Welcome to Learning to Make Panoramas and Object Movies

Apple QuickTime VR Authoring Studio software allows you to quickly and easily create 3-D panoramas and object movies from almost any type of photograph. Both can be fully interactive through the use of "hotspots" to link the user to other types of multimedia within or outside the current web site.

Whether taken with a digital camera or a point and shot, film-based camera, the photos can be quickly "stitched" together to create an incredible 3-D panoramic movie.

The following panorama was made using a set of 16 still photographs which were taken in a 360 degree sequence and then "stitched" together using the "Panorama Stitcher" in the Apple QuickTime VR Authoring Studio.

A QuickTime plug-in is required and comes bundled with newer browser software. If you are using an older version of a browser software, download the newest version of the plug-in from QuickTime's download page for no charge.

Place your cursor in the middle of the panorama and hold your mouse button down. Dragging the mouse to the left or the right allows you to pan through the entire panorama and back to the starting point. Moving the cursor up or down allows you to pan towards the top or bottom of the panorama.

In addition, you may zoom in or out to examine any one point in detail. This can be done by placing your cursor on the plus key to zoom in or the minus key to zoom out and holding down the mouse button.

Object Movies

So how are object movies different from panoramas? One is in the way the photographs are taken. For panoramas, the camera is rotated and a picture is shot at each stop or location. With object movies, the object which is being photographed is moved either by hand or on a turntable type mechanism and a picture is shot each time the turntable is stopped. This gives the 3-dimensional feeling when viewing an object. As you look at and interact with an object you feel as if you are actually manipulating and viewing the object from each angle.

Apple QuickTime VR Authoring Studio software also has the capabilities to construct scenes.

• Scene Maker:

  Interconnects panoramas and object movies to create a scene.

  An example of a scene can be found on the Storage section of the Digital Cameras module. This scene combines a panorama, object movies and links or hot spots which lead to web pages that contain additional information. Use the back button on your browser window to return to this page after viewing the sample scene.