Epic 360 degree interactive product shots

[Mark Mannschreck]

Not sure if this should be posted in Epic, workflow, still photog - but...

I've got a client that needs some interactive 360 degree product shots. I want to shoot the product in it's environment and dolly 180-360 degrees around it rather than using a turntable. The type of product needs an environment.

Then take the resulting shot and make it interactive in Flash or whatever - i.e. grab the screen and spin, pan, zoom. Utilizing the Epic's resolution (for zoom)
Is there a recipe or tutoral for something similar to this somewhere? (I have flash but have yet to use it)

(note - Needs to work with ipads too)

Any info would be appreciated!

 

[Christopher Fulham]

Flash won't cut it if you want the final work viewable on iPads, although there are more and more conversion tools out there now. I would suggest you consider html5, css and javascript, although you'll need a good coder in order to produce something that's slick and performs well across platforms and devices. You could also investigate off the shelf software like Unity3D - http://unity3d.com/

 

[Dominic Jones]

We've done stuff very similar to this and Unity is pretty much your best bet as it stands. You might also want to check out Molehill as and when it comes out of beta (soon, if not already, I believe).

The advantage of Unity is that you can build for various different outputs (Web, iPhone/iPad, Andriod, Stand-alone executable) from the same Unity build, which is great for multiple deployment projects. Molehill will offer similar functionality.

Hope that helps,
Dom.

EDIT: Sorry, just realised that you've got a specific iPad requirement for this, which will rule out Molehill as it's a new 3D-capable version of flash, which of course won't jive with Apple kit. Go with Unity, that's my advice...

 

[Mark Mannschreck]

Thanks for the info - Checking into Unity3d...