Geomantics - 3D, GIS, Landscape Visualization, Graphics and Business Software     
Geomantics site front page

Hotspots - integrating photographs and video

GenesisIV can add hotspots to the 2D map image in the main window. This tends to be most useful in an education setting, where the teacher can provide a set of hotspots as part of a project, or the students can collect data and add these themselves as part of their investigation. Please note that if you did not installed GenesisIV to the default location you may need to update the paths for the project in the Projects Editor before proceeding.


The Peak District demonstration project already has Terrain Layers for Photographs and Audiovisual set up, although no hotspots have been created. Load this project (if you don't know how to do this see our getting started tutorial).

Select the Photographs layer in the Layers list and click anywhere on the 2D image. A dialog pops up and asks if you want to select an image. Click yes.

 

A standard open file dialog box opens displaying the contents of your projects images directory (for the demo this is set up as C:\Program Files\Genesis4\Peak\images). We've placed a single jpg in here - if you do not see any files you should cancel at this point and copy a suitable test file into the location.

Select an image and click OK.

 
This places a hotspot picture icon on the 2D map.
You can move the icon around by clicking on it once to select and dragging.
Audiovisual files (avi, mp3, wav) may be added in a similar way when
an audiovisual layer is selected.

To open our new photograph hotspot make sure the Photographs layer is selected, then double click on the icon.

 

Double clicking opens a dialog box showing the (scaled) photograph. You can add notes - here we've added a short note about the location, print the data, or remove the hotspot completely.

With audiovisual files the GenesisIV opens a similar dialog with a link to Windows Media Player, which can be used to play the file.

 
Instead of double clicking you can select the layer then right click on the icon. The popup menu gives the option of editing the hotspot (and opens same dialog box as above) or deleting the hotspot. Deletion does not remove the actual file, just the hotspot link.