New feature in Storyline 360: Interactive 360° images

I see, thank you that does help. Fingers crossed that markers are made accessible in the next update!

The 360-Degree Image feature is a really nice enhancement! Great work, everyone!

I just read Katie Riggio's article on accessibility support for this feature, and she commented that the Articulate team is still working on screen-reader support and keyboard navigation.

I tested out a brief interaction created with this feature and noticed that, although it is possible to navigate around the 360-degree image with all four keyboard arrow keys, there's currently (apparently) not a way to tab or navigate to a hotspot and select/open it.

Any ETA on when more accessible features, like the ones Katie mentioned, might be ready? Thanks in advance--and thanks for always working on improvements to SL360! :)

Hi Michelle, thanks for the feedback!

Even though accessibility is still a work in progress, you should be able to tab to the different objects on a 360° image and then click the spacebar to open the labels. We are aware of a bug where sometimes the focus goes from the slide directly to the "Back to top" button and skips over all the markers and hotspots on that image. If that's what you're seeing, then going to another slide and coming back will sometimes magically fix that. 

We will continue rolling out accessibility improvements with every monthly update until we're done!

Is there a way to pin characters from the Storyline library to a 360-degree photo so the character moves with the photo as users explore other parts of the image? If I add a character on top of a 360-degree image, the character stays in the same spot on the screen while the background moves behind them. I can shoot new 360 photos with real models and can think of some workarounds to get them to change their facial expressions if the user gets a question wrong or something. But I was hoping a feature like that would already exist, I just couldn't find it anywhere. Thank you.

Thanks for the fast reply, Annie! In the item I was testing, this lack of focus/inability to tab to the different objects is happening consistently, but to be fair, the .story file containing the image has only one slide. I'll create another test 360 image item that contains more than one slide to see if that remedies the issue. Thanks again!

Love this new feature but would be nice to be able to load a series of images to create a VR/table turn still interaction for like product review. The ability to have a quick way to do a 360 Product Viewer with hotspots and interactivity. If this already is able to let me know as I have clients that love the ability to take photos of products and then view in a table turn-style viewer with hotspots detailing aspects of the product. I am newer to Storyline so any help would be great. If this feature is not readily available it would be a nice added bonus to have as an insert like this new 360 image feature in beat.

Hi Jeanette,

That feature doesn't exist officially, but I was able to find a hack a couple months ago where I added Atsumi to my 360° image. You can see my Review example here.

I did this by finding the 360° image in Media Library, clicking the Edit button on the bottom right, choosing Paint, adding Atsumi (I had previously exported the character) on top of the image, and saving the new image. Then the image in Storyline should update so that the character is now there and is part of the 360° image so it doesn't stay in the same spot while the image is being moved around. Hope that helps!

Hi David,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you want to have a 3D object vs a 360° image. That's not currently supported, but you can submit it as a feature request here if you would like to see this in the future. This forum thread might also be helpful to you as Tyler gave some information about how to add 3D objects using the Web Objects feature. 

Thank you so much! This is super helpful! I really appreciate it =)

Thank you for the reply. Having the ability to insert 3d objects would be a huge plus and something Articulate should really consider. I have added it to the new feature request...which I did several times a few years back so hopefully, it will stick this time. What we currently do is table-turn style photos of products and then build a product 360 with hotspots and interaction embedded. So we take a series of images and then load them into rows...end result is the user can grab the product and rotate around the actual product and not the world like the current beta 360 in Storyline. If Storyline had an option to load a series of images and then when the user clicked and dragged around the object it would flip thru the series of images giving the end user the feel of rotating the product. Like this web-based code example:

https://preview.codecanyon.net/item/easy-360-product-viewer/full_screen_preview/19294733?_ga=2.83695702.1352589150.1633007309-524644463.1629388225

But having the ability to have all this inside Storyline and not have to have a web-based option or web object.

Thanks again for the sample hack you provided and the comment.

Photoshop has an 360 image editor , so you can drop 3D objects anywhere on the 360 image space.  You can then add subtle shadows etc. to make it look like it was there.  Once you save back out to 360, you can't go back and separate.   I also think 3D object support would be great to have in SL.   

Amazing new feature, would LOVE support for 360 video now as well, the same tools but an animated background would be ace!

Nice Jonathan! (Although, pushing it a little with adding Tina to the "...genius of...). Keep it going!

About that 2:1 ratio...

So I have been experimenting with creating 360 Pano shots in my iPhone (since I don't own a 3d cam at this time), bringing those into Photoshop in their Pano editor and converting to a 2:1 ratio - the editing settings in the software are 16:9, 5:4, 3:2, and then there is a freeform, and I can set to the recommended 2:1. In every instance of a 2:1 ratio when I put into a SL slide I get dimension errors - and if clicking through, it does look pretty wonky. I would never use the results in a class. 

I'm sure I am missing something and I am hoping someone in eLearning-space here can suggest something to help with my own images. Many thanks! And, thanks to Articulate for this feature!

Ya'll still haven't fixed things from 8 years ago - but that is a different topic! 

Thanks!  Tina is credited as one of the five songwriters alongside the rest of the band and producer Bryan Eno.  One of the most underrated bassists around and definitely a genius, in my humble opinion.  

I like the new 360* image support, but to be practical we are going to need a way to support multiple camera positions in a space (simulate walk-thru).  We can add the new image to next slide, but if you have direction arrows to move back and forth between slides (photos) we need to be able to SET initial image coordinates on the fly in a "Trigger".  Is this a feature request I can make?

Hi Mike Olivieri

I love your example! Is it possible to have the template to download ? 

Thank you!!!

Based on this article, it seems that markers set up in a 360 image can not be formatted to 'show all on hover' like non-360 markers. Not a show-stopper, just wondering if I'm missing something or if there are plans to add this feature at a later date.

Thanks for reaching out, Bobby!

You didn't miss anything. The ability to Show All on Hover is not a feature included with the markers on 360-degree images at this time, but I'd like to point out a feature on our roadmap for Tooltips when hovering that may help your interaction in the future.

We value your input! Could you share more about how you'd use this feature for our team to review? Submit a Feature Request.

I have done a number of edits to the 360 panoramic images, like adding 3D PPT objects into the scenes, changing art work on walls, adding my own green direction arrows on the floors, etc.  Just use the 3D panoramic import in Photoshop.  Once you have the 360 image opened you can move to the position where you want the object to be/stay.  Draw or paste  it on a layer, when your finished editing you need to merge the new layer (Ctrl+E) down.  Once you merge with 360 layer you cannot change it independently, so do it last before exporting.  Then, under the 3D tab select Export panoramic image and replace in Storyline and the object/edit will move with the scene.  Hope i explained that clear enough.  

Hi Denise!

I'm not sure if you intended all of this information to be included in a public forum reply, so I wanted to make sure that you were aware. Please click 'View' vs. 'Reply' to pop into the forums directly and edit your reply if needed.

It sounds like your questions are specific to Photoshop, but if we can help you with any of your Storyline 360 questions around 360-degree images, please let us know.

Also, your email signature came through when you replied via email. You can remove that if needed by clicking ‘Edit’ beneath your response. Here’s a quick Peek video if you need help.

Hi, I want to insert a video into a 360-image, but all the media-options in 360 edit-mode are greyed out. How come?

Tommy,

You need to create a layer on the slide that has the 360 image.  On the new layer insert the video. Go back to 360 image and create a marker or hotspot.  Then create a trigger that opens the layer with the video.  

Denise,

A great alternative to Photoshop is Affinity Photo (available for Windows and Mac with a one time purchase of $55, no subscription).  There is even a iPad version for $22.  Affinity Photo does not have all the features as Photoshop, but there are so many, most people would not notice.  

Affinity Photo has the ability to work with 360 Photos.