[thelist] Flash walkthrough

Richard Bennett richard.bennett at skynet.be
Sun Jun 18 14:53:42 CDT 2006


On Sunday 18 June 2006 13:51, john at johnallsopp.co.uk wrote:
> Hi ppl
>
> I've a client who is considering a Flash walkthrough of a holiday home
> in Australia. I'm in the UK, so he'd have to provide all the pics
> under my direction.
One problem is that it is not easy to photograph the inside of a house and 
have it look good. I think you'd need a digital SLR camera (like a Nikon D50 
for instance) with wide-angle and fish-eye lenses, shooting in raw format (to 
be able to correct dark, life-less photos) shooting without flash and with 
additional lighting. Plus plenty of practice.
If they won't invest in decent equipment, or a pro photographer with a clue, 
it is not really worth investing in the Flash component, as the result will 
not increase sales.
(YMMV)
>
> He wants a two-screen interface, one showing the 'view',the other
> showing a line plan of the house with an indication of where you are.
> Then he wants the user to be able to walk through the house and
> explore it.
>
> I'm no Flash expert or fan, but it seems like overkill to me. 
So why not do it in html? (you could call it ajax if he needs buzzwords).
Simply have the floorplan slices-up, or with an image-map, and change the src 
of another image when the floorplan is clicked. Add some pre-loading. 
It'd be done in an afternoon.

> Ignoring the fact that I don't know how to do it yet, so obviously it
> would take me longer, I've guessed at a ballpark figure of somewhere
> between £1k and £3k to get that working.
I'd put an html solution near the low end, and a Flash solution near or over 
the high-end of that, but all depends on the details, and the quality of the 
floorplan and images. (Do they all need to be cropped and optimized or not, 
etc). 

I would split your estimate into a few parts:
* Cost to build the app (Flash or html) to view the walkthroughs.
* Cost of creating a walkthrough for use in said app.
* Cost of creating a good quality floorplan from a low-quality 
example/scan/sketch etc.
* Cost of optimizing images (Per 10 or so)

That makes it easier to adapt your price as scope-creep or bad-quality images 
come up.

HTH,
Richard.






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