Due to the COVID-19 restriction, many education facilities have closed and moved the entire teaching and learning experience online. Yet, many schools and universities are finding new ways to help their students, staff, and visitors walk into their buildings or education spaces online. 360° digital twins and 3D models became the most straightforward replication for viewers to generate direct experience while prohibited from entering the school space. Creating a virtual, living digital portfolio for school and university also unleashed a greater potential for virtual learning, virtual conference, virtual training or even virtual community. Once a virtual format of the school or university was created, people can also quickly move beyond the idea of virtual reality to mixed reality and augmented reality —- in which all of these has been applied in education to a certain extent even before the pandemic.

Here are some of the questions one will have when we consider creating digital twins for educational space.

1. What does the “digital twin of school” means?

A digital twin is the virtual representation of a physical object (or a system). It captures real-time data and other sources to enable learning, reasoning and dynamically re-calibrating for improved decision making(ref). Therefore, producing a digital twin of school does not only limited to taking photos or capturing 3D model of the school region but also using these data along with other materials, like recording, reports, historical photos, audios, to represent the figure of the school in a virtual format. The digital twin of a physical property should also include the measurement data and other physical information, and it is the key to classify a virtual tour as an actual digital twin. The digital twin of the school does not only act as an important piece of documentation but also enable better decision-making for all stakeholders in their focus areas. It will be discussed in detail in the following sections.

2. What can we do with the 360 virtual reality tour?

The first thing to notice when answering this question is that there are different types/quality of 360 VR tour. You can either choose a RICOH 360 camera (with a thousand pixels) or choose a professional camera like the Civetta (with 230 megapixels). The more precise the camera, the more valid data it captured for different purposes beyond viewing.

Given a virtual reality tour, visitors can explore in 360-degrees and move in-between spaces. Each virtual reality tour can be made of a combination of 360 panorama images, where all of them are connected via URLs or hot spots. It simulated a real walking experience, while virtually, via mouse and image viewers. But of course, there are a lot more you can do with a virtual tour. Many virtual reality viewers commonly enable one to attach additional images, videos, and documents to the tour, like Matterport or VAM2.

3. How to explore the enormous potential of digital twins?

A digital file will never be a digital twin if one cannot connect it with another digital file to create real meaning and influence the workflow or decision-making process. Therefore, connecting the 360 virtual tours to other related documents or files is the first step to unleash the digital education facility’s potential. The education entity can also consider collaborating with stakeholders with different backgrounds, which can maximize its existing digital twins.

Given the functionalities explained in the last question, a digital twin like a virtual reality tour can become the story-line to connect all different types of digital assets together in a logical way.

School and university can use 360 VR tour for marketing, storytelling or engagement purposes. One can explore the education facility and discover some related stories or news materials that can best represent its culture or history.

One can also connect the virtual reality tour with class materials to create a virtual classroom. It comes with the idea of mixed reality or argumental reality. Teacher or instructor can simply benefit from hardware like Blackmagic ATEM, and integrate their own figures into a virtual environment. It can improve the learning experience. It also means instructors can simulate a school environment and act like they are standing in a classroom.

Another question might come along: Why would one need to spend money to produce a virtual tour or 3D model when we already can use Zoom to simulate a fake background? Several points come along, one thing is a 360 panorama background enable the user to walk around the entire scene, yet a fake zoom background cannot do it. Another point is that with 360 HDR images as background, you have much greater freedom in adjusting the background image’s lighting. (HDRI- High Dynamic Range Image) An issue with mixed reality is the difficulty of adjusting the lighting of the integrated figure and the background to make them look similar so one can simulate a viewing experience that makes the viewer’s brain believe it is real.

4. What can the university/education entity get from investing in its digital twins?

• Enable a dynamic record of school/university’s history goes beyond building’s appearances and geographical location and the building’s measurement data, related documents, supportive sources, and else more.
• Better marketing and storytelling experience for upcoming students and parents, especially during/post-covid era.
• Better management of its physical assets.
• Create a virtual engagement space for students and staffs.
• Enable digital planning, maintenance and safety inspection.
• Advanced and upfront school/university culture in adopting new technologies.

5. What are some of the successful examples?

There is no other visual asset management platform that can produce comprehensive and reliable digital twins like VAM2. Many schools in the United States have commonly used VAM2 for safety inspection and emergency response. With the entire school space digitalized with Civetta to produce 360-degrees HDR panorama(VR) and 3D model, VAM2 helps connect all different files with these visual files.

Schools can further use these precise and information-rich images and 3D file for management, maintenance, resource planning; they also collaborate with government facilities like the police station to plan for quick responses in cases like tourist attack or natural disasters.

When the pandemic comes into place, schools and universities are forced to close, and the classroom turns virtually. It is also where the VAM2 portfolio takes places, enabling the teacher to simulate a real-life 360-degree classroom background with Mixed Reality.

6. How can a virtual facility(digital twins) integrate into the existing learning experience?

Once the connections between the virtual tour/3D model with other types of assets are clearly established, it is not difficult to integrate the digital twin of a school into its existing learning experience. For instance, here are some examples.

1. Documentation and maintenance

clients from all industries come to Weiss AG for Civetta, and VAM2 solutions are mainly because they are looking for precise measurement for documentation and maintenance of the building. It is getting more critical to achieving properties management with a distance across many groups via Weiss AG’s solutions. It is the same for school and university, especially for many types of properties in many campus regions. With VAM2, schools and universities can combine their VR, 3D models, live web-cam, and many other documents and file sources in one platform. With periodically tracking, the maintenance history has been recorded with words and captured with media. It also helps with maintenance budget planning, construction planning, staff management and more.

2. Information exchange and communication

Visual Asset Management platform like VAM2 is more than just a cloud/local space where stored all types of resources. Still, a powerful source to help with direct communication and references. With buildings or scenes turns digital twins, one can directly use the digital twin as a reference to visually point out a broken door or window directly on a VR scene in their email. This method has already been commonly used in the oil&gas and aviation industries, which is also growing famous in university and retail management. If one uses a cloud or SaaS version of the VAM2, they can also benefit from real-time updates, where two parties in different areas have access to the same version of the file.

3. Virtual e-learning with Mixed Reality

With the virtual reality created by a high-resolution panorama camera like the Civetta, instructors can benefit from a high resolution 360*180 background images in mixed reality teaching. Instructors can walk around in a green screen studio while pretending it is in a classroom, lab, playground or more. It gives students a realistic feeling in an online course. Everything the school need is a single web-browser, as VAM2 enables a user to direct access to all the files via a browser, with no installation needed.

7. What are some of the cost of generating digital twins for school?

– Cost & time of data capturing

– Time, human resources and hardware for data processing or sorting (3D model)

– Purchase VAM2 licence or SaaS subscription services

Other invisible costs involve the time and energy to retrieve resources from other stakeholders and parties to complete a visual asset management portfolio for the school or university.

8. How to manage all the digital contents created?

As explained in the previous article, producing a school or university’s digital twin is not just capturing all the scenes and producing a virtual tour, but much more than that. Managing all the related digital content is the first step before connecting them up logically and paint a full picture of decision making in the future. Like database management, you might need to consider how to categorize them and name them to make them accessible and searchable. Besides, you can also use hotspot or URLs to connect any type of assets in VAM2.

Unlike Matterport or other visualization tools, VAM2 goes beyond just simply adding a button on your 360 or 3D model; but enables you to change its symbol, colour, add a description to the hot spots, and much more.

It is also essential to consider the accessibility and documentation of your digital management platform(DAM) to make sure the assets are well-protected or managed. It also extended beyond the idea of the virtual tour. With VAM2, you can decide which user will be editor, administrator or viewer only. Each level has different authorities and access rights. With VAM2, it will not automatically delete any file when you uploaded a new file with the same name. This protective system has been commonly used by Weiss AG’s other clients like Shell, BP, FBI and more.

9. What are some of the factors to consider before producing digital twins for your space?

Here are a few questions the school or education entity can consider before producing a digital twin.

– What is the digital twin used for?

For marketing, for fun, for emergency measures, for documentation or digital management? Based on this question’s answer, the school can be very certain which kind of equipment or team they will recruit for digitalization. It can be as cheap as an Apple scan or as expensive as Civetta, Z+F or more.

– What are some of the other contents that the school can collect to produce a digital twin?

Again, a digital twin is not just about scanning and digitalizing the building. There are also other documents that the admin team can collect, students, parents or other stakeholders. It can help list out these digital assets, collect them and upload them into the same visual asset management platform along with the virtual tour or 3D models.

– Do you expect to use the digital twins in the long term?

If yes, it is essential to find at least one staff or even a team to actively manage the digital assets in VAM2, regularly update it, and encourage other participants to share new materials with the admin to ensure the VAM2 portfolio of your school is valid. If there is a recent renovation or new building, one can also consider recruit a scanning team or use the Civetta to scan the new scene and upload it to the VAM2 for comparison and updates. With the SaaS subscription version of the VAM2, school and university do not need to worry about managing the cloud space or any hardware. Still, they only need simple access to any web-browser to achieve digital asset management.

10. Why accurate digital twins portfolio is also essential for school and university?

Even before the pandemic, many schools already implement the Visual Asset Management Platform (VAM2) for their digital twin portfolio. VAM2 has also been a great example that was commonly addressed in NBC News in the US. Accurate digital twins, including reliable measurement data and geographic information, can be used beyond the scope of marketing and education and for building maintenance, reconstruction, safety management, emergency response, and law enforcement.

Author: Christiane Zhao

Showcase examples and case studies

3D models and illustrations are always attractive to people, no matter whether they work in the industry or not. Almost everyone acknowledges the importance of showcasing their successful examples to their audiences. For those who provide 3D scanners and software, it is essential to address the strengths of their products through the final result. Your example also helps you to make your company’s brand more identifiable and outlines the difference with others. With specific examples, you can put your clients in the shoes you customized for them. It can be a video recording of the 3D models, preparation or working diary, or even test examples you just tried out during your free time. These examples help to create an adequate connection between your scanners/hardware/software with the final result, so clients will get a clear understanding of what they will be expected when they purchase your products. 

Case studies are also significantly important, as it showcases the entire workflow as well as your company’s philosophy throughout the whole story. Suppose you even get authorization from your previous clients or partners. In that case, you can include their names in the story line as a character, and explain to your audiences why your involvement makes a significant difference that others cannot. 

Advice N0.2

Not just photos, but also videos and 3D visualization platforms

No matter if you are a service or product provider, you are aware that you are working in the 3D tech industries, right? There is no doubt that you will be the first one who takes advantage of 3D visualization, in all aspects. If your clients can benefit from using your technology, you can do as well. Photos are great if you would like to showcase all these details or the overall structure of the 3D models, but that is far more than enough. 

You shall consider using specific platforms to record your 3D point clouds, or even share it, such as VAM2. From my previous experience, both the LinkedIn audiences and our clients love to watch their 3D models as they are playing a game. With some web-browser based platforms (like VAM2), you can simply use your mouse and keyboard to move around and view 3D models regardless of file size or the device. Audiences always want more than just a photo, with an active 3D model online, the entire product story line will be completed. 

Advice No.3

Connect your products with the final result

“What does it mean to me if I make a purchase?”

Customers usually tend to balance between their expected result and the amount of money they invested. When it comes to professional 3D scanners, the market does favor not only those that are popular but also those with numbers and significant results. There are many different ways for you to connect your product/service with the final result, and it depends on the target audiences you are focusing on. For scanner providers, the target audience is very diverse, and obviously, they have different needs and requirements. Everyone loves an easy-to-use product with good results, so address that!

Advice No.4

Address visualization possibilities with your 3D models

There are so many things that a 3D model can achieve, no matter if it is a high precision point cloud or a quick, cheap mesh. Clients in the different levels of the market might also use the 3D model differently. An engineer might look for a high precision 3D RGB point cloud that can visualize a 0.03mm crack in a tunnel, yet an art collector will need a 6MB 3D point cloud that can quickly be loaded to showcase its gallery and collections. 

Even though our clients are usually the one who use the 3D models, it is also interesting to know that not everyone knows how to use their 3D assets wisely. A 3D marketer needs to showcase the enormous possibilities of these 3D assets, such as improving shopping experience; speed up workflow; visualize assets; enrich entertainment. This will become clearer if you see this task as gold-digging ——- finding the shiny part within the sand. After all, everyone will be impressed by the power of storytelling.

Advice No. 5

Webinar and live-streaming will make your brand alive.

Online events such as webinar and live-streaming became even more important in the pandemic. Up to now, there is still nothing that can replace the feeling of seeing a person’s face. Webinars do not only enable you to do a talk online but also enables you to showcase a specific topic in any form you like to a group of potential users. It involves some interaction as well, one can comment or share, and another one can ask and answer questions. Things became alive, and more importantly, these chat moments can be prolonged with the shares, likes and comments on the Internet. 

Advice No.6

Listen to feedback, not just the number of likes.

In social media marketing, some figures are easy to draw you or your boss’s attention away, such as the number of likes, shares, comments or followers. There is no doubt that you can never do real social marketing if you don’t keep these figures growing, but never forget the purpose of why you are doing social marketing here —– to enable your company and your clients to get to know each other, and make the brand alive. Surprise or not, social marketing channels are excellent places for you to reach out to a group of special audiences that might not come across to your business in daily activities, yet one of them might be your future clients as well. Through sharing useful news, case studies, updates, or examples, each post you created provides a related topic for your online community to discuss with. Thus, you can see some useful feedback as time goes by. These feedbacks might not be as obvious as you thought, but you will end up realizing what are some points that you did not explain or highlight, which further draw confusions to readers. Or else, which functionality really hit the pain spot of your clients. 

Advice No.7

Seek for collaboration and partnerships with other 3D Tech providers

Same as any other tech sectors, 3D-tech industries are a combination of different providers and users. Over the entire tech journey of your clients, it is often that it involves using several hardware and software to produce the desired outcomes. Finding your companions to target the right group of audiences will benefit both parties, you and the other provider as well. Considering both of you are building upon each other’s brands, it became easier for you to sell your product to a mature group of users. In return, you can also promote your partner’s product and services to those long-term users to speed up their workflow. 

Advice No.8

Think creatively, how can you help?

Providing a 3D solution is never just giving out a quality 3D model but much more than that. Nowadays, 3D assets are easier to access; some even treat it the same as other traditional digital assets, such as photo, video, audio or documentation. Understanding what role your 3D assets play in your client’s workflow can make a significant difference. To show your compassion and professional knowledge in this, you can use these 3D assets as part of the story. For instance, engineers who are working in the oil rig platform are looking for a fast, easy-to-use but also safe scanner. Therefore I will recommend using the Civetta. But what makes this scanner special? Well, we can instantly upload all the panorama images to the VAM2, so then people in the onshore center can also visualize the result on the same day! That is the main point that makes both onshore and offshore engineers favor Weiss AG’s 3D solution. In other words, try to integrate your 3D solutions to your client’s workflow in a reasonable but also personalized way.

Advice No.9

Details, details, details

In many cases, it is the details that are able to make several different functions to link together and finally be useful at work. It is excellent if you are a person that really cares about the details of your products but also bear in mind that your clients will be even more confused if you spend hours to explain the design and purpose of each component. Other than that, showing to them how these details can end up making them the critical change makers to achieve clients’ requirements. Treat these detail designs as a dessert, not the main. 

Advice No.10

Work with a team, don’t fight alone.

Almost everyone knows the importance of team work when promoting your company’s brand to the market. It does involve not only posting or design, but also a deep understanding of your client’s behaviors, workflow, as well as a bit of technological theory and practices (if you meant to work in the 3D industry). If you are starting marketing like me, as an individual without a computer science background, feel free to keep your questions in mind and try to understand your hardware/software from your clients’ perspective, as well as understand the reason why things function in such way. There is always a reason when it comes to tech. 

Conclusion

I wish these 10 pieces of advice I provided are useful for you and your team. Surprise or not, many 3D technology companies do not even do any marketing in the space. As you know, marketing is never easy. However, with the development of technology, you can do a lot more than you once can, not just reaching the guy on the other side of the table. Feel free to send me a message or email me if you would like to share your piece of advice about marketing in the 3D Tech space. 

Author: Christiane Zhao