Virtual Museum and Gallery Tours

What is a virtual museum or gallery?

A 3D space that visitors walk through in a browser: rooms, exhibits and labels, built in CGI rather than photographed. A visitor moves from viewpoint to viewpoint, turns to look around and steps up to an object. There is no app to install and no headset to buy.

Is it the same as a 360 tour of a museum?

No. A photographed 360 tour records a building that exists, as it looks today. A CGI space can hold a collection larger than your floor, an exhibition that has not been hung yet, or a room no real building could fit. We build photographed-style tours of unbuilt property on our 360 virtual tours page; this page is the cultural version. The longer argument is in CGI virtual tours for museums and galleries.

Who commissions one?

• Museums with more collection than floor space, or objects too large or fragile to put in one room.
• Commercial galleries showing a hang to collectors who will never visit the city.
• Artists and private collections that want a permanent room for the work without renting one.
• Curators testing an exhibition layout before the walls go up.

Does it work for a temporary exhibition?

Yes, and it is one of the better uses. A show that runs for ten weeks in one city can stay open online after the walls come down, with the same hang, the same labels and the same light.

Does it replace the visit?

No, and a studio that says it does is overselling. Standing in front of the real object still wins. What the virtual space removes is the limit on who can see the collection and how much of it.

A natural history museum: 104 viewpoints in 8 weeks

A 5,000 sq ft hall built around a Titanosaur and a T-Rex, sized so a visitor walks between the legs of the sauropod and gets close enough to read a bone. 104 viewpoints, 4 stills from the same model, 8 weeks in 3ds Max. Most of that time went into scale: a skeleton only reads as enormous if something human stands next to it at the right distance and in the right light. The rest went into keeping the hall moving on a laptop. See the virtual museum project.

An art gallery: 114 viewpoints in 28 days

A deliberately neutral room, because in a gallery the architecture has to disappear behind the work. 114 viewpoints and 9 renders in 28 days, built in 3ds Max and published as a WebGL build. Lighting art inverts the usual job: an even wash on the walls, no hotspots across glazed pieces, no colour cast that would misrepresent a painting to someone judging it from a screen. See the virtual art gallery project.

Are these client projects?

No, and we would rather say so. Both are our own concepts, built to show the format to museums and galleries. The pipeline behind them is the one we run for client tours: the same 3ds Max models, the same lighting work and the same density of viewpoints as the 114-position tour of a Mayfair apartment we built for JPW.London.

What do you need from us?

• Plans of the building, if the virtual space follows a real one. If it does not, a brief and references are enough: we design the room.
• High-resolution files of every flat work, with its real dimensions.
• For objects: existing 3D scans if you have them, otherwise photographs from several sides and measurements.
• Label text, and any audio or video you want attached to a piece.

How do you light the work?

For the work first, the room second. An interior render flatters the space; a gallery render has to flatter what hangs in it, so walls get an even wash and glazed pieces get no reflections across the image. Large objects get the opposite treatment: a human reference in the frame and light that shows their size.

What do you build it with?

3ds Max for the model and the rendering, then a custom WebGL build that opens from a link in Chrome, Safari or Firefox. We keep the scene light enough to load on a phone, because most visitors arrive on one. A headset version can be built on request, but it is never required to view the space.

Who decides what goes where?

You do. The selection, the order and the story stay with the curator; we build them faithfully in 3D. You see the space at a clay stage, before lighting and materials go on, while the hang is still cheap to change.

How long does it take?

Our gallery with 114 viewpoints took 28 days. The museum hall, 5,000 sq ft with two life-size skeletons modelled from scratch, took 8 weeks. Your estimate states the delivery date before you commit.

How much does a virtual museum or gallery cost?

The price follows four things: the floor area, the number of viewpoints, how many objects we model from scratch rather than from your scans, and how much each piece carries (a label, audio, video, a link). A single gallery room with flat works sits at the low end; a hall of large modelled objects at the top. Send the plans or a short brief with a list of works and you will have an estimate within 1 hour.

Can visitors buy work inside the gallery?

Each piece can carry its label and a Buy button, and the Buy button can link to your store.

What do you receive?

• The virtual space: a link that runs in any modern browser and can be embedded on your own site.
• Stills from the same model: 4 came with the museum and 9 with the gallery, for press, posters and social.
• A headset version, on request.
• The 3D files. You own the build, and the models of your rooms and objects can be reused for later shows.

Can the space change after launch?

Yes. It is a 3D model, so a new hang or an extra room is built into the same scene rather than started again.