe.

Well, I hope that helps you get started. Also, the primary intent for this website is to share the word of God through a free service. Have fun sharing your creations and sharing God's word.