View, navigate and sketch on lat-long panoramas in SyncSketch
SyncSketch supports synced reviews of 360˚ spherical panoramas with sketching.
In order to be treated as a 360 panorama, the uploaded image file must be rendered or stitched as an equirectangular(aka lat-long) image or movie with an aspect ratio of 2:1. Many renderers and 360˚ cameras will create such files.
Why is it behaving like a plain still image?
When imported into a review, a panorama may initially appear as if it were any any other uploaded still image or movie. To set it as a spherical panorama, reveal it in the media drawer beneath the review, then click on the ⋯ menu, and select Set as 360 content:
Navigating
Now when you open the review to that file it will be displayed as a navigable spherical panorama. Click on the camera tool at the bottom to switch to Camera Navigation mode:
Drag within the viewing area to navigate the scene. Any reviewers who have joined the review will be synchronized; when someone navigates the scene, everyone will be looking at the same angle.
Sketching
Once you've found an angle that requires an annotation, click the Brush tool to leave navigation mode, and then draw your sketch. This will create a comment in the comments pane at the right.
The comments pane may need to be revealed by clicking on the speech balloon icon in the upper right:
| Hides/Shows Comment Pane | Badge indicates 3 sketches |
The sketches do not exist in 3D space. To revisit them, you must return to the exact viewing angle from when the sketch was made. There are three ways to do this:
|
|
The note created when you begin a sketch simply contains the word "sketch" by default. Click or tap the note's pencil icon to replace the text with something more descriptive, or else simply use these comments as "bookmarks" to return to the viewing angles where you've sketched by clicking or tapping on them.
Limits
It must be a 2:1 equirectangular panorama
As stated earlier, SyncSketch currently only supports the same 2:1 equirectangular renders that Google and Facebook support. This excludes the "Swedish-flag" style cubemaps popular for use as, for example, Unity skyboxes. There are online utilities that will convert cubemaps to equirectangular/lat-long panoramas.
Size limits
The panoramas are subject to still-image pixel dimension limits. For example, customers on Enterprise or Education+ plans can import still images of virtually any size, but users on other plans must keep each dimension of the file 8192 pixels or less, an important consideration for panoramas.
Supported Formats
Panoramic images must be in 8-bit PNG, JPG or TIFF formats. Higher bit depths, EXR and PDF are not currently supported.