Making Web Hot Spots in VR PanoWorx & Worx
Hot spots are specific regions on a QTVR movie that will perform certain actions when clicked on or rolled over. This tutorial covers adding hot spots for making links on a web page and for displaying information in the movie's controller bar. See the Web Authoring section of this tutorial for more information on using hot spots for linking web pages.
Hot spots can also be used in multimedia authoring programs such as Director to perform a number of functions, but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial. Nodester and VR PanoWorx create hot spots in a very similar way. Though these instructions show how hot spots are created in Nodester, they will serve as instructions for VR Panoworx as well.
Creating Hot Spots
- You will need to have finished the Blend step in VR Panoworx to create hot
spots. The hot spots get created on the stitched PICT file created in this
step. Make sure you are at the Blend page of the program by clicking on that
tab. Click on the Edit button, to the left of the panorama. Nodester opens
the stitched panorama in its full size in a separate window. There is a palette
of editing tools to the left. These are fairly weak tools. It is better to
use a full-function graphics program like Photoshop to touch up your panoramas.
- Click on the Image button in the lower left hand corner of the window. It will toggle to Hot Spot and change the image editing tool palette to the hot spot editing palette. This palette lets you access the following functions:
- Arrow tool for selecting, resizing, moving, and editing existing hot spots
- Polygon tool for creating irregularly shaped hot spots
- Square tool for creating square hot spots
- Rectangle tool for creating rectangular hot spots
- Circle tool for creating circular hot spots
- Oval tool for creating oval hot spots
- Color tool for setting the color of the hot spots
- Click on a hot spot creation tool each time you want to use it. Draw your hot spots over the regions in your panorama where you want actions to take place when rolled over or clicked on. Your hot spots will be automatically numbered. These are ID numbers that you will need to know when you create web page links, so you may want to write them down for future reference. You can move, resize, or delete hot spots using the arrow tool.
- To edit a hot spot, double-click on it with the arrow tool. A Hot Spot Properties dialog box will appear. Here you can edit the following properties:
- Kind drop box-- There are several kinds of hot spots, depending on what type of action you want to take place when it is clicked. The Link hot spot kind will be the only one covered in this tutorial. It is used for making web page links, and it will also display information in the controller bar when rolled over.
- ID field-- This is a number the computer uses to identify what hot spot has been clicked. You will use this number when you want to link to a web page with the hot spot. (See the Web Authoring section of this tutorial.)
- Name field-- This is a text name you can give the hot spot. The text will appear in the QTVR movie controller bar when the hot spot is rolled over by the cursor. Text in the controller bar requires QTVR version 2, which you select when you export your final QTVR movie.
- Comment field-- Comments are saved in the Nodester file to help you document the purpose of the hot spot.
- After your have created and edited the hot spots, select "Save" from the "Edit" menu. Then close the editing window. The hot spots will be added to the QTVR movie when you Compose (Compress in VR Panoworx) and Export it.
QTVR Movie with Hot Spots Revealed
UTSoMall2.mov 247K
When you play the QTVR movie with hot spots, you can click on the Hot Spot button (
) in the controller bar to reveal the hot spots. Double-clicking on this button will cause the hot spots to stay "lit up" until you click it once more. You can check out this example by clicking on the picture above.
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