How to Make a Virtual Tour for Real Estate

How to make a virtual tour: the short answer

To make a virtual tour, capture overlapping 360 views of each room, join them into scenes, link the scenes with hotspots so viewers can move from room to room, add information such as room names and selling points, then publish the tour and share it by link or embed it on a web page.

This article follows one house through that job. You visit it once, and the same visit gives you the three things the agent will ask for: the tour, a floor plan and the photos. Capture decides the result, because editing, checking and publishing all work on whatever the capture gives you. So the first section is about the choices you make before you pick up a camera.

What to decide before you shoot

Start with the capture route, because it sets what you can build afterwards.

• Phone panoramas: you turn on the spot and take several shots per position. Free to start, slow to do well, and each room is a stitching job.
• A DSLR on a tripod with a panohead: more accurate and quicker than handheld, and the head keeps the camera at the right point between shots. Still a stitching job per room.
• A 360 camera: one shot covers the room, so capture is fast. You get panoramas for the tour and nothing else.
• A scan camera: it captures the room's data, not only its pictures, so the tour, floor plan and photos come from one visit. The cost is that you need a capture made for it. You cannot add that data later from a phone.

On the first two routes, the overlap between shots is what lets software stitch them. It finds the same points in two neighbouring photos and joins them there. Skip the overlap and the seam shows in the finished room.

Then choose the software by what the agent will need to do with the tour:

• how scenes are linked, and whether you can set which one opens first
• whether the tour connects to a floor plan
• branding, so the tour carries your logo or the agent's
• privacy cleanup, for faces, family photos and the camera's own reflection
• link and embed options, including a version for listing sites that restrict embeds
• tracking, so the agent can show the seller how many people looked

Prepare the house too. Our guide to staging a property for a virtual tour covers what to move before you start, and it is cheaper to move a laundry basket than to reshoot a room.

The method we recommend, step by step

The route below uses the Giraffe360 camera and Content Studio. It has one firm limit. A tour is built from a Giraffe360 scan, either one you captured or one sent to you. Photos uploaded from another camera or a phone can be edited and enhanced in a Content Studio project, but they do not become a tour. If you already hold a folder of 360 shots, a stitching tool will get you to a tour sooner than this route. If you are shooting a new house and want the floor plan and photos from the same visit, this is the shorter path.

1. Capture the house in one visit

A capture with the Giraffe360 camera gives you HDR photos, 360 panoramas for the tour and LiDAR data for floor plans. Work through the house room by room, front door to garden. Before you leave, check that every room you want in the tour is in the capture. A missing room means a second trip, and everything below depends on this step.

2. Let processing run and check the status

Open the project and look at the Processing tab. It lists still photos, panoramas, the virtual tour and floor plans separately, and a content type drops off the list when it is complete. The photos can finish before the tour does, so do not judge the tour until its entry is gone.

3. Set up the tour in the Virtual Tour Editor

Open the virtual tour in the editor and make three decisions for the house. Rename each room so the viewer sees "Kitchen" and not a scan label. Hide any scene you do not want shown, such as a cluttered utility room. Choose the start view, the first thing a buyer sees: the front door or the main living space works for most houses. If the sellers want one version with curtains open and one with them closed, alternative panoramas store both and the tour shows the one you choose.

4. Add info hotspots for the selling points

Info hotspots are clickable points that show text, links or images. Put one on the new kitchen or the underfloor heating, where a buyer is already looking. A few well placed ones read better than one on every wall.

5. Check the cleanup and the branding

Tours get automatic privacy blur, camera removal and sky replacement, which makes them ready for a public listing. Walk through every scene anyway, and add a blur by hand where something personal remains. Then add the logo, accent colour and theme, and decide whether to show the welcome screen.

6. Publish and copy the link

Open the project, open the three-dot menu on the virtual tour card and choose Tour links. On the Regular tour card, check the status. If it says Unpublished, open the status menu, choose Publish and wait for Published. Then decide whether to leave Collect cookies on. Turning it off changes the link, so make that choice before you copy. Select the copy icon beside Link.

Some listing sites restrict branding or embeds, and for those the dialog has an unbranded link, shown as the LSF tour. The same dialog offers social sharing and a QR code download. Giraffe360 tours also work with portals such as StreetEasy.

7. Embed it on the listing page

If the agent's website editor accepts HTML, paste the full copied address, including the https:// at the start, as the iframe source. Publish the page, then check the tour on desktop and on a phone.

Check the tour before the agent sees it

Run this list on the published link, not on the editor preview:

• Open the link in a separate browser window, as a buyer would.
• After embedding, test the page on desktop and on mobile.
• Click through every room and confirm its name and its start view.
• Decide who gets in. An open tour needs nothing. A gated tour asks for contact details before it opens. A protected tour shows part of the tour and captures the lead before full access, and the leads appear in the dashboard. The gated tours post covers the setup.
• Leave the tour published. Unpublishing it breaks the shared and embedded links, including the one on the agent's page.

If you are the agent ordering a tour, ask for the published link and open it on your phone before the listing goes live. Once it is live, tour analytics show views and visitors over time, which gives you something to show the seller. When the tour is working, our tips for engaging virtual tours cover what to improve next.

How to make a virtual tour video from the same visit

The tour you just built is also the source for a video. A walkthrough video can be generated from the tour panoramas, outdoor areas included. What you can generate depends on your capture and your plan, so check what the project offers in Content Studio before you promise the agent one. See real estate videos for what the video tools cover.

The rest of the visit is already in the project. The LiDAR data produces the floor plans, and the tour connects to them, so a buyer can see where they are standing in the house. The HDR photos are the same ones the agent uploads to the portal. For this house, one visit leaves the agent with a tour link, a floor plan, a set of photos and a video to choose from.