We have tested for you: Layama

360 tour creation tool

Motiva is a 3D studio which also develops the apps they need for their projects. Some of them are available for sale.

Let’s name Colimo, a tool that enables to swap textures after the rendering and then create configurators of products, or the famous DataSmith, bought by Epic Games, that makes import and export of geometry and textures easy in Unreal Engine.

Layama: a taste of VR with the simpliciy of 360° renderings

Motiva noticed that even though a lot of people would like to try and work with VR, there still are obstacles: transfer and adaptation of the materials, power of the machines of the clients for real time rendering… In short, VR is not accessible to everyone yet and requires quite a big amount of working time.

It is why we still use a lot of 360° renderings. There are tools that make it possible to add sound or navigation hotspots to your 360° renderings but it remains a bit old school.

Motiva wants to go further with Layama :

Fast and simple

The idea is to place several cameras in your image. Layama will create 360° renderings for these places at the resolution you chose during the export. While rendering, Layama will also generate normal and depth passes. Layama will calculate a light 3D and then place the renderings in the space according to the angles of view. The transition between two precalculated camera positions will be smoother and more transparent, closer to the way it looks in a VR move.

Same idea in 3ds Max and Unreal: you place several cameras in your model and Layama will launch a series of renderings.

You can custom the visit with your logo in signature and even a picto during the loading times. You can also change the initial view point when the visualization starts within the same interface. It is the place where you define the quality of the 3D mesh that will be used for the transition. Very few settings: “detail evaluation” that handles the precision of the mesh (if you increase that setting, creation will require more RAM and will take longer) and “Polygon count” that defines the density of the mesh.

Conclusion

Of cource the tool is not as flexible as real VR project would be. In some transitions, you can “see the trick”, but the ratio time spent / product shown to the client is unbeattable.

Simple to handle, easy to integrate to your workflow, Layama makes it possible to give your clients an extra service with a nice added value at a reduced production cost. .

To go further:

Christophe Bicchierai