Yulio Knowledge Base > Enhancing a VR Project > Navigational Hotspots: What is it and how can I use it?

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Navigational Hotspots: What is it and how can I use it?

Navigation hotspots are a way to explore your VR project through point-to-point navigation. All you have to do is gaze or click on a hotspot to move into another scene. Adding navigation hotspots to your VR project is a great way to make your designs more interactive.

How to add Navigational Hotspots to your VR Project with Yulio Jump
The simplest way to add navigational hotspots to your VR project is through the Yulio plugin for Revit, SketchUp and CET.
 
Start off by downloading the Yulio plugin here. You can choose which plugin to download depending on your preferred CAD tool.
 
Once the plugin has been installed and your project is ready to render for VR, open the Yulio plugin. From here, select your scenes and other render settings.
 
Screenshot of Yulio Jump for Sketchup plugin version 3.0.1
 
Important note: Plugin settings may look slightly different between the Yulio plugin for Revit, SketchUp and CET. To review the settings for each plugin, download the individual User Guide available here.
 
When you reach Add Navigation Hotspots, check the box to apply the setting. Please note that you will need to have at least two scenes in order to add navigational hotspots to your VR project. 
 
Cropped screenshot of the Yulio Jump for Sketchup plugin version 3.0.1. A red arrow points to the Add Navigation Hotspots setting.
 
That’s it! Once you render with Yulio Jump, your navigational hotspots will be automatically generated and placed into your VR project.
 
If you’d like to edit the placement or style of your hotspots later, you can do that. Scroll down to the section on How to Edit a Hotspot to learn more.
 
How to Manually add Navigational Hotspots to your VR Project

In order to manually add navigational hotspots to your VR project you need at least two scenes.

Start off by logging into your Yulio account and selecting the project you would like to edit.

On the project page, click on the blue Hotspot Editor button. This button will take you into the authoring tool that will allow you to add and edit navigational hotspots. 

Once you’re in the Hotspot Editor, either click the green Add Hotspot button or click and drag the target scene from the left panel into the main scene window.

Drag the hotspot to position it where you would like it to appear for your viewer. Remember, navigational hotspots transfer viewers from one scene to the next, so you should place the hotspot where the view will be transitioning to.

How to Edit a Hotspot

Once the hotspot has been created in your scene, you can modify its location by clicking and dragging on the hotspot itself. 

There are additional hotspot properties that you can adjust in the left panel. To access the hotspot properties, select the hotspot and then click on the blue Edit arrow.

To start, you can customize the name of your hotspot. By default, the label will appear as the name of your cube map. You can customize this to something more meaningful for your design and scene. 

The label will appear in VR and browser mode and provide designers the ability to further build the narrative for their experience. Labels can have a maximum length of 140 characters.  

You can also hide the label all together by clicking on the Hide toggle.

You can also change the depth of a hotspot to provide additional spatial context in the VR project. 

Changing the depth will provide more context for viewing in VR. The depth slider doesn’t just make the icon larger or smaller; it is actually moving the hotspot closer/further away from the viewer. 

Finally, you can customize the color of a hotspot so that it stands out in your scene. You can choose between a white or black hotspot as standard options, or open the paint tab to choose any color. 

Example

Click here for an example of a virtual reality project with navigation hotspots.

Check out our YouTube channel for more info & tutorials.

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