How would you like to boost engagement for your 360 photo? You can do that by gamifying it and turning it into a simple puzzle. Here’s how you can do that with a free app. Here’s a sample (click on the dialogue box to make it go away). This was shot with a DSLR using VTE 2.0 (give it a few seconds to load):
Here’s another sample, shot by Bernd Kronmuller:
To turn your 360 photo into a puzzle, you need to use PanoPuzzle, an app by Bernd Kronmuller. Bernd reports that with Panopuzzle, average engagement time is 2 minutes 30 seconds, which I believe is quite good.
Here’s how to create your own Panopuzzle
Step 1: download PanoPuzzle from github and extract the zip file.
Step 2: create cubefaces for your 360 photo. You can do this in PTGui or websites such as 360 Toolkit. In 360 Toolkit, it will take a couple of minutes after uploading the file. Note: when I tried toolkit, there were errors in the cubemap conversion. I used PTGui instead.
Step 3: convert each of the cubefaces to JPG, if they’re not already in JPG. Make sure the files are named top, bottom, left, right, front and back respectively, e.g. top.jpg, bottom.jpg, etc.
Step 4: paste the cubeface files (do not change the names) into the images subfolder of Panopuzzle.
Step 5: upload the Panopuzzle folder to your server.
Thanks for the shout-out!!!
Thank YOU Bernd for sharing this app with the 360 community!
Just an update – it is now way easier to use your own panorama in a puzzle – no work required at all.
Just head over to https://panopuzzle.created-by.me/ForYour360.html
drag one of your 360 panoramas onto the white field – click “Create puzzle” wait for a bit and play your own puzzle – it is literally that easy.
Or click on the drag & drop field and choose a 360 panorama with your file browser.
No data will ever leave your computer – the whole conversion and puzzle runs in your browser session.
There are a couple of restrictions – only jpg images with a ratio 2:1 smaller than 25MB are accepted.
Give it a go 😉
Thanks Bernd!!