Creating interactive 360-degree and VR content is easy thanks to Near-Life. Team member Ellie explains how you can use Near-Life and Skybox AI to create a VR Space Station Tour.
I’ve always found that the longest part of making interactive content with Near-Life is creating the content itself. The interactive part tends to be a breeze. So, being able to sit back and let Skybox AI generate all the content I needed made the process a whole lot quicker and easier.
Creating a Plan
As always, you need an idea and a plan for your video. I decided to create a Space Station Tour as it would serve as a great example of how you can use Near-Life to create interactive VR content. I also decided it would be a great way to give more information about all of Near-Life’s features to the end-user. I thought about what media I would need and created a storyboard on the Near-Life canvas. If you don’t know, a storyboard is like a flow chart where you can mark out all the interactions and decision points into different blocks that store each scene of your media.
Generating VR images
When I had a detailed plan I went onto Skybox AI to generate my VR images. Skybox AI allows you to give detailed prompts to generate VR images in a style of your choice. I was so happy with how all of the images looked!
Adding Media to Near-Life
With each location generated, I could then go onto Near-Life and upload the media. Then I could drag and drop each scene into the storyboard I’d made earlier. On the media tab on each node you can select the media format as 360 mono, 180 mono, 180 stereo or 360 stereo too (as well as 2D/flat). I chose 360 mono for this video.
Near-Life’s Features
I used this video to give information to the end user about what kind of features Near-Life has that you can weave into your 360/VR content. Therefore, I added icons, video overlays, triggers, hotspots and buttons. You can learn more about how these features work and see them in action if you play through the video.
Publishing and Sharing
With my video made, I could preview it a few times to make sure everything worked as I wanted. Then I could publish it and share it.
Near-Life makes it easy for learning professionals, educators and anyone seeking to communicate knowledge effectively to create immersive and engaging interactive video, VR, and gamified content.
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