I’ve been working on 360° tour projects more and more this last year. Below is a brief explanation of the process, and an example that I can show you here on my site.
This project is an existing office that is being refurbished, I was asked to virtually stage the space; presenting it as if the works had already been completed. 360° photography of the existing space and plans of the proposed layout were supplied to me.
Below is one of the 360° photographs. As you can see some of the refurb work is already completed, but there is still work going on. So rather than modelling the entire space in 3d, I wanted to use the existing ceiling, windows, and most of the walls from the photographs to save a bit of time, then overlay the new CGI furniture etc. The CGI elements would hide most of the building work and tools on the floor, however there were a few bits that stuck up above the floor area, or loose wires on the ceiling that needed tidying up in Photoshop. If you move the frame left and right below you can see the before and after.
Next, following the supplied building plans, I modelled the main elements of walls, windows, floor and ceiling. Even though some of these virtual elements would not be visible in the final images. Having them in the 3d model allowed me to match my virtual cameras’ positions to those shown in the photos, these elements also contribute to the accurate lighting and shadows on the the new CG furniture and floor. Once the cameras were set, I could add virtual lights and match their positions exactly to those in the photos. Now it was just a case of populating the scene with furniture and items to match as close as possible the references and mood boards I was supplied with.
Once rendered to high resolution I could complete the final post editing in Photoshop; integrating the CG elements into the photograph: Masking things in or out of the final image as required. Having rendered my virtual CGI version of the room with glass in the windows, I was able to pick up and add these new virtual reflections to the real ones, while removing any obvious reflections of building work in the existing glass.
So there you have it; a brief description of combining 360° photography with CGI elements to produce images ready for use in a virtually staged tour.