WebRotate 360 Blog

New Magento Integration For WebRotate 360 Product Viewer Released

2013-05-16T21:31:00+00:00

Today we're announcing a long awaited release of our updated Magento Integration v3.5 on Magento Connect.

There are several major enhancements in this release:

Integration has been updated to the latest stable 3.5 beta script that packs a slew of improvements and latest fixes (more is coming in the next script update shortly).
prettyPhoto lightbox support has also been updated to one of the latest releases (you can now also choose one of several nice skins that it comes with).
We introduced a new Ad-hoc integration mode (in addition to the standard one). It allows you to keep any other customizations or third-party modules that you might previously had installed on your product pages in the same location where we activate our standard integration. Previously this was a major concern as there have been many conflicts with the existing 3d party modules that could be only resolved by uninstalling one of the components. Now with the addition of the new Ad-hoc integration you can hook the 360 view pretty much anywhere on your product pages. It can be used as an embedded 360 view or as a small image thumbnail (or a text link) that will activate the viewer inside the same prettyPhoto lightbox popup.
We also added our Root Path / Master config support that allows you to have a single 360 viewer configuration file for all of your products in Magento (assuming they have the same number of 360 images, etc) and also support for loading your 360 images from an external server or CDN.
Other minor extras and fixes.

Here's some of the screenshots from this release (click to expand). Let us know if any questions!

PS: this new module has been successfully installed by a few folks already and they reported that everything went smoothly via Magento CE 1.6 and 1.7.

Shooting Flashlights in 360 degrees

2013-05-09T17:46:00+00:00

Check out our latest blog post on PhotoGear 360 where we talk about 360 photography of flashlights using the Ortery equipment combo, consisting of the PhotoCapture 360 turntable and PhotoSimile 50 Lighbox.

We shared a pretty interesting write up there that you can find helpful when photographing small uniform products similar to flashlights using the Ortery hardware. Here's a short extract from this post:

"What we also had to figure out was how to best present the flashlights as just dropping them on the 360 turntable was not expected to produce good results – we wanted to achieve a straight horizontal orientation of each object as if it was floating in the air while rotating in 360 degrees. Our solution was this small DIY mini platform with two tiny stands made out of metallic paperclips that we then plugged into the piece of cardboard foam...".

Click on this image to read the full post that also shows a completed 360 video of one of the finalized flashlights (there was about a hundred of those!).

Cool 360 Photography By Low Alpine

2013-04-22T19:33:00+00:00

Here is another recent example of an excellent implementation of a 360 product view that we think truly stands out.

Produced by Lowe Alpine to showcase their high-tech backpacks, these 360 degree photos deliver one of the best online product presentations we've seen so far. See one of the sample 360 views here or just click on the image:

The backpack pages feature nicely blended high-quality 360 product photography with neatly organized hot-spots, all tastefully crafted into website's look and feel (notice how all of our standard toolbar graphics has been overriden with custom imagery).

We are glad that the guys at Lowe Alpine picked our WebRotate 360 Product Viewer and put it into a good use!

360 Product Views In OpenCart Are Now Possible

2013-04-04T22:48:00+00:00

Check out our brand new extension for OpenCart! As with our new WordPress module we released the other week, this extension features all of our latest enhancements and fixes that we have introduced so far in our core product WebRotate 360 Product Viewer. Like the awesome full-screen capability that you can see in this demo below. And yes, for those of you who wanted hot-spots in full-screen, this is now also possible.

To make a long story short, please see this OpenCart 360 View Demo and if you would like to give it a try, just follow these simple steps:

Step 1. Download

Download our OpenCart module using this link:

Download Extension »

[UPDATE: get the latest version directly from OpenCart.com]

Step 2. Copy files

Unzip webrotate360_opencart_integration.zip on your local computer and copy all folders from the webrotate360 folder to the root of your OpenCart installation. This will not replace any existing OpenCart files unless you already had a previous version of WebRotate 360 module installed.

Step 3. Find header.php

Find the following file in your OpenCart installation:

<Your OpenCart folder>\catalog\controller\common\header.php

Step 4. Update header part I

Make a backup copy of header.php then open the original file for edit and enter the following three lines right after the first line that reads "<?php" at the very top:

global $__wr360Path; $__wr360Path = 'catalog';
if(defined('DIR_APPLICATION')) $__wr360Path = preg_replace('/.*\/([^\/].*)\//is', '$1', DIR_APPLICATION);
include $__wr360Path.'/controller/module/wr360/wr360header.php';

Step 5. Update header Part II

Enter the following line right after this statement "$this->render();" at the end of header.php and save the file:

$this->output = addWR360Headers($this, $this->output, $this->db);

Step 6. Activate module and configure

Go to your OpenCart Admin and select Extensions > Modules and click [Install] next to the WebRotate 360 module. Then select module's [Edit] to enable the module and set the rest of parameters by following the text notes under each field.

To see our test 360 view (included with the module), just enter the following url under Config File URL in the table next to your test product (remember to enable it in the table): /360assets/sampleshoe/config.xml. Or use a full url including your domain name, eg http://yoursite.com/360assets/sampleshoe/config.xml:

Step 7. Finish

Click Save to activate your changes.

PS: if you haven't created 360 views with WebRotate 360 Product Viewer before, you would first need to download our software and follow this simple video tutorial to create your 360 views first and then just upload them to your OpenCart installation via FTP.

360 Views In WordPress Made Simple

2013-03-27T19:09:00+00:00

Our new 360 viewer integration for WordPress is ready! This time it has been implemented from scratch using various feedback we received from the users of our old WordPress 360 Viewer module. In short, we are now using WP short-codes that make things much simpler and provide greater flexibility in what you can now accomplish.

Main plugin features include:

Ability to add multiple 360 product views on the same page or post.
Gallery mode to show your 360 views in an expandable popup gallery.
Support for loading images from CDN or external servers or using a single config xml for multiple 360 views.
Dynamic 360 viewer resizing if your are using responsive WP themes that adjust their layouts based on browser or screen dimensions.
And a slew of other features included in our core product WebRotate 360 Product Viewer 3.5 beta such as:
Rotation inertia.
Full-screen support.
New hot-spot presentation modes.
Mouse-hover dragging.
Improved support for mobile viewing.
APIs and more..

Checkout this WordPress 360 viewer demo page with usage instructions.

Installation is quite simple also (requires at least WordPress 3.0):

Download our WordPress 360 viewer plugin manually, unzip, and copy its contents into your "wp-content/plugins/ webrotate360" folder.
Activate WebRotate 360 Product Viewer integration via the Plugins page in the WordPress Admin.
Upload your 360 product view to your chosen location on your WordPress server via FTP.
Then just visit our demo WordPress page for further instructions on how to apply the short-codes to achieve the desired presentation of your 360 views.

Download Plugin »

Or install the latest version directly from WordPress.org »

360 Product View In 180 Degrees. Why Not?

2013-03-23T01:44:00+00:00

Checkout this neat 360 product view by Triton Showers (and of course powered by WebRotate 360 Product Viewer). Note how their photographers decided to not show the back of the product which makes perfect sense - much simpler to mount and produce the 360 photography while showing only the sleek front and sides.

Why we like this one even more:

The use of a clean light-box popup.
Image-based interactive hot-spots.
Excellent 360 degree photography.
Cool touch shower with a temperature control - we want one!

To see it in action use this link or click on the image:

Fix for Internet Explorer 10 Mouse Drag Issue

2013-03-07T05:59:00+00:00

If you haven't heard already, Microsoft has just released their flagship Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) for Windows 7 about a week ago, which we believe will spread pretty quickly.

We have identified a critical issue in this latest IE10 release for Win7 that breaks mouse dragging in all 360 product views running in JavaScript mode with WebRotate 360 Product Viewer v3.0 and also the latest WebRotate 360 Product Viewer Beta 3.5 build 111 (limited release).

To fix the issue in your existing v3.0 deployments, please download imagerotator.js using the following link (the file is inside the zip) and copy it over imagerotator.js located under your imagerotator/html/js folder on your webserver. To update your SpotEditor (desktop) installation, please first find imagerotator.zip in your SpotEditor application installation folder and replace imagerotator.js inside this zip (located under html/js inside the zip).

DOWNLOAD FIX FOR V3.0

PS: if you are using the latest beta 3.5 (it's just a couple of weeks old, so very few folks are using it at the moment), you can download updated build here. Only imagerotator.js under imagerotator/html/js has been affected since the last beta drop.

360 View of The Famous Lucy Now Powered by WebRotate 360

2013-02-28T22:59:00+00:00

Here's a pretty interesting 360 view of the Creation Museum's 3D model of Lucy published in the digital edition of the Answers magazine. It's always nice to see our hot-spots in action - turns out they are great not just for the product annotations but for historical records as well!

This is not the first time our WebRotate 360 Product Viewer came handy in showcasing historical artifacts. We've also helped The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Natural History Museum of United Kingdom in London with their 360 degree presentations. Museums are looking into enhancing their web presence these days and our interactive software helps achieving this goal.

We think that's the way to go!

Testing SpotEditor on Apple's Mac OSX 10.8

2013-02-25T22:31:00+00:00

Just wanted to share a post from our forum with the current status of Mac OSX 10.8 support (confirmed by the client):

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We have done a few more tests on clean OSx 10.8 with latest updates, and SpotEditor seems to be working fine as-is (the same copy as in our free 360 viewer download).

To make it work on OSx 10.8 we have installed the latest X11 2.7.4 via
http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/

And you also need to install Mono framework using this link (same as as per our readme in the free download):
http://download.mono-project.com/archiv ... in.x86.dmg

Also, it looks like you have to restart your computer after initial installation of X11 on fresh Mac OSx for it to start working with our app.

Download limited WebRotate 360 Product Viewer Beta Code v3.5 (build 115)

2013-02-11T19:42:00+00:00

Just ahead of the full 3.5 release of the next iteration of our WebRotate 360 Product Viewer, we would like to make available a limited 3.5 release to help addressing some of the pressing issues in our previous viewer releases, and specifically:

Firefox 17.x-18.x image flashing issue caused by this Firefox bug.
Popup hot-spots closing immediately after opening on some Android devices.
Support for multiple viewer instances on the same web page (existing PRO customers only).
Rotation inertia support (can be disabled in xml config if needed via the useInertia setting; please see included sample).
Integration as a jQuery module (see included html for a sample).

If you urgently need any of these, please don't hesitate to download and test this limited 3.5 beta release.

To apply to your existing installations, just overwrite the contents of your imagerotator folder with the one included in this download. No changes to your existing xml should be necessary.

IMPORTANT: this new version doesn't support Adobe Flash, so if you are still using Flash mode via our previous 360 viewer releases, this drop will not work for you.

DOWNLOAD LIMITED BETA »

[DOWNLOAD LINK WAS UPDATED TO BUILD 115 THAT FIXES IE10 MOUSE DRAG ISSUE]

PS: here's a little bit more information (and a quick demo) about the upcoming 3.5 release: First Preview of Beta 3.5