NewUser :S -Need help setting up 1st tour

OK, I'm hoping that, thought I am a new user, I can get some assistance starting my Vt business. I've got the Studio 2005 version. Yesterday I was able to stitch succesfully my 1st pano after figuring out how important was the nodal point setup for picture taking. Before that, nothing was coming up. Then, I changed it to cylindrical & saved it as PSD, edited the floor and ceiling adding a logo. Saved it as JPG, changed back to spherical in Pano and saved it. Preview looks fine.

Now, in TW 1.3, I have followed all the steps from the manual to create a simple tour, but on preview, I am just getting the skin image, with no pictures or my spherical image from Panoweaver. Now, If I use a different sherical image from sample list, it runs fine on preview. WHAT AM I MISSING?

1.-Choose skin; 2.-Manage Panel (imported my sheric image and a random still too). 3.-Scene Panel (left at default settings) 4.-Hotspots (placed a sound hotspot anywere on image). 5.-Movie Panel (left default Slideshow).

Again, please help me out.

G'day spacefossil12,

Mate, the first thing is we need to back up a little and get a full understanding of what you are using and how.

• What camera and lens do you have?
• What tripod and panohead do you have?

It is NOT the nodal point but the No Parallax Point (NPP) you need to rotate the camera/lens around. (The miss information has been spouted for years).

Setting the camera/lens on the panohead correctly is vitally important. Once done the use of control points pretty much becomes redundant.

Assuming you stitch your image and it becomes a spherical image there is no reason to convert to cylindrical, you would just convert to cubic to patch and cap the Zenith(T) and the Nadir(B) and then publish. (you could if you choose convert the cubes back to spherical projection.

For spherical projection to work the image must be equirectangular 2:1 aspect ratio. (twice as wide as it is tall "Exactly") I.E 5000x2500, 4000x2000 etc. This then can be displayed via the viewer as a 360x180 panorama.

Now, if you are stitching images to become a cylindrical image and wish to make it a spherical image that is a whole different story. Typically a cylindrical panorama image is 360x(something less than 180) I.E: 360x140 where the second number is the maximum FOV (Field of View). Creating a canvas in Photoshop that is equirectangular 2:1 aspect ratio as wide as you cylindrical image and then half as tall as the width you can bring your cylindrical image onto this canvas, centre and save and you now have a spherical image that will display as 360x180 with "holes" at the Zenith(T) and Nadir(B).

With this new image you can than convert to cubic and patch and cap the "holes" of the Zenith(T) and Nadir(B) to give the illusion of a real spherical panorama.   

Be sure to resize this resulting image to something Tourweaver 1.3 will cope with I.E: 2800x1400 or less otherwise it is doubtful it will show. You should also learn how to compress the image for maximum space saving and download speed.

I hope this helps you on your way. I offer personal "One on One" tuition for those who would like to get up to speed on the fast track. From purchasing, setting up, stitching, tour building to publishing.

Regards, Smooth